Tong Li Comics

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Tong Li (Chinese: 東立, Hanyu Pinyin: Dōng Lì, also known as Tongli or TongLi, and with variations such as Tong Li Publishing Co. or Tong Li Comics) is a publishing company which distributes a variety of manga comic book titles in the Republic of China (Taiwan).

Tong Li entered the publishing business as a comic book pirate. "For fifteen years, Tong Li was the largest producer of pirated comics, redoing more than 1,000 titles in all, and for part of that time, fifty a month."[1]

Tong Li's original method of operation was to procure new comics from Japanese distributors, replacing the Japanese text with traditional Chinese, and "drawing bras on bare-breasted women characters and modifying, up to what they could get away with, explicitly sexual or violent panels".[2] The head of Tong Li, Fang Wan-nan, "jokingly referred to himself as the 'king of pirated comics'".[3] However, a 1992 Taiwanese law forbidding the pirating of comics forced Tong Li to develop original content, at which point it began publishing Dragon Youth and Star Lass - titles which retained the considerable influence of Japanese manga.[4]

Titles distributed by Tong Li include:

[edit] References

  1. ^ John A. Lent, Pulp Demons: International Dimensions of the Postwar Anti-Comics Campaign (1999) p. 195.
  2. ^ Pulp Demons, p. 195.
  3. ^ Pulp Demons, p. 195.
  4. ^ Pulp Demons, p. 195.

[edit] External links

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