2018 Golden Comic Awards & Connection+ boosts international cooperation

2018 Golden Comic Awards & Connection+

The 2018 Golden Comic Awards & Connection+, held on October 2, was deemed a historic success by comic event curators and industry insiders. This year’s event has again attracted great interest thanks to efforts of the organizer Ministry of Culture for holding international exchange and matching events, alongside the awards ceremony.

Commenting on the events, Hew Kuan-Yau, Curator of Asia Comic Cultural Museum, said Taiwan’s comics sector continues to surprise, and the comics he saw at the event have become more diverse over the years. Elisabeth Wolf, Company Founder and Owner of Switzerland’s China books E.Wolf, was pleased with the results of this year’s festival as buyers could purchase comic rights while meeting some of Taiwan’s best comic artists. Paul Gravett, an Independent Curator from the United Kingdom, noted Sean Chuang as one of the world’s best graphic novelists, and he hopes to see more literary comics at future events.

Taiwan’s comics are a rich mine of products ready to be transformed into derivative products. Recognizing this, this year’s Golden Comic Awards & Connection+ featured an exhibit showcasing how Taiwan’s comics have inspired or been incorporated into films, games, and music. AKRU’s Scrolls of a Northern City, released as a film, was praised by French Comic Specialist Laurent Melikian and Japan’s Access Bright Chief Operating Officer, who lauded the production for showing a natural connection between comics and film.

Stealing the show this year were the “Young-Jiu Grocery Store” extended reality (XR) application exhibition and the theme song exhibit featuring the comic Demo#. All in all, this year’s events showcased excellent results of promoting derivative works across the cultural creative economy.

Koxinga Z, Comic of the Year Award

This year also marked the Golden Comic Awards & Connection+’s first cooperation with Japan’s foreign comics festival Kaigai Manga Festa. The organizers paid for the 9th GCA winner Li Lung-Chieh to attend this year’s Kaigai event. Other GCA winners will attend the COMITIA in Tokyo in November as well as the Kitakyushu Pop Culture Festival.

The 2018 Golden Comic Awards & Connection+ not just an opportunity to infuse the local market with new ideas, but also to bring Taiwan’s comics to the world.

Taiwan Television Enterprise is the Executive Organizer of Golden Comic Awards & Connection+.

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Tags: comedy, entertainment, Golden Comic Awards, TAIPEI, Taiwan, The Hype Magazine

About the Author

Dr. Jerry Doby Editor-in-Chief of The Hype Magazine, Media and SEO Consultant, Journalist, Ph.D. and retired combat vet. 2023 recipient of The President's Lifetime Achievement Award. Partner at THM Media Group. Member of the U.S. Department of Arts and Culture, the United States Press Agency and ForbesBLK.