002: Cultural Statement
Welcome back. Big news yet again in this edition. (I swear, not every instalment is gonna be as eventful as these first two.)
But before we get to all of that...
Support my work
Work-Life Balance – a prose/comics hybrid co-created with Benjamin Chee
You can also get the Work-Life Balance bundle, which comes with the book, a mug, washi tape and more
Worlds Apart: A Conversation About Mental Health – a comic co-created with Nurjannah Suhaimi
HANTU – Spotify channel for the award-winning narrative series, Ghost Maps, and the talk show, Dead Air, both of which were co-created with Kyle Ong
We won! Hoo boy, did we win...
No sense burying the lede: Work-Life Balance was named Best Literary Work and Book of the Year at the 2023 Singapore Book Awards.
Here's a part of the judges' consolidated statement:
[Work-Life Balance] is more than a worthy winner, a wondrous fusion of the prose and sequential art forms that deftly navigates several narrative conventions to create a disarming confection of horror, humour, and a dash of office politics. A tome that anyone who wishes to understand the psycho-social aspects of 21st-century life in Southeast Asia must read. The book is a cultural statement.
You can read their full statement here and a Straits Times article about the awards here.
I'm writing this three days after the ceremony and I'm still in shock. I think Ben is too. We started the night honestly just happy that we were nominated (and that they were serving decently decadent cheesecakes). When they announced that we had won Best Literary Work, we were absolutely floored.
After that win, however—and after regaining some level of our composure—we actually started entertaining what we thought was a pretty small possibility that we could be named Book of the Year too.
When we won that honour as well, we were left speechless—and remained so for the rest of the night, barely articulating our gratitude to everyone who shook our hands.
But I do want to properly thank those of you who congratulated us—so thank you to everyone who did so in person, as well as through WhatsApp messages, on social media and, in the case of my friend, Derek Des Anges, through a whole blog post.
To reiterate something I said in our acceptance speech (!!!), Work-Life Balance is, at its core, a love letter to storytelling—and I'm so grateful to the Singapore Book Publishers Association, the judges and, of course, our readers for recognising that.
Making the list
The wins have already had a positive effect, it seems. We're listed as best seller at Books Kinokuniya this week.
I've done events and signings at their main store (and shopped there way too much), but this is my first time on their list, so this was just the sweetest cherry on the Book Awards sundae for me.
If you're looking for Work-Life Balance in their stores, you'll find it under the Local Literature sections, or you could order it directly from their website too.
Nerd alert
Nadia and I were recently invited to dinner by my folks' old friends, Uncle Adrian and Aunty Loretta.
Uncle Adrian in particular had said that he wanted me to come over and check out his comic collection. I didn't think much of it at first, but when we got to talking, he mentioned that he owned a comic shop way back in 1985.
Now, my knowledge of the local scene isn't exactly encyclopaedic. However, he seemed pretty confident that his was the very first comic shop in Singapore.
After dinner, Uncle Adrian brought me up to their attic—and hauled out many, many boxes containing hundreds of Silver and Bronze Age comics. We're talking the early Marvel years, a near-complete run of the original Conan the Barbarian comics, a sizeable stack of Warren horror magazines, and two copies of the very first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
I could've spent all night up there, but that might have been considered impolite to Aunty Loretta, my folks and, of course, my wife. However—whether it's because he's known me literally since I was born or because he could clearly see how excited I was to be surrounded by all that history—Uncle Adrian very generously gave me two comics from his collection.
The adaptation of Michael Moorcock's Elric: The Dreaming City unsurprisingly had me poring over every page of P. Craig Russell's gorgeous art and storytelling. The 'Nam collection, on the other hand, was less about craft initially (though I thoroughly enjoyed Doug Murray and Michael Golden's work).
When I was a kid, there was a mini-mart across the street from our place that sold comics. The 'Nam was among their offerings, but I never picked it up because I was more enamoured with the superhero titles. I've always been curious about the series though, so after all these years, it's wonderful to finally—finally!—dive in.
Links and things
Comic letterer and writer, Aditya Bidikar, shares one of their guiding principles when it comes to working on commercial art: why you and nobody else?
bani haykal has a new album out called writing f(r)iction, which he describes as "music for films that have yet to be made"
Never content
Ed Brubaker is one of my favourite writers ever. Back in June, he had a lot to say in his newsletter about artificial intelligence, my favourite part of which was...
And somewhere lost in all of this bullshit about AI is the fact that writing is a form of human self-expression. It’s not the creation of “content” or IP. This is why art matters to people, because underneath whatever you see, someone is revealing something about life as they have experienced it, even if they’re not sure what it is. And we see ourselves reflected in other people’s work, that’s the beauty of it – that’s why I thought David Bowie was talking to me when he said, “You’re not alone.” Or Joey Ramone, when he said, “I wanna be sedated.” Yeah, me too, Joey. Me too.
In this month's edition, he speaks about the terms "content" and "IP", and it crystallised exactly what I hate about those words. I've screen grabbed most of it here:
Obligatory photo of Luca
This was taken right after the Visual Versatility panel during this year's PICOF. He was sleeping on my comic boxes by my legs the whole time, so if you were wondering why my head was out of frame once or twice during the panel, it was because I was giving sleeping beauty here some pats.
One last reminder, with a twist
That's it for now! Don't forget to support my work...:
(The multiple award-winning) Work-Life Balance
... and I'll see you in October!