This unexpected revelation that the history of Thai comics actually dates back over a hundred years would not have been evident had it not been for Nicolas Verstappen’s recent magnum opus, The Art of Thai Comics: A Century of Strips and Stripes (2021), published by River Books. A magnificent tome that was six years in the making (five years of research, plus another year to write it up), the book chronicles and dissects the best and brightest masters of Thai comics, dating from 1907 to 2007. Earlier this May, the book had been nominated for the Best Comics-Related Book category at the Eisner Awards, an Oscars-level accolade for the comics industry.

As a lecturer and comics scholar currently teaching at the International Programme of the Faculty of Communication Arts at Chulalongkorn University, Verstappen had been working on his academic paper on the new generation of indie Thai cartoonists. When the faculty suggested that he add a chapter about the history of Thai comics predating 1997 to his paper, he would come across a trove of discoveries with a compelling breadth that warranted a book of its own.

“I thought it would be easy because I thought there wouldn’t be anything—because no one ever mentioned anything,” Verstappen laughs. “The reality is there are so many artists and comics that were forgotten because none of it was preserved. Comics from the past were usually destroyed by monsoon floods and bookworms. There was a vivid tradition before the ’80s, where comics were everywhere, in every format, size, and topic, reaching every class. It stopped when the pirated manga wave arrived in the country and wiped out the market within five years.”

Born in Belgium, Verstappen had grown up surrounded by his country’s rich comic culture not limited to Tintin and Smurfs. “It’s a part of Belgian culture that passed down the generations.” He explains how his love for comics began: “My grandfather gave his comics to my father and uncle, who then passed it on to us. It’s not considered a childish activity, and it wasn’t shameful to be reading comics as an adult. In fact, the comic bookstore I worked at for 15 years after graduating with my master’s degree saw mostly adult readers.”

For the 43-year-old, one of the most life-changing comics he read as a child was Yakari: Little Thunder’s Secret, a tale of a Sioux boy and his lost pony. “I had an amazing childhood with a loving and caring family, so when I discovered that the rest of the world was not like my family, I became really anxious and scared of the violence in the world,” he explains. “Yakari was a really dark coming-of-age story where he was getting challenged, burned, and wounded, but I could deal with the violence at my own pace and process it because comics are static, unlike movies. Seeing the past, present, and future on the same page also gives you a sense of how things are interconnected. You come to understand the complexity of the world and darkness, which really appealed to me.”

Save for that one-off woodcut comic from 1907, the 1920s saw an intriguing flood of comics, ranging from political satire to depictions of poetry. Thailand has had a long tradition of poetry that continued to survive in the form of comics, despite modernisation that threatened the art form. “This is very unique as far as I know, that a culture would actually keep all captions under the pictures in complete verses,” says Verstappen.

Another spellbinding favourite of the professor’s are likay comics by Prayoon Chanyawongse, a figure considered to be the king of Thai comics. Literally bringing the theatrical spectacle of these free-form performances onto the page, characters would turn to readers to suddenly make political criticisms, before getting whisked off to castles and fighting monsters. Just like in real likay, where audiences and performers interact, gags included audiences in the comic booing at a hero deemed not good-looking enough and the leading man changing mid-performance. “They’re breaking the fourth wall by talking to audiences, and I’ve never seen this before 1939. Thais have used this technique even before Americans, which you don’t see until the mid-1950s in MAD Magazine.”

Although the current state of comics in Thailand is far from its past heyday that saw as many as 200 million copies of one-baht cartoons circulating the country, recognition and acceptance are starting to pick up. According to the professor, before Covid, the National Library of Thailand had hosted an exhibition about Thai comics to highlight pieces from their collection—the first time a public institution has shone a spotlight on Thai comics—and within this year, the Holocaust horrors of Maus will also be translated into Thai.