Adi Tantimedh interviews Coco Wang

Fri, May 30, 2008

“I cried the whole day away on the 16th and started to draw the comics on the 17th. I had to find a way to let all these suffocation sadness out of my chest. At first I was too depressed to do anything, but as soon as I started drawing, I felt much better and felt I was able to contribute something. However, the process is still quite painful. Reading these sad words again and again, like living in a nightmare, everyday I keep returning to those photos of blood and death, hearing cries and screams from TV, drawing every horrible moments, try to feel what they felt,” Coco Wang describing her reaction to the catastrophic earthquake in China to Adi Tantimedh.

Earlier this week we blogged about an often heart-rending (and yet sometimes also uplifting) series of comics which Chinese artist Coco Wang was creating in response to the calamity of the earthquake in China, which Paul Gravett has hosted on his own site to share with the world (I’m glad to see so many comics sites around the world have also been pointing their readers towards it – good work Coco and kudos to Paul for hosting it). Adi Tantimedh, writer of one of my favourite online graphic novels, La Muse, has just posted an interview with Coco on Comic Book Resources, which you really should go and read.

(one of Coco’s pages combining the awfulness of events with a touch of hope and love, borrowed from Paul Gravett’s site and (c) Coco Wang)

I suppose some may question if we need something like comics reporting on the disaster when we live in a media-saturated world of 24 hour rolling news accessible anywhere with WiFi or on our mobiles. I’d say with out hesitation yes, we do. The news, even the very good news services like the Beeb, show scale and spectacle, but it is hard for a reporter to give an impression at the human level in a few minutes of sequence from the disaster scene. Images run into one another and numbers of casualties, villages destroyed, dams threatening to burst, can all blur into one. We already know that the graphic medium can put a very personal, individual face on events which are too large to grasp, making them more accessible to us as individuals rather than mass audience, directly, it seems, addressing us, to our empathy and emotions. Just look at Maus or Palestine as outstanding examples of how well the medium can discourse to readers on such heavy subjects.

It is bad enough that such awful events happen, but somehow it becomes even worse if we allow ourselves to become desensitized through endless and repetitive newsbites on rolling news channels; its too easy to forget that behind the scenes and numbers are ordinary families just like our own ones we love so dearly. I don’t think anyone who reads Coco’s strips about the earthquake will forget that – they are incredibly emotional (to be honest it can be hard to read as the emotions well up, but its harder to turn away) and I’d urge readers to visit Paul’s site and have a look as more go on, as well as checking Adi’s interview with Coco (you can feel that desire to do something, anything helpful, in the face of something awful leaking out of her words). Adi has also added in a whole range of links to various news sources and a number of charities involved in the relief effort who could all use donations.