A Symphony of Comics
Review of Sound: A Comics Anthology (Singapore: Difference Engine, 2020)
By Angel Lopez
As a person who is always listening to music or podcasts throughout the day, sound is a significant part of how I experience the world. For me, it’s a way to help focus on whatever task I’m working on, or to feel less isolated in tough times. When I was told about Sound: A Comics Anthology, edited by Budjette Tan and Charis Loke, I was excited to pick it up. It was an interesting but unexpected proposal, to base a visual medium around a very auditory theme, but Singapore-based publisher Difference Engine has put together an exciting anthology of comic book creators from across South East Asia who rise to this challenge.
In comics, it is common to see sound effects depicted in word format, or through stylization in the artwork, such as the use of bold, jagged lines to visualize an explosive impact. With the expectation that Sound would be built around conveying the aural experience in visual terms, I was primed to look at every instance of sound with a close eye. The thirteen stories of the anthology do not disappoint; each had its own unique interpretation or riff on the motif, as writers and artists flexed their creative muscles in the ten to twenty pages alloted to them. Though no two stories looked alike, the book remained thematically consistent throughout its wide-ranging subject matter.
Some of the stories in Sound are grounded in local cultures and histories. In “The Whispers of the Earth,” written by Amahl S. Azwar and illustrated by Nadiyah Rizki, the main character listens to the earth warn her of an impending tsunami and goes to higher ground. The earth’s voice is conveyed as a word balloon that tapers off at two ends, appearing to be carried on the wind, and giving it a sense of motion even as the text itself dominates the panel. In this story, sound is realized in environmental terms, as much a part of the landscape as the clouds in the sky or crashing waves on a beach. I could vividly imagine the ambient noises that were being drawn on the page. Stories such as “Blabber” by Bonni Rambatan and “Road Trip Radio” by Cathlyn Vania, on the other hand, explore more quotidian and perhaps universal relationships between sound and memory. Rambatan does this by having the main character listen to old recordings of his family playing in their old house, and then having the art morph the family into the roles they were acting out, demonstrating the capacity for audio recordings to retain a vivid emotional impact years after they were first made. The recordings only provide voices and onometapoeic sound effects, so it falls to the artwork to complete the story, depicting them as monsters and astronauts in much the same way that podcast fiction asks listeners to fill in the gap between what they hear and what they must infer is happening.
From Bonni Rambatan’s “Blabber.” Reproduced with permission from Difference Engine.
On the other end of the spectrum, Vania uses sound to give her scenes in “Road Trip Radio” particular moods. Not going to the same extremes as “Blabber,” Vania still imbues sound with the ability to shift the world of the story. In “Road Trip Radio,” music fills the car on the main character’s trips with her father. Different genres of music create different visual effects, such as soft floating balls of light, or explosions like fireworks, to indicate sleepiness or alertness in response to the music. Of course, this is all in service of exploring the bond between father and daughter, and the visual effects of the music dramatize emotion in a way reminiscent of how lighting is used in movies to reflect the moods of a character or scene.
With collaborative works like comics, the best stories are told when writers and artists are paired well with each other. If the wrong pairing is made, the art and writing clash like the scraping of nails on a chalkboard. Thankfully, the artistic pairings in this anthology synergize well, and taken together the anthology is a testament to a wide range of comic styles. The stories range from light and fun, to harrowing and emotional, with matching art styles ranging from expressive cartooning to realistically detailed. From the stories in this anthology which were set in the real world, I was able to see South East Asia as viewed through the eyes of its peoples. As a Mexican-American, much of my experience with comics is influenced by what I had access to in North America, and I appreciated the opportunity to encounter South East Asian settings and cultures. While there may be certain cultural nuances that South East Asians would pick up on and I wouldn’t, the emotions and concerns depicted throughout the anthology remained accessible even to my imagination.
While I will refrain from spoiling too much of the book, two particular stories solidified my affection for this anthology. The first is “Signals” by Farid Nad. What struck me about this story was the main character’s relationship with sounds. The main character filters everything they hear through some kind of “threat assessment” depicted as a diagram with helpful info such as “Signal,” “Analysis,” and “Threat Priority,” indicating that the main character has a hostile relationship with the world around them. As the story progresses it becomes clear that this is because the main character is queer and is bombarded by anti-LGBTQ sentiment. Thus, they are constantly having to keep an ear open for language that indicates threat of discovery or perhaps even violence.
From Farid Nad’s “Signals.” Reproduced with permission from Difference Engine.
Nad uses sound as a vehicle to convey an all-too-familiar experience of living life on high alert. For closeted people, living in an environment that not only rejects queerness but is actively hostile towards its existence makes every moment an onslaught of invisible danger. The casual disapproval, the hateful rhetoric, all of it is like a high-pitched whine. To endure this requires the development of practices to categorize the intensity of the noise and distinguish it from the potential threat of physical harm that could always be lurking under the surface of someone’s words. It’s an understood aspect of being queer, but not one that is easy to convey through writing. In Nad’s comic the visual metaphor for being on constant alert for homophobia makes the experience intimately real, and the main character’s palpable fatigue stays with me even as I write this review.
The other story deserving mention is “Folk,” written by Paolo Chikiamco and illustrated by Borg Sinaban. In it, the main character Doreen becomes involved with Kapre—creatures from Filipino folklore—that frequent the karaoke bar next door to her home. Curiosity pulls Doreen in, but it is their music that makes her want to be a part of their world. The Kapre explain that they live among humans, blending in to avoid persecution, at the cost of their spirits. Ka-Pre-Ok, the name of the bar that doubles as a cheeky homonym, provides a haven for these creatures to exist openly and heal through singing and dancing. Chikiamco and Sinaban merge folklore with the quintessential Filipino cultural pastime to create a unique story.
From Paolo Chikiamco and Borg Sinaban’s “Folk.” Reproduced with permission from Difference Engine.
Narrating folklore and singing together are both acts of sharing community, and linking the two suggests that karaoke has as much significance to modern Filipino culture as its folklore. In “Folk,” the folklore creatures are a straightforward allegory for marginalized people who are forced to hide in plain sight. For these creatures, hiding who they are diminishes their spirit in the same way that in real life, hiding an important piece of yourself from the world feels soul-crushing. Thus, having a communal space that allows them to be their full selves is nourishing. Chikiamco and Sinaban use music and song as a unifying force that allows these creatures to celebrate their existence even as others try to silence them.
I find solace in sound. When I needed to hear a familiar voice, I’ve played the same podcasts countless times. Sound reminds me of the way we impact one another. Living in the world means creating sounds that will echo out until someone else hears it, inspiring a response. Similarly, Difference Engine published Sound to share the talents of South East Asian creators with an international audience and add to the existing international comics scene. This anthology demonstrates a successful first step towards making that goal a reality. The range of stories collected, from the mundane snippets of everyday life to the fantastical worlds rendered beautifully throughout the book, ensures plenty of resonance in nearly 300 pages of comics. One hopes that this is the first of many comics that I will have the opportunity to read from South East Asia.
Angel Lopez is an avid reader from the California bay area. Obsessed with stories from a young age, he used whatever medium he could get his hands on to create them: the written word, art, or sound. Now, when he’s not working in a bookstore, he’s studying to earn a Master’s degree in Library and Information Science.