Publisher WangZ Inc. Original run 1962 – present | Demographic Various | |
Genre Humor comics, Gag-a-day, Pantomime comics, Text comics, Satirical comics | ||
Old master q comic artist dies at 93
Old Master Q (Chinese: 老夫子; Jyutping: lou5 fu1 zi2) is a popular Hong Kong manhua created by Alfonso Wong. The cartoon first appeared in the newspapers and magazines in Hong Kong in 1962, and later serialised in 1964. The comic is still in publication today.
Contents
- Old master q comic artist dies at 93
- The man behind old master q and his son
- Characters
- Format and themes
- Films
- Spin Off
- References
The comic is copyrighted by WangZ Inc, a company established by Joseph Wong Chak (Alfonso Wong's eldest son) in Taipei, Taiwan.
The man behind old master q and his son
Characters
The series' cast is led by Old Master Q, an elderly, lanky man dressed in a distinctive traditional Chinese attire. Supporting characters include Big Potato (Old Master Q's identically-dressed contemporary with a stumpy, big-headed build) as well as Mr. Chin,
Format and themes
The overall theme of the comics centers around humour, with characters usually portrayed in a variety of social statuses, professions and time periods, ranging from beggars and office workers to actors and ancient warriors, which allows for a wide variety of scenarios to explore. More outlandish situations incorporate surrealism, close encounters with aliens, ghost sightings, and the afterlife. While each comic is typically produced as short strips of four, six or twelve panels, longer comics have been produced revolving around lengthier adventures of the main cast pitted again gangsters in modern Hong Kong or warriors in a wuxia setting.
While Old Master Q comics primarily focuses on humour, it also reflects changing social trends, particularly from the 1960s to the 1980s. The comics would sometimes feature societal problems in urban life, such as poverty, petty thefts and secret societies. It also poked fun at fashion, contemporary art and rock music. The comic strips sometimes also bemoan the decline of ethical or moral values in modern-day living. Characters often display acts of selfishness or misery, although the comics occasionally display good values like filial piety. The language barrier between the Chinese language and the English language is also depicted in some comic strips, illustrated with Old Master Q's difficulty communicating with foreigners, especially Westerners.
The comics have, on rare occasions, expressed serious views on major political changes taking place in Hong Kong during the 1960s-1980s. It had previously criticised overly Westernised Chinese, who were often shown in the comic strips kowtowing to Western interests over the local Chinese interests. The run-up to the handover of Hong Kong to China following the Sino-British Joint Declaration of 1984 also became a point of interest, as a few comic strips were published through the late 1980s and early 1990s expressing the characters' fears of handover, frequently represented in a numeral of the year it would take place: 1997. Some of these comic strips also depict direct assault of representations of the Chinese government and the Communist Party of China, occasionally in the form of caricatured depictions of Deng Xiaoping. The handover was later depicted in more a positive light in the years leading to the actual event, possibly representing a changing perspective from the author.
Films
The comic series was made into many Cantonese and Mandarin cartoon animations, one of which combined live actors and advanced CGI graphics. The list of Old Master Q movies is as follows, in chronological order:
Spin Off
A spin-off series called Q夫子 shows young characters who had similar clothing to their adult counterparts. Each of their names also are related to their counterparts: