A Taiwanese artist has released a fantasy comic book in France to great acclaim, receiving special nominations and acknowledgments at some of France’s most prestigious comic book fairs.
Released on Oct. 6 by publisher Patayo, Evergreen Yeh’s (葉長青) Lost Gods: Shen Mu, l’esprit de l’arbre is the first of a planned series of bilingual comic books that were inspired by Taiwanese folklore and written in Chinese and French.
Patayo is a French publishing house that has discovered talented artists from Taiwan, having released press cartoonist Stellina Chen’s (陳筱涵) political satire comic Dans la cour des grands (“In the Big Leagues”) in October.
Photo: CNA
Patayo’s founder, Frederic Fourreau, said that Taiwanese artists stood out with their abilities to blend different cultures and their willingness to tackle a wide range of genres.
What he liked most about Yeh’s storytelling, Fourreau said, was the author’s ability to transport European readers into a fantasy universe built on Taiwan.
“[Yeh’s work] fuses creatures from Japan, China and Taiwan’s Indigenous peoples,” Fourreau said, describing the read as “truly an enjoyable ride.”
The book was so well-received that Yeh was given a grant from the French government-run Centre National du Livre, which provides assistance to artists to create and promote their works, Fourreau said.
Yeh’s work also received special recognition at Paris’s Montreuil Children Book Fair, held from Nov. 29 to Monday last week.
From Dec. 1 to Dec. 3, the book brought Yeh to “Salon SOBD — Toute la Bande dessinee au coeur de Paris,” one of the biggest comic book fairs in France.
A comic artist, illustrator and academic, Yeh’s list of artistic accomplishments began with his enrollment at the University of Melbourne in Australia, where he studied oil painting.
Upon graduation, Yeh worked as a professional animator before becoming a full-time comic artist and illustrator.
Yeh’s most recognizable work is Mayfly Island (蜉蝣之島), a comic for which he received the Bronze Award at the 15th Japan International Manga Award in 2021.
In his latest work, Yeh takes his readers on an odyssey through the eyes of his protagonist who tracks down amnesiac spirits and deities.
The protagonist of the story was Yeh’s rendition of “Kui the Star,” an anthropomorphized celestial body from Taoist beliefs.
Kui took the form of a young girl in Yeh’s story, who located lost spirits to help them recover their forgotten memories before sending them home to heaven on a summoned vessel.
Before devoting his talents to Lost Gods: Shen Mu, l’esprit de l’arbre, Yeh worked with Taipei Legend Studio, where he illustrated one of the art house’s publications.
His time with the studio — a company focused on archiving Taiwan’s folklore — gave him the opportunity to map out the first manuscript of his story.
“I have always thought about how to push Taiwan’s stories to other countries,” he said. “Perhaps I could use yokai [spirits, creatures, monsters and demons] as a starting point and combine it with the fantasy art style which I like to pique the interest of foreign readers.”
Many of his French readers observed that the majority of yokai comics were dominated by Japanese books, which made Yeh’s Taiwan creatures all the more fascinating and alluring, he said.
Yeh added that he hopes to use new retellings of old stories based on new research and understanding to present Taiwan’s culture and legends to the rest of the world.
“Creating work that will be liked by both Taiwanese and foreigners alike, on top of deepening Taiwan’s own knowledge of their own domestic culture and legends to give them pride, is the ultimate goal which I thrive toward,” he said.
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