Color cover . Published in 1977, Lisbon, Portugal

First page

Kwan Tak Hing was the first actor to portray Wong Fei Hong in the 60s

Chinese medicine and martial arts brought him to movies

Wong Fei Hong 1847 - 1924 is a hero and a reference to the people of the Guangdong Province where Macau and Hong Kong are located.
In my story I depicted a village villain who had connections with the boxers. The drawings were done in 1976 in Portugal with little help other than memory and some postcards. Each page was A1 size and was painstakingly drawn by hand. Here are some scanned drawings.

Wong is in a tea-house when a young stranger with a northern accent asks loudly where is the house of Sek Kin Seng, a man who has raped his mother when he was a child.
I preferred to focus on the people than to blend them with disturbing background, as the book was black & white and I used plenty of hand drawn textures for shadows and composition elements .

It just happened that one of Sek's men heard the young man ask, hits him and is then stopped by Wong. You will pay, says the man brandishing his fist towards Wong. I always tried to establish a relationship of dialogue and tension between the people involved. To the right, the look on Wong's face makes the fist almost vanish in iconographic importance.

Later Sek himself appears in Wong's place with his henchmen and threatens the wounded young man. I personally like the right drawing where Sek says to Wong: may this teach you not to mess in my affairs.

The young man is taken away from Wong's clinic. He is a patriot who is trying to fight the invading powers. Like all boxers as well as Empress Dowager Ci Xi, the boxers opposed the Western ways. Yet in 1910 Dr. Sun Yat Seng would finally proclaim the Chinese Republic.

The climax is a final fight between Sek Kin Seng and Wong Fei Hong who was also performing the lion dance as the head cloth shows. I created a sequence of Sek getting up after being hit, and preparing to attach on the first row. His charge is on the second row. The third row shows Wong blocking with his right hand that will move to the right and the traditional eye balls attack with the left hand. I still kept background to a minimum making an appeal to the reader's imagination.
Looking back after 27 years, I suddenly realize that Jet Li was not around, Once Upon a Time in China was still to be made and the boxers theme were to be treated almost two decades later. I feel gratified that the story I did has still the same condiments of the Kung Fu movies of today.

© by Antonio Cejunior & EDIBANDA since 1977.