Since the 1980s, the Korean comic art has made phenomenal growth. In external terms, it grew up into a giant industry, at the same time expanding its role as an entertainment medium to assume the roles of education and delivery of information. However, it still remained questionable even though the comics could ever be a subject deserving literary criticism. Such a perception of the comics has been a factor interfering with the recognition due to the comics, even if its readership had already reached adults and has provided more to society than momentary catharsis.

This book is a collection of the first criticisms to appear in Korea focusing on comics, soon after the Korea Cartoonist Association was inaugurated in order to present evidence that comic artists, like painters, deserve orthodox criticism as well. This book covers the 12 comic artists who have been the undisputed leaders in the Korean comic art world since the 1970s on. They are Gil Chang-deok, Park Su-dong, Yi Sang-mu, Heo Yeong-man, Yi Hyeon-se, Go Haeng-seok, Yi Hui-jae, Baek Seong-min, Kim Su-jeong, O Se-yeong, Hwang Mi-na and Kim Hye-rin.

The 11 co-authors of this book, who have intermittently produced critical essays on comics since the 1980s, are at last getting down to a study of the comics, which has been left out of the boundary of mass culture. Their perspectives on the comics are diverse, as this book shows. These diverse perspectives will help to enrich the cartoon culture and the mapping out of its cultural identity. Noting the shift of orientation of comics from commercialism and entertainment toward authorism, art-for-art’s sake and nationalism, the authors encourage senior and younger comic artists to exert more effort for the increased development and diversification of comic art.