Reviving The Novel Grafik: Maple Comics Offers Up Third Title for KL Book Fair 2015

It could soon be time for dreamers across Malaysia to get excited about the quest for The Great Malaysian Graphic Novel, as local imprint Maple Comics pushes its third title, Taubat Si Tanggang, in conjunction with the KL International Book Fair happening at Putra World Trade Centre till May 5.

The medium of the graphic novel, or novel grafik, as we may soon come to know them by here very soon, has been a form which has continued to be autonomously appreciated as the times have moved on. It’s been unstoppable, pretty much, and like the heavy metal, it’s here to stay.

As with any first world fads from rollerblading in the ’90s to dubstep in the 21st, here in Malaysia folks always look like they jump on pretty late, only to overdo it anyway. But “funny books” are no fad or bandwagon, and the novel grafik has really always been around us.

The difference was in the 80s and 90s people knew them as komik, and grew up to define classic issues of Gila-Gila, Ujang, translated Japanese smash hits like Doreamon, Naruto and the localised Indonesian delight – those addictive Dewata Raya comics (all the rage with Malaysian schoolboys even today) – which were closer to home, as the prototype novel grafik.

And it takes a special kind of genre to yield a talent like Gayour, or Ubi, to name but a couple, or Datuk Lat to be more obvious. One thing they all had in common, was that they all had the freedom, time and prasarana – infrastructure – to create, like commissioned artists.  

Mining local folklore for new stories and shared universes  

When believers like Maple Comics co-founders Amir Hafizi and Fairul Nizam Ablah dreamt up the first Great Malaysian Graphic Novel of the, let’s call it ‘new Nusantara’ age, it could have looked something like Taubat Si Tanggang. This new story imagines events after the arrogant son is cursed into stone by his mother in the old folk tale, turning the anak derhaka from a forbidding children’s lesson into a fresh protagonist seeking redemption.

Adi Fitri Ahmad‘s Tanggang started selling for MYR20 at the PWTC on Friday through the two-year-old label’s booth space shared with their slightly more seasoned indie fellow publishers Fixi and Lejen Press, who are also Maple’s distributors.

“The potential for expansion is immense, there’s (sic) a lot of things (to explore),” Amir says about this particular story and the host of iconic folklore characters from the Malaysian pantheon which appear in the new material. “I think it’s something that is useful, to reintroduce Malaysians to our local folklore.”

Before Tanggang, the first, Invasi by Azhar Abdullah and Raja Faisal, and second title, Mimi Mashud‘s “travelogue-comic” Kuala Terengganu In 7 Days, sold steadily online at the Maple site in the same price range and even yielded young reader requests for signings with the previously unknown writer-illustrators. Another one in the pipeline is Nafiri, a mouthwatering character-fantasy, judging from the stills samples revealed so far (see below).

But wait — twenty, twenty five ringgit a pop for a hardcover and about a hundred shiny pages — why so cheap? Might Maple be undercutting the market just a bit there? Wouldn’t it just perpetuate the whole ‘local = cheap’ stigma, and make it harder to sell for future works of similar or even better quality?

“We believe it’s a fair price,” Amir maintains. “The market is very price-sensitive and at RM20, we feel like we need to compete with a lot of other publishers who are publishing smaller comics but at a reduced price.”

Thankfully, higher end products – limited print, coffee-table sized hardcovers – for example, will be part of the plan for Maple in the near future.

Their non-domination masterplan will then include reader-tailored paperbacks, put out mostly for, Amir says, “people who want to read the thing”. The duo are also in the midst of developing games – card games, board games, apps and more.

“Our bread and butter is still comics, and IP. We don’t own the IP, but we work together and negotiate with the creators on every release just so that everyone can do it again,” he adds, explaining the Maple way.

“If you sell comics only to the comics crowd – my people – the geeks, dorks, nerds, whatever else, you only have a very small percentage of them supporting local comics. The challenge as always is to find new audiences. It’s the same problem with any other business, any other sections of the arts industry.”

Dreaming up a small comic book empire

DonK, short for dongeng kontemporari (contemporary fiction), is another Maple project which will be ready by the mid-year. It’s something Maple hopes to become a yearly anthology where a bunch of artists and writers reimagine and retell the stories from our folklore, with their own take.

Imagine the “Batu Belah Batu Bertangkup” story set in modern day Hartamas, for instance, where high-society datins get overly dramatic and suicidal about caviar; while the superhuman Badang could be a regular Azman from the gym who shoots steroids, with his hantu air foil reduced to his pusher; or, our favourite village idiot Pak Pandir, who could be made over as a frustrated post-modern intellectual.

“When we talk about Indian folklore, Western folklore, Australia and their (aboriginal) Dreaming mythology, European folk tales and whatever, Cinderella, even African stories like Anansi (the West African spider god)…it’s all been done to death,” Amir says.

“The only thing that’s left untapped and never been really explored with this modern medium is actually South East Asian folklore.”

A prolific writer himself (he’s the guy who wrote the    screenplays for Magika, My Spy and Hikayat Merong Mahawangsa, among others), Amir has his heart in the right place when it comes to producing art but still keeps money on his mind and his mind on the money.

His deep philosophy on art and commerce? “I just want to sell comics.” 

Amir claims Maple as being a bit Blue Ocean in their approach to selling. “What we’re trying to do, is offer the same thing but in new ways. Our logic is with each book is we sell this one in order to make the next one.”

He also hints that it would be a great loss for the blooming comics scene here to go the way of the film world.

“We just want to do our part to help make sure that this thing grows in the right direction, and not end up with so many persatuans and associations yet it’s so divisive and nothing gets done.”

Now to their greatest credit, another thing Maple believes in is unearthing new talent.

“We’ve always opened ourselves up to pitching from anyone and everyone. From there, we have discovered some amazing artists, some amazing writers of stories. We’re always actively seeking out people who want to do comics,” Amir shares.

These would be the dreamers who know that there is at the moment not much money in comics but want to make comics their way anyway.

 

 

 

 

 

 

For Maple Comics, the thing seems more about: not being cowed by expectations, ignoring the naysayers and going wild, then kicking some ass and seeing then opportunities, and just doing it like you mean it.

With the doable benchmark of a title every three months for every quarter of 2015, you really feel like rooting for them if you give a shit about colored story books at all.

Maple’s promise seems to be giving original Malaysian fiction – and the Malay language – the fancy graphic novel gloss it has long deserved.

When a small indie shows ambition like that to back up the noble (and once lost) cause, you can’t help but to hope they win. And maybe one day be able to charge a bit more for the quality of their product.

Comics are for everyone, not just “balls”

Maple also want to make more “female” comic books, with more and more girls buying comics, illustrated books and graphic novels now.

“Where Tanggang has a more universal appeal, we do want to get more girls to read comic books while not forgetting of course male readers,” Amir says.

“More than half of gamers and comics fans out there right now are young women. If that’s the global average then we believe that there is a market here. Finally, we also want to work with a lot of female comics artists because we believe there is huge potential here for that. We want them to come and approach us, we want to work with them and we want to publish their stuff.”

“If you exclude any group, you lose out on half of the talent pool. I think it makes perfect business sense to work with women, while also being about a coming together of comics fans,” he adds.

The beauty of all this, believe Amir and Roy, is that the comics scene hasn’t yet been sullied by too many politics. Nastiness hasn’t yet been institutionalised in this one scene. The opportunities are there and the time to tape the cracks in the medium, build on, and not screw it up later is now.

So for now, buy the books, have them at home, maybe make them openly reachable. Here’s to a future where new literary and visual talents have room and license to foster some new terrain for many a novel grafik to come.

More power to Maple for carving such a space and may they make more durable, value-for-quality comics which will be owned, held, read, gazed at, loved, passed down, collected, preserved, held, torn, stained and everything in between, to last for the rest of the 21st century…or if not, at least as long as this whole new Nusantara business lasts.