This article was originally published on Neocha and is republished with permission.
Monsters assembled from the severed limbs of their victims, humans riding flying cats, and planet-eating entities. These are the types of characters that inhabit the mind of Taiwanese comic artist Huang Liang-Chun (้ปไบฎ้ Huรกng Liร ngjลซn), better known by his alias Karmarket. Heโs an artist unafraid to explore the deep recesses of his mind, those dark corners of horror we usually strive to avoid. But he consciously gives his stories emotional breadth and meaningful depth. Itโs also frequently infused with his own signature brand of humor.
“There’s a burning smell.”
“I can feel the heat.”
Huang writes and draws all his comics, drawing inspiration from dreams and daydreams alike. His first comic, โSomewhere On Fire,โ was inspired by photos he took of local street food vendors. It started as three standalone illustrations, but due to the inspiration of a surreal Japanese manga, he developed a full comic out of the scenes. It became an outlandish story about a man who sees smoke in the distance and jumps onto a flying cat to go to the rescue, only to discover the smoke is actually just steam from a restaurant. So instead, he just sits down and orders food.
โIt doesnโt really have a clear plot or make much sense,โ Huang laughs.โ โI wanted to draw people eating street food and it grew into this.โ At the end of the comic, news of a real fire is broadcast on television and the hero looks on, depressed. Itโs a helplessness that mirrors Huangโs own feelings when watching the news.
“I’m here to help!”
Since that first comic, Huang has completed two others. All are drawn in the same style, strictly black and white with an almost pointillist shading technique. โIโm a little color blind and my college professor told me my color sense is terrible,โ he chuckles. โI was using a brush tip pen in high school, then used a fine tip, and when I switched to digital I continued the style.โ
“They’re everywhere. It’s revolting.”
“I thought I could escape these entities in space and find my peace.”
“I was mistaken. Wrong to a shocking degree.”
โMir spacecraft MS01 has docked at 8.20pm. Welcome aboard.”
“Finally making it to space…”
โGhosts From Outer Spaceโ drills deeper into feelings of despair and horror. In one panel, a giant, blob-like monster growing out of the Earth with tentacles that eat up ghosts in space. Circular orbs glom onto each other, creating the shape of growing โโtendrils the stretch into the exosphere, which is packed with the white silhouettes of ghosts floating aimlessly in orbit. This illustration was the comicโs initial inspiration. Huang had drawn it for fun and decided to expand it into a full story afterward. โI was having trouble explaining to people what the drawing was about, so I created a whole story to back it up.โ
“I supposed this is what people call heaven.”
“Mom left and went to heaven.”
“Yup. Heaven is right above us, so if you miss her, just look up…”
“Mom? What are you doing here!”
“Mom!”
“Why did you leave me by myself?”
“Growing up, I saw so many spirits, but I never saw you. I miss you so much.”
“At that moment, from the abyss of the galaxy, something crawled out of the darkness.”
Itโs the story of a woman whoโs been haunted by spirits her whole lifeโtheir mangled, tortured bodies present at every waking moment. She joins NASA to escape from it all, hoping the vacuum of space will offer peace and quiet. Instead, she finds the entire history of human kind on Earth in orbit, including her mother. Then the blob grows into space eating the ghosts, mom and all. Her fellow astronauts canโt see the ghosts and think sheโs gone insane, so they send her back to Earth, where babies start being born dead without souls.
“Maybe it’s because of earth’s gravity, or interference from the planet’s atmosphere, I’ve never seen anything like this. But in space… it’s clear as day.”
“What is it?…”
“What does it want? Why is it devouring human souls? Where did it come from? I had no answers.”
“My crew mates became worried about me. We trained together and underwent pre-flight therapy together, why was I the only one so out of it? I don’t blame them. They’re lucky that they don’t see what I see.”
“In the end, command sent me back down to earth. And you know the rest.”
“It doesn’t matter what you believe. I’m not going back.”
“In recent days, an unexplained disease has seemingly spread around the world that’s affecting all newborns.”
“They’re seemingly without conscious. They don’t cry or move. It’s like they have no souls. There’s no medical explanation.”
For โPhantom Limb,โ Liang-Chun wanted to draw a full-fledged horror story. Although itโs pretty gruesome, full of blood and guts, itโs also about coming to terms with trauma. A man whoโs been hospitalized with a lost limb after a car accident sees visions of monsters made from other peopleโs body parts. In the heroโs dream, he feels the soft and tender wet grass on his missing foot and wakes up happy. Originally, Liang-Chun just wanted to draw a bunch of hacked off limbs but added the deeper themes after getting that part out of his system.
“But it wasn’t just my foot.”
All of Huangโs comics are available on theย Creative Comic Collectionย website, a government-sponsored comics portal. He printed a couple of them before working with CCC, but readers will have to wait for the rest to be published. He says theyโve approved ten stories, which he expects to be published in about a year. โThe government pays me to draw,โ he smiles. โI wonโt be rich or anything but I get paid to draw what I want.โ
“The grass cut into my soles, and the soft mud with the mushy leaves felt wet and soft.”
“It felt as if I were a kid again, running through the backyard. No direction and no destinationโjust freedom.”
Huangโs work delves into dark themes, with gore and destruction always a page away. Even when itโs just a scene of restaurant patrons enjoying tasty noodles, it looks ghastly and dangerous. Massive spreads of ghouls and blazing fires are regular. Theyโre fantastical stories, happy to explore unreal worlds with flying creatures and blurred lines between the living and the dead. But he always strives to bring a human element to his tales, something that speaks truth to our souls. His characters deal with trauma, whether that be the death of a loved one or a life-changing accident. Some find peace and others donโt, much like the real world. Itโs a balance that lets readers escape but also keeps them thinking.
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Instagram:ย @karmarket
Contributor:ย Mike Steyels
Chinese Translation: Olivia Li
