I’m always intrigued when artists who work in other mediums try their hand at comics. Not that they usually end up being very good, but still …
Anyway, filmmaker Ann Marie Fleming made a documentary about her great-grandfather, the magician Long Tack Sam, and now has turned that movie into a graphic novel. CBC.ca provides a short profile of the artist and the book:
Fleming’s graphic novel combines stills from the film and new images she has created herself to tell the story of an international performer who was a headline act in the early 1900s.
“He was an amazing individual,” Fleming told CBC Radio’s Q cultural affairs show.
“He was born in a small town in China and he ended up being a headliner all over the world on the vaudeville circuit. He did this sort of full-on Chinese acrobatic comic musical routine and he travelled the world with up to 80 performers.”
He appealed to both Chinese and Western audiences at a time of political turmoil and xenophobia. He married an Austrian woman.
“There were a lot of Chinese acts at that time, but they all went back to China,” Fleming said. “He was able to adapt to a Western sensibility.”
