Each of the more than 90 pages in his first illustrated novel took Em Satya only about half a day to draw, but the book as a whole has been 17 years in the making.
Hot off the printing press, “Bopha Battambang” has finally hit the shelves of bookshops, with only a few alterations to the original draft that was completed in 1990.
When artist and author Em Satya first pedaled the draft of his illustrated story around to potential buyers in 1990 he was met with only grumbles.
At that time, it was already the tail end of the “silver age” of Khmer comics, which first debuted in the mid-1960s, and Cambodia was changing fast. Years of conflict and war had put the initial comics craze to rest in Cambodia. They had returned in the 1980s but by 1990 a revolution of technology threatened to make Khmer comics, once again, a thing of the past.
“Bopha Battambang”, or Flower of Battambang—with one foot in the past and another in the here and now—traces a rough history of Khmer comics, and perhaps highlights the potential of where the medium might go from here.
Sitting in his Phnom Penh home in Chamkar Mon district, 50-year-old Em Satya recently said he remembers feeling surprised, though not particularly fazed, at the initial lack of interest in his story 17 years ago.
Romance stories, like “Bopha Battambang”, were steadily popular through the 1980s, in addition to folk tales and adventure stories, he said.
But at the dawn of the 90s, “Everything seemed updated: They had TVs and radios,” Em Satya said, adding that he had given up hope that “Bopha Battambang” would ever be published until he met Our Books, a local NGO devoted to the preservation and development of Khmer comics. Additional assistance came from Valease, a French organization that supports writing in Southeast Asia.
Our Books assistant managing editor John Weeks said that when his organization first encountered “Bopha Battambang” in 2004, the story of a seemingly doomed young couple—a wealthy woman and a poor man—set in Battambang, it was already almost a finished product.
“It was basically ready to go. All it needed was a little extra material and about 10 more pages to end it,” he said, adding that a few transitional scenes to ease the story’s flow were developed through a dialogue between Em Satya and Our Books.
Em Satya’s characters are, for the most part, realistically depicted—though not specifically Khmer in their appearance or dress—and many images mimic classical tropes of romance, such as the frame in which the protagonist Sotha sits at the base of a tree by the river, hunched in pensive brooding over his ill-fated love.
US comics expert Anne Elizabeth Moore credits Em Satya, who says he remains isolated from outside artistic influences, with practically reinventing the wheel when it comes to sketching classical poses just so.
“It’s incredible that he would come to that with a fresh eye,” she said at the launch of the Khmer-language edition Dec 11 at Meta House Gallery.
Weeks said he views “Bopha Battambang” as a genuine time capsule, with drawings that reflect an Indianized culture, evidenced by the characters’ features and clothes, which give a nod to the Bollywood films that were popular in Phnom Penh in the 1980s.
The 1,000 copies of “Bopha Battambang” that have been published in Khmer are selling for $1 at the International Book Center, Phsar Tuol Tompong, Phsar O’Russei, Angkor Bookshop and other locales. Two thousand copies in both English and French will sell for $2.
The idea is to set up a production model by which Khmer-language copies, sold just below production cost, can be subsidized by the foreign translations.
“We hope to raise demand so Khmer publication would be sustainable without translation,” Weeks said, adding that Our Books is already considering going back to press on the Khmer-language version due to high demand.
“If Cambodia was crazy about comics in the 80s, I’m sure the readership will return,” Weeks said.
Ing Phousera, a French-Khmer comic artist who goes by the name Sera, sees “Bopha Battambang” primarily as a vestige of something old that lacks the vitality of work created from the unique interplay of forces today, no matter how skillfully rendered.
“[T]his is absolutely traditional,” he said of Bopha Battambang—down to the composition of the pages and shading techniques, both reminiscent of European “revue de gare” comics that made their way to Cambodia the 1960s.
“We have to forget the old rules and create new ones,” he said, adding that this very lesson is what he imparts to the 50 or so Cambodian students he instructs in comic art in both Phnom Penh and Battambang.
Having left Cambodia in 1975 at the age of 14 to live in Paris, Sera’s research for his three comic books that trace Phnom Penh through decades of conflict and war was also a process of self-excavation.
“Things must change. I think we have to produce something more personal,” he said, adding that he sees the future of Cambodian comics in his young students who engage with Japanese manga as readily as traditional Cambodian images found in the colorful pictorials on pagoda walls.
Em Satya, who began drawing as a young boy in Takeo province, but saw his prospects nearly shattered by a stroke in 2000, is cautiously optimistic about his book’s success.
“I am not sure if it will be a success or not, but if it is, I hope it will encourage more reading among children,” he said.
Em Satya’s stroke rendered his right side—including his drawing hand—paralyzed, interrupting his prolific artistic career—one that included a stint as the cartoonist for Khmer-language newspaper Rasmei Kampuchea Daily.
In order to rejuvenate his own career and complete Bopha Battambang, Em Satya was forced to train his left hand at what his right had already mastered.
“When I started using my left hand, in the beginning it was very messy,” he said, adding that it took some time to get back up to speed.
His momentum now regained, Em Satya said he has already started envisioning a second book.
“This one might take place in Siem Reap or Koh Kong. I am thinking now, maybe at the beginning the girl is poor,” he said.
But, he added, by the end she might get to go abroad, to somewhere like France—a place Em Satya said he knows only through pictures of the Eiffel Tower.
(Additional reporting by Lam Bopha)
