The Resident Artist
Review of Parts 1-3 of Troy Chin’s The Resident Tourist (Singapore: Math Paper Press)
By Sebastian Taylor
What happens when you don’t fit in at home, but it is home nonetheless? “Somewhere in the first half of 2007,” musician-producer-artist-cum-tourist Troy Chin returned to Singapore after working in the finance department of a music label. Enjoying the freedom of routine, he undertook a new venture into independent comics, producing the autofictional The Resident Tourist, a comic that details the narrator’s experience of returning to a home that has never seemed to fit right. With a fresh approach to such topics as the importance of friends and the work ethic of Singapore, Troy the Artist uses the slice-of-life genre and an evolving graphic style to journal his time as a tourist in his hometown. While reconnecting with old friends and revisiting old haunts, Chin’s autofictional self unearths old memories and anxieties. By the third installment, tension emerges between those with whom the narrator is closest and, as is often the case in life, there is no easy fix. But life, and this comic, continues.
A long-running series with nine issues, or parts, published by local publisher Math Paper Press, The Resident Tourist has recently begun the journey of being adapted for online reading. Since the first 140 pages of The Resident Tourist have been published online, the time is ripe to take a retrospective look at its inception. Reading Parts One through Three of the series, it is striking to see how Chin thought this endeavor would continue. His narrator in Part One, wondering if there will be a second or third volume, laments, “Who knows? My Life’s not a trilogy though.” Thankfully, Chin has enjoyed a healthy career as a graphic artist, going on to publish nine issues of The Resident Tourist, and at least six new stories and comics, some of which delve into the new media of interactive webcomics. It is fascinating to see how Chin’s art style evolves over time, changing noticeably even within the first three installments of The Resident Tourist.
Take for example, these two excerpts from Part One and Part Three.
Excerpt from The Resident Tourist: Part One p. 37. Troy has a short conversation with his grandmother. Reproduced with permission from Troy Chin.
Excerpt from The Resident Tourist: Part Three p. 105. Young Troy is advised to be humble by his grandmother in a flashback. Reproduced with permission from Troy Chin.
Both excerpts show an interaction between Troy and his grandmother. However, the style of drawing has changed subtly. Firstly, the volume of text has increased. Part Three has two more panels than Part One, and the gutters (gaps) between panels are smaller to allow for more detail and text. Secondly, Chin uses foreshortening, the technique of distorting the proportions of the image to reflect perspective, to draw more complex and interesting angles in Part Three. In the excerpt from Part One, the characters are seen head-on. Lastly, the backgrounds are more developed in Part Three. Part Three makes use of a computerized gradient background in the second panel to show the sky’s color. Though this is a simple addition, these gradients add more context and depth to the images. The contrast is stark when compared to the relatively empty-looking panels of Part One. The subtlety of these changes ensures a cohesive feel and tone across issues while Chin’s affinity for his art continues to deepen.
This artistic skill is likewise accompanied by a greater narrative confidence and facility for plotting. Each part of The Resident Tourist has a cohesive narrative despite its slice-of-life nature. I thought this cohesion was more apparent in the physical publications due to the added content and editing choices, but it is still noticeable in the online version as each part has its own story arc and recurring motifs and images. Part One uses the paradox of being a resident tourist as a springboard: the story revolves around introducing Troy (the narrator) as he reacclimatizes to Singaporean life. Chin uses short comic-strip vignettes and setup-punchline formats such as recurring wrong-number phone calls to punctuate Troy’s slow integration back into Singaporean life. The dialogue is sparse, which fits nicely with the spacing of the early panels.
Part Two of The Resident Tourist starts to focus more on Troy’s friends; specifically, it focuses on the individuals 2P and Mint. It also starts to critique both Singaporean culture and his friends’ responses to it. The vignette format is maintained, but these vignettes now revolve around Troy the Narrator’s relationships with different friends. We see tension build between Troy and his friend Kampong Boy due to their differences over what it takes to survive in Singapore’s materialistic society, while we see kinship strengthen between Troy, 2P, and Mint. As another friend explains in a flashback in Part Two, “You can do whatever you want, as long as it fits the mold Singapore has set for you. It’s hard for outliers like us.” These so-called outliers are bound together through the language of arcade shooters and rock-and-roll. In the webcomic, the vignette-like feel and comic strip format is maintained, but Part Two does gradually follow a more traditional narrative of setting up meaningful relationships before introducing a cliff-hanging conflict near the end of the issue. In addition, we see Chin foreshadowing the development of his autofictional self through allegorical dream sequences that now seamlessly weave into the overarching narrative.
This character development is more fully realized in Part Three. Despite being shorter than Part Two, Part Three took the longest time and most effort to read. It was also, in my opinion, the most engaging of the three issues. This is partly due to the changes in art style, as mentioned before. It is also because this issue clearly ties in Troy’s friendships to Troy the Narrator’s trajectory in the story. In this issue Troy ruminates on his Singaporean childhood. The flashbacks focus on simpler times with friends at school, which are then tied into the dreams and life of the adult narrator. I adored how Troy the Artist uses a meta-narrative about the psychological interpretation of dreams to engage the reader and address aspects of growing up in the Singaporean education system. And through this plot, Troy the Artist maintains his previous calling-card of vignettes mixed with humor and emotion. I thoroughly enjoyed Part Three, and to reduce it to the narrative aspects I mention here would do it a disservice. Reading the series from Part One through Three rewards the reader with the joy of seeing a narrative voice and an art style emerge over time.
Excerpt from The Resident Tourist: Part Three p.16. Troy the Narrator cuts and binds his new comic. Reproduced with permission from Troy Chin.
A slow burn at heart, The Resident Tourist owes its success to its ability to extract the insecurities of its characters (and by extension, the writer himself). In Part One, Troy the Narrator stresses that he is an amateur, and claims that he is not good enough to be published. This is one of the earliest instances of the intriguing nuance of autofiction in this work. Obviously, Troy the Artist does believe, at least now, that his works are good enough to be published because they indeed exist in a physical format. The action and speech of Troy the Narrator, however, contradict this sentiment. This is interesting because it should not be considered false humility or a bending of the truth. Instead, it highlights the role of autofiction to keep a record while including different aspects of the truth. The most obvious way this comes through in Chin’s work is by his inclusion of memories and dreams. From the second half of Part One onwards, dream episodes and memories are introduced into the narrative, building upon an earlier meeting between Troy and his psychologist that was revealed to be, in fact, a dream.
On one hand, this technique, again, reminds you that the narrative of The Resident Tourist is both autobiographical and fiction. It reminds you that you, as a reader, are subject to the whims of Troy the Narrator rather than sharing a world with Troy the Artist. On the other hand, this technique of injecting suspense into the comic keeps you engaged and reading. Slice-of-life can be a difficult genre to master, especially for comics, because it emphasizes the mundane and the ordinary. Comics as a medium, however, have been associated with excess and hyperbole, whether in the form of Superman or the casual comedy-violence of the Sunday comic strips (Troy the Narrator recommends Mr. Kiasu as an example of Singaporean comic strips in Part Three). The inclusion of surreal dream episodes in the slice-of-life narrative is a powerful move, reminiscent of New York’s Octopus Pie, a webcomic published by Meredith Gran between 2007 and 2017.
The two comics The Resident Tourist and Octopus Pie share many similarities. Octopus Pie follows a fictional character, Everest Ning, as she goes about her daily life in New York City, whereas The Resident Tourist follows Troy the Narrator as he reacclimatizes to his home in Singapore. Both stories focus on mundane events such as work or buying a mattress for a new flat. In Octopus Pie, the intrusion of the surreal often adds fun and whimsy to the stress of living in New York in your early 20’s. When a character can drive through a teleporter from the West Coast to attend a flat party in New York, things can’t be that bad. Such surreal additions lighten the mood while also insinuating the stress of city living. They also push the artist to play with colors and concepts that cannot be found in realistic fiction.
Similarly, the overarching plot of The Resident Tourist is paced using dream elements such as Alf the cat-eating alien. Alf only speaks in Mandarin, which Troy the Narrator stresses is difficult for him to understand. The surrealism compounds the feeling of displacement in both geography and time: Troy the Narrator is caught between the Singapore he remembers and the modern Singapore that has changed a lot of his friends. Even familiar and comforting figures, such as characters from old 90’s sitcoms, are alien again. The surreal thus serves both to test Troy the Artist’s graphic skills and to lighten the mood at the points when Troy the Narrator is feeling unsure of his path. This is a unique critique of Singapore in the late 2000’s that is accomplished through the clever subversion of the slice-of-life genre.
Overall, I really enjoyed reading The Resident Tourist. Troy Chin has found a unique and powerful medium for his autobiography and uses it to varying degrees to critique his surroundings. Aside from Mr. Kiasu and The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye, Singapore is not known for its comics. This makes Chin’s feat of publishing a longform slice-of-life comic even more impressive. It is interesting that comics should operate in Singapore as a vital part of its counterculture. If you take anything away from this review, it is that The Resident Tourist occupies an important space in Singapore literature. You can read the first three Parts of the comic now on Webtoons here or on Tapas here.
Sebastian Taylor studied physics at the University of St Andrews. Their area of interest was nuclear decommissioning and non-proliferation. They are also fascinated by performance poetry and write on the themes of queering the body, self, and space, after having served as the Head Editor of the University’s Creative Writing Society.
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