Illustration:
ill. 6.51 (set: 6.50)
Author:
Author: Yi Fu Artist: Deng Ke 改编: 艺夫 绘画：邓柯
Date:
1977
Genre:
comic, comic strip
Material:
scan, paper, black-and-white; original source: print on paper, black-and-white
Source:
LHHB 1977.3:14:3/5. “Sun Wukong san da baigujing” 孙悟空三打白骨精 (Sun Wukong thrice defeats the white-boned demon).
Keywords:
hero, Sun Wukong, Journey to the West, heroism, visualisation, symbolism, revolutionary masses, santuchu, Three Prominences, after Cultural Revolution, villain, shadow, comic

Sun Wukong thrice defeats the white-boned Demon 1977 (Sun Wukong san da baigujing 孙悟空三打白骨精)

Ironically, this post-Cultural Revolution version of the comic accords much better with the artistic directives associated with Jiang Qing and the so-called “Gang of Four” than either of the two examples published during the Cultural Revolution (e.g. ill. 6.7 and ill. 6.32).

The new version does allow Zhu Bajie’s nipples and navel to be seen, but apart from that, it goes along with all the rules of Three Prominences raised as important in our description of the Cultural Revolution straightjacket for comics. It thus surpasses Zhao’s revised 1972 version in its “orthodoxy:” the demon, for example, is much more clearly marked than in any of the earlier versions. When she first appears, in the form of a young maiden, her real nature is immediately made explicit in a shadow above her (something that happens only at the very end of the Zhao Hongben comic, when Xuanzang is brought to discern Truth from Fiction). When the demon is defeated for the first time in this new version, her real format appears again as she disappears through a wisp as seen here. Thus, her hypocritical nature is unmasked, twice, at the very first instance.