Loud mouth who's never heard

"Mostly an editorial cartoonist will comment on the ruling party, but they're definitely not the only ones who invite mockery."

Easy Targets

One of the high points of his career was the presidential election of 1996, which saw the cementing of the legacy of former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) as the central person behind the country's transition to democracy. The campaign saw the rallying of different parties -- always easy fodder for commentary -- but more importantly exposed the many, sometimes contradictory, aspects of Lee's persona and politics.

"Lee's my favorite one to draw because he's seen the biggest changes over time." Other characters, in particular former vice president and current KMT Chairman Lien Chan (連戰) and more recently President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) are routinely the butts of the joke. Chen is always drawn with a deer-in-the-headlights look on his face, while Lien typically appears clueless to what is happening around him.

Coco prides himself on providing balance in his commentary, but he makes no bones about drawing Chinese leaders and the People's Liberation Army as brutish ogres playing with fire over the Taiwan Strait.

"I just don't like the Chinese government," he says, rolling his eyes at the memory of Hong Kong's pro-Beijing Wen Hui Pao (文匯報) and even Chinese papers using his cartoons when they mocked Taiwanese leaders. (A note to those papers: he never received payment.) Taiwanese politics may have lost some of the super-charged energy of the early 1990s, but Coco feels there will never be a dearth of political absurdities to expose with his cartoons. The cross-Strait tension, for starters, will always be a rich source for commentary in the years to come, he said.

"As long as the Taiwan-China standoff continues, I'll probably never lack work." He won't lack work, the loudmouth will just get louder.