The Art of Thai Comics: A Century of Strips and Stripes
Nicolas Verstappen
River Books: 2021
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Nicolas Verstappen’s The Art of Thai Comics is an ambitious, aesthetically aware and politically astute history of comic art in Thailand. It is sweeping in focus and rigorous in research; the history of Thai comics now has something like an English-language textbook.

Verstappen, a lecturer at Chulalongkorn University, has been working towards this book for no less than five years, with interviews and archival work dating to at least 2016. Much of this research was funded by the university. The author has also published a number of articles about Thai comics in anglophone journals, and his sensitivity to the specificities of Thai language—its humour, its subtleties, its idioms—shines through in the writing.

• Tags: Dismiss this notice. Benjamin Tausig, Issue 23, Nicolas Verstappen, Thailand