Illustration:
ill. 6.35 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, 1962:39.
Keywords:
Sun Wukong, Mao Zedong, Journey to the West, hero, heroism, visualisation, iconography, criticism, revisionism, Cultural Revolution, 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)

Some of the panels from the 1962 version in which he is told off or punished by Tang Seng are simply omitted or substituted to make him look better; he is never punished in the new version and he is never humiliated such that he has to stand on a lower level than everyone else. This image from the earlier version in which the monk is seen with his entourage looking down at Monkey King from a cliff and casting a punishing spell on him as he bends down awkwardly in pain is substituted with an image in which Monk Sha is now seen advising Tang Seng not to punish Sun (see ill 6.35b).