Nationally, Much Less, Transnationally: A Struggle to Grow: Comic Art in Vietnam

Abstract

This chapter serves as an investigation into the developing process of comic art in Vietnam. By examining the country’s historical and cultural context in the last few decades, it argues that Vietnam lacks the proper conditions needed for comic art to grow, but it has grown nonetheless. Though Vietnamese comics do not reach an international market, they do exhibit other transnational traits. First, they were introduced by French colonists and then had strong impacts from the United States, Europe, and Japan, mainly imitating those countries’ comic books. Second, some artists in the Vietnamese diaspora in the United States and France have been successful with their graphic novels which captured their experience as refugees after the U.S.–Vietnam War. These factors, together with Vietnam’s unique cultural traits and the fast development of the Internet, contribute to an ever-adapting and growing identity of Vietnamese comics.