The Chinese term “manhua” (漫画) is commonly used in Hong Kong to mean “cartoon” or “comics”. Manhua, in Hong Kong today, also refers to “lianhuantu” (連环图) a Chinese term that means picture books featuring a sequence of Chinese line art accompanied by prose, telling stories about traditional characters. These stories have typically been of the martial arts and kung fu genres.
One only has to glance through the pages of the Eisner-Award winning “The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye”, by Sonny Liew, to see the development of comic book art in Asia over the last several decades. True, the titular character created by Sonny is fictional – but Chan Hock Chye’s journey illustrates the myriad influences that have flowed into the region over the years, and some ways in which they were adapted and transformed by local culture.
I've been collecting comics for twenty years now. I love the hobby and would go to the local comics store regularly picking up weekly/monthly issues from my pull list. As I progressed further in the hobby, I started to make more friends that started collecting “key” comic issues.
What we mean by the term “key” is that the issue is significantly important in that it might contain an event that can shock a storyline prompting collectors to collect those comics. Events such as Secret Wars, Civil War, The Infinity Gauntlet, Death of Superman and more recently the death of Wolverine are some examples. These are key events and collectors will scramble to get the best copies, variants and also aim for the best possible “condition” of the book available.
Rarity - a foremost quality to hobbyists. A comic book with a print run of 100,000 is spawned from a single canvas - an original piece that was inked, coloured and then mass-produced. In the quest for exclusivity, novelty and investment value, original comic art is becoming more attractive to collectors. This article seeks to briefly address a few basic aspects of the hobby.