Drawing on the Past: A New Generation of Cambodian Comic Book Artists are Carrying on the Legacy of the Golden Age Forebears

Uth Roeun sits in his office at the Association of Cambodian Artist’s Friends at the foot of Wat Phnom, proudly leafing through the yellowing pages of some of the dozens of comics he has written and illustrated over the past four decades.

It is with a sense of loss that Roeun talks of how things have changed for comic book artists.

“I hope comics will be popular again but people don’t read as much now they have TV and video,” he says. “I can see the difference between now and the past. Before I printed 10,000 to 20,000 books but now I just print only 2,000 books and it is a problem to sell them”.

Comic sales may have declined since the mid 1990’s, but hunt through one of the bookstalls in a Phnom Penh market and you will still find reprinted editions of Uth Rouen’s comics.

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