Illustration:
ill. 6.34 a (set: 6.34)
Author:
Zhao Hongben (1915-2000) 赵宏本
Date:
1962
Genre:
comic, comic book, comic strip
Material:
scan, paper, black-and-white; original source: woodblock print
Source:
SWKSDBGJ 1962: Sun Wukong san da baigujing 孙悟空三打白骨精 (Sun Wukong thrice defeats the white-boned demon). Shanghai: Shanghai meishu, 1962:108.
Keywords:
Sun Wukong, Mao Zedong, hero, heroism, visualisation, iconography, Journey to the West, Buddhism, criticism, revisionism, comic

Zhao Hongben: Sun Wukong thrice defeats the white-boned Demon 1962 (Zhao Hongben: Sun Wukong san da baigujing 赵宏本: 孙悟空三打白骨精)

In 1972, Zhao published his comic in revised format (Comics SWKSDBGJ 1972). Some inconsistencies can be observed: although this version does include a number of changes from 1962, the missing navel and nipple being the most obvious, it contains few other changes and certainly does not remedy completely the points accused and criticized by Red Guards in the early years of the Cultural Revolution. The republished version thus illustrates once more that the straightjacket for cultural production in the Cultural Revolution had its loopholes.

Admittedly, Sun Wukong had, in this more recent version, gained some heroic features: no longer does he appear as a supplicant, for example, in front of Tang Seng who dismisses him for killing the different incarnations of the demon (because a true follower of Buddha is not allowed to kill). In the revised version, Sun is the one who takes center stage and who appears much larger and stronger than everyone else, facing the viewer, while his companions are shown from the back or from the side (ill. 6.34a&b).