Argumento
Collects the answers from thirty-two artists from Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, and throughout Southeast Asia. The stories, Liew writes in his preface, “provide a snapshot of the lives of Southeast Asian creators and their ultimate hopes, dreams, and fears at world’s end, capturing that one moment in their lives when they dared to play a game of make-belief.”
The stories explore the theme through the lenses of autobiography and current events, as well as through science fiction and fantasy. The diversity of ethnicity in Indonesia is explored in Tita Larasati’s autobiographical “Bloemen Blij Plukken Wij,” and Elvin Chang, from Singapore, also draws from his own experience in the military in “Boy. In “Pig When Small, Cow When Big,” Vietnamese artist Nguyen Thanh Phong takes a humorous look at a food market with no regulations.
Malaysian artist Aks Kwan’s story “Disappear” has a point of view between magic and reality, telling the story of his and his brother’s glimpse of giant guardian spirits. Singaporean artist Benjamin Chee envisions a different kind of behemoth in “Let Me See the Giant Fall,” a story of humanity’s resistance to tyranny and brutality. Adrian Ngin, an artist from Singapore, has an original take on the standard comics trope of superheroes in “iPocalypse,” asking “What if the retiree uncles and aunties frequenting your neighborhood coffee shops had special powers?”