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Vietnam.

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Comics

Vietnam

1930

In short

Vietnamese comics, called truyện tranh, grew out of 1930s newspaper cartoons such as Lý Toét, Xã Xệ and Bang Bạnh, the village officials mocked in the Hanoi weekly Phong Hóa.

In the 1960s and early 1970s the Saigon youth magazine Tuổi Hoa and its artist ViVi carried the form in the South, while state publishers such as Kim Đồng shaped comics in the North. Nguyễn Hùng Lân's Dũng sĩ Hesman was the best-selling Vietnamese series for ten years, until Japanese manga took over the market and Lê Linh's Thần đồng Đất Việt became the first local hit of the manga era in 2002.

Vietnam in numbers · 01 • 04

20

21

1930

2000s

Artists

Artists from Vietnam in the archive.

Comics from Vietnam in the archive.

Lý Toét, Xã Xệ and Bang Bạnh, the earliest comic from Vietnam in the archive.

The decade when the most new comics from Vietnam began.

truyện tranh

truyện tranh · Comics from Vietnam

History

Vietnam in 5 chapters

  1. 1930

    to 1953

    Chapter 01

    Colonial newspaper cartoons

    Comics took hold in the 1930s through satirical weeklies. Lý Toét first appeared in Phụ Nữ Thời Đàm in November 1930, and Phong Hóa and later Ngày Nay turned him, Xã Xệ and Bang Bạnh into a famous trio drawn by many hands, including Nguyễn Gia Trí. Serials such as Nguyễn Văn Thịnh's Ba đứa trẻ mạo hiểm also appeared.

  2. 1954

    to 1975

    Chapter 02

    Two Vietnams

    In the South, the youth magazine Tuổi Hoa (1962 to 1975) promoted Vietnamese picture stories, and artists such as ViVi drew adventure, detective and children's comics. In the North, comics were closely supervised and came mainly from Kim Đồng and the youth papers Khăn Quàng Đỏ, Nhi Đồng and Thiếu Niên Tiền Phong.

  3. 1976

    to 1991

    Chapter 03

    State publishing and Bút Chì

    After reunification, war stories and historical heroes dominated under strict censorship. In the 1980s Kim Đồng printed folk-tale comics on traditional dó paper in a folk-painting style and backed the comics magazine Bút Chì, edited by a group around Đỗ Hoàng Tường.

  4. 1992

    to 2001

    Chapter 04

    Hesman and the manga wave

    Nguyễn Hùng Lân's science fiction series Dũng sĩ Hesman, which began as an adaptation of the Voltron cartoon, ran to 159 weekly volumes and led domestic sales for a decade. From 1992, when Kim Đồng printed Doraemon, Japanese manga came to dominate the market.

  5. 2002

    to today

    Chapter 05

    Local series and new platforms

    Thần đồng Đất Việt (2002), Tý Quậy (2003) and Trạng Quỳnh (2003) won back young readers. Manga-style creators went on to win International Manga Awards, Mèo Mốc's online diary became a best-selling book in 2014, and Comicola and POPS Comics brought Vietnamese comics to apps and the web.

Essentials

The comics to know

Essentials

The people to know

Artists

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