cover image Silk Tapestry and Other Chinese Folktales: Songs of Our Ancestors

Silk Tapestry and Other Chinese Folktales: Songs of Our Ancestors

Patrick Atangan, . . NBM, $12.95 (0pp) ISBN 978-1-56163-403-3

This slim collection of Chinese folk tale adaptations by Atangan would have made a fine first or second comic book by a newcomer, but published in a deluxe hardcover format, it collapses under the weight of its own packaging. Atangan is a charming enough cartoonist—he tells his stories in a flat, clean line style not dissimilar to that employed in Tintin , but his writing is clichéd and his storytelling repetitive. When a bird is described as lovely, the next panel shows the bird looking, one supposes, "lovely." Though Atangan's attention to authentic clothes and architecture is commendable, he recycles tired Chinese visuals, with stereotypical dragons, wise men and postcard-derived landscapes. Nothing new is shown, and no effort is made to break out of the old, obvious ideas about the East. It's just the usual Western take on "exotic" Asia. The problems within the book stretch to its format—it's hard to imagine why such a minor, short work justifies an entire book and a disproportionate price tag. Atangan may have a solid book in him, but this isn't it. (Dec.)