Batman Comics
From: ryan nelson
Date: 2008/9/15
Zap! Pow! Kablam!
For individuals interested in 1960s South Vietnamese youth popular culture (and an insight into the origins of Batman’s current popularity among youths in Vietnam) a “1966” or “1967,” South Vietnam printed knock off copy of a Batman comic book has been digitized and posted online for viewing. The masked cultural icon to this day continues to captivate the imaginations of many Vietnamese youths; and his image adorns countless youths' wardrobes, drawing papers, book bags and notebook covers. Despite the overflowing regard for the Caped Crusader, his non-lethal fighting style stands in contrast to the preferences of many modern day Vietnamese comic book readers: more recent thematic trends in HCMC comic books suggest “violent stories with rampant killings” are extremely popular.
http://www.ep.tc/batman-in-vietnam/index.html
Peace
Ryan Nelson
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From: Tuan Hoang
Date: Thu, Oct 2, 2008 at 4:46 PM
A belated appreciation for posting the link to this comic book. It's
another reason that I am grateful for the Internet: preserving
materials that may not show up in libraries and archives. Same with
websites that digitize and make available pre-1975 popular music and
video clips. The fact that they are usually run by amateurs
underscores the appeal of this popular culture.
I'd suspect, however, that the popularity of Batman among Vietnamese
today has more to do with Hollywood movies in the 1990s and 2000s and
little with comic knock-offs from the 1960s and 1970s. There was
indeed a strong infusion of American popular culture that accompanied
US military involvement: soft power along with hard power, a topic
awaiting future historians of the war. But urban Vietnamese in the
south were probably influenced more by the popular cultures of Western
Europe (esp. Francophile) and noncommunist East Asia (i.e., Hong Kong
and Taiwan) than by the historically and culturally less familiar USA.
Think of Thanh Lan singing those ye-ye pop songs in French and
Vietnamese. Or movie theaters showing martial arts flicks starring
Ly' Tieu Long or Vuong Vu~: Bruce Lee and Jimmy Wang Yu,
respectively. (It'd be great to find out how Hollywood Westerns fared
against Hong Kong and even early Bollywood movies at the time.) As
for the comics, Batman and Spiderman were certainly known. But I'd
wager that in term of popularity, they lagged behind Tintin and Smurfs
(Xi` Trum), both of Belgian origin.
If true, it's an irony that American popular culture made only limited
inroads in the 1960s but was more successful *after* the war, when it
wasn't even trying. To be precise, after the Cold War, and along with
regional newcomers like South Korean and post-Mao Chinese popular
cultures & global ones like the English Harry Potter series.
~Tuan
--
Tuan Hoang, PhD Candidate
Department of History
University of Notre Dame