{"id":463560,"date":"2026-05-28T01:18:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T01:18:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/463560\/"},"modified":"2026-05-28T01:18:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T01:18:08","slug":"the-rise-and-fall-of-hong-kong-comics-once-a-50-million-copies-a-year-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/463560\/","title":{"rendered":"The rise and fall of Hong Kong comics, once a 50 million copies a year industry"},"content":{"rendered":"<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">There was a time when young people in Hong Kong were gripped not by their smartphones, but by weekly comic books.<\/p>\n<p>Throughout the 1980s and 90s, local comic books \u2013 known as maanwaa (\u201cfree-form drawings\u201d) in Cantonese and manhua in Mandarin \u2013 had a huge following, shifting hundreds of thousands of copies each week. Successful comic artists became millionaires and their works were turned into blockbuster films, like <a target=\"_self\" class=\"e1yy41x40 ef9u0v01 css-1ankfgb ecgc78b0\" href=\"https:\/\/www.scmp.com\/lifestyle\/entertainment\/article\/3117540\/martial-arts-meets-special-effects-storm-riders-where-ekin?module=inline&amp;pgtype=article\" title=\"\" data-qa=\"BaseLink-renderAnchor-StyledAnchor\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">The Storm Riders<\/a> (1998), which was based on Ma Wing-shing\u2019s bestselling Fung Wan series.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">According to a 2016 research paper published by Lingnan University titled \u201cHong Kong comics after the mid-1990s\u201d, industry sales during the 1980s totalled 50 million copies a year. Industry revenues hit US$13 million annually, and individual top-tier comics commanded single-issue circulations of 80,000 to 200,000 copies.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">Elvis Yeung Chi-kong, a former comic story writer who joined the industry in the late 1990s, can still recall the heady days of comics in Hong Kong.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAt its height, <a target=\"_self\" class=\"e1yy41x40 ef9u0v01 css-1ankfgb ecgc78b0\" href=\"https:\/\/www.scmp.com\/magazines\/post-magazine\/short-reads\/article\/3206097\/when-triads-attacked-chinese-heroes-cartoonist-ma-wing-shing-and-his-assistant-knives-hong-kong?module=inline&amp;pgtype=article\" title=\"\" data-qa=\"BaseLink-renderAnchor-StyledAnchor\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Ma Wing-shing\u2019s<\/a> Chinese Hero series [1980-1995] was said to sell 200,000 copies a week. The titles I worked on sold around 50,000 copies a week.\u201d<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">Circulation was impressive. Cheung Chi-chung, a comic book seller based in Choi Hung, describes how it was hard to keep up with the new titles that appeared every day.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">\u201cThere were over a hundred titles in all; there would be a new one every day. I would need to employ staff to go to different publishers to bring back the stock,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There was a time when young people in Hong Kong were gripped not by their smartphones, but by&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":463561,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[215744,215745,64587,215748,146,215749,3448,215739,215741,85,46,10170,215742,215740,215747,215746,215743],"class_list":["post-463560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-chinese-hero","tag-choi-hung-estate","tag-dragon-ball","tag-elvis-yeung-chi-kong","tag-entertainment","tag-fernando-wong","tag-hong-kong","tag-hong-kong-comics","tag-hong-kong-manhua","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-kakao","tag-ma-wing-shing","tag-manhua","tag-naver","tag-oriental-heroes","tag-tony-wong-yuk-long"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=463560"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463560\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/463561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=463560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=463560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=463560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}