Thursday, May 11, 2023

"Oriental Heroes" original HK versions Little Rascals (小流氓), 1970's

"Oriental Heroes was first published in 1970 under the title Little Rascals (小流氓). It featured stories about young people living in public housing estates in Hong Kong fighting gangsters and criminals. The heroes of the stories exhibited antisocial behavior, but routinely fought for justice. In the early years of the book's run, the fighting was very graphically illustrated. Various weapons were used, where spilled blood, internal organs, guts, and bones were shown in the injuries that the characters sustained. People criticize the graphic violence depicted in Oriental Heroes and other similar action genre comics, eventually leading to the enactment of the Indecent Publication Law in 1975, banning explicit violence in comics. 

As the Indecent Publication Law only applied to comics, Wong Yuk-long established a daily newspaper, called Sàng Bou (生報), with which to publish Oriental Heroes. In the first month of Sàng Bou's run, the newspaper published actual news together with various comics titles, including Oriental Heroes on the back cover. After a month, Sàng Bou switched to a comics-only daily newspaper. Oriental Heroes was published daily in the newspaper, and a full week's stories were collected and published in book form every week. Wong Yuk-long changed the name of the book to its current name of Lùhng Fú Mùhn, with the English name of Oriental Heroes. He also explored less graphic means of depicting violence and altered his drawing technique."

from an Ebay listing























 

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