A bank in Macao once used a fairly well-known character from a Taiwanese comic book to promote its credit cards. Thanks to certain social media, this character was finally known to and accepted by the people in Macao.

The Internet is a borderless world and in theory any comics written in Macao can be circulated at high speed. It seems that “the market in Macao is small” could no longer be an excuse to limit the growth of the comic business. In recent years, several comic groups have set up online platforms and actively publish their works there. Independent comic artists also irregularly publish their latest works on those platforms. Not only can we see yonkoma manga (four-cell manga), there are short stories, too. Of course, the quality of such works is another question. Comparing to spending thousands of dollars to get your work to the printer (if you apply for subsidies from the government in the capacity of an association, you have to deal with piles of administrative work too) and distributed, publishing your work online is more hassle-free. You only need to focus on creating your work and once it’s finished, you simply need to upload it to the internet. In a few minutes you’ll get “likes” and your work goes viral. Anyway, artists in Macao aren’t going to make money out of it. It’s more important, especially for newbies, that the work is seen. The satisfaction from getting readers’ feedback is definitely a reason that keeps artists creating work.

Reading comics online is a regular activity among comic fans. But they usually read works by famous comic artists or excellent comic books. For those unknown artists and works, comic fans are still willing to take a look if they come across them online but very soon they will forget about them unless the reader has already known the artist in person or the reader is working in the creative industry and collecting information deliberately on local comics. Comics that can give a strong impression to readers, or attract readers to download and make it part of his or her collections is not commonplace in Macao.  The internet is a two-edged sword. It has an ocean of information which is readily available to everyone. People don’t really treasure such information at all. And most of the people still see that comics are only a form of entertainment. Unless the comics are excellent and boast something that encourages discussion, otherwise the attention given to them is a flash in the pan and soon they will be forgotten.

Back to the comic character we talked about at the beginning of this article, she has become so well-known not only because of the speedy circulation on the internet, but more importantly, it’s because of the character herself. She is not pretty according to modern aesthetic sense. Even though she is fictional, her temperament is so real that she seems like a psychological projection to every one of us, especially women. This is the key why the character is a commercial success. There are also some online comics written by Macao artists. The comic characters and the scenes are very down-to-earth. The stories are ordinary yet heart-warming. They may not be able to rise to fame overnight, but they attract a steady growth of readers and the comic characters eventually become a company of the reader. These comics started getting attention from people outside the sector, and we can wait and see how things go in the future. Of course, Macao has its own problems and whether a comic gets attention from the business sector is not the only criteria to judge whether the comic is a successful one or not.

On the other hand, some local artists prefer to get their comics printed. The orders and sales are fairly good. However, it is also true that today a book is no longer merely a book, just like Eslite Bookshop is not really a bookshop. Some readers also understand that reading comics via smartphones is different from reading a comic book. The two reading habits are not replaceable. For the comics that are published solely online, the quality of drawing and the story structure perhaps have to be compromised in order to accurately tell the plots and catch the readers’ eye. This read-and-discard type of comics isn’t really for artists to drill their drawing skills. They are just like songs sung in the Karaoke. Because online reading is so popular now, printed books are forced to repackage as a “speciality” and provide more value-added substances that e-books cannot provide so as to attract more readers. A good book design, together with creative content ideas, will make a comic book “stronger”. Artists and publishers are therefore more motivated to participate as they see it as a “fun” stuff. Moreover, books are easier to keep and past down to later generations. This explains that even online information is flooding the world, printed comic books still have an active role to play.