志异 Draft by Drama box July 2014 (english) | Page 47

or social commentaries. Liew did
try to inject some of that in his strip
for The New Paper in Frankie and
Poo. Since turning professional in
the 2000s, he has ‘stayed away’
from Singapore – from Wonderland
(2009) to the Austen territory of
Sense and Sensibility, and the
science fiction world of Malinky
Robot (2011). But that seems to be
changing in the smaller stories Liew
has been doing.
In 2008, Liew drew a story written
by Mike Carey, a short meditation
on the effects of colonialism. This
questioning of authority and master
narratives continues in The Hunt
for Mas Selamat, a story Liew
wrote and drew for Liquid City Vol
2, an anthology of Southeast Asian
comics edited by him and myself
in 2010. This subtle challenge to
the official story of what really
happened to Mas Selamat is
conveyed playfully by Liew who
draws different panels in different
comic styles, taken from the gamut
of comic book history. The shifts in
form hint to the reader to question
the shifts in government speak.
This technique of juxtaposing
contradictions and putting jarring
images together is to make things
unfamiliar, to destabilise current

social or political realities. The
Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye
will be the culmination of such
experimentation. It will feature
the politicians of the 1950s and
1960s. But I shan’t say more. You
will get an idea from the political
caricatures in Liew’s paintings.
In 1998, at a Singapore Art Museum
forum, Kuo Pao Kun asked how we
can make