Interview With Larry Feign

We are delighted to sit down with the talented author and cartoonist Larry Feign, as he prepares for his book signing event on June 2nd at Bookazine Princes Building from 6 pm to 7 pm.  An event you will not want to miss.

Known for his captivating storytelling and dynamic illustrations, Larry will be sharing his latest works, "The Flower Boat Girl" and "The Village at the Center of the World," which continue to highlight his unique perspective on life and culture.

Larry's connection to Bookazine is heartfelt and historic. He debuted his bestselling book in 1986, "AIEEYAAA!," which featured the beloved collection of cartoons known as "The World of Lily Wong." That memorable day saw hundreds of fans queuing out into the Prince’s Building corridors, eager to meet Larry.

As Bookazine marks its 40th anniversary, we remember the special friendship Larry shared with Mohan Mirchandani, the founder of Bookazine, who sadly passed away in 2003. Reuniting with Bookazine during this significant milestone not only honors Mohan’s legacy but also celebrates the enduring bond between author and Bookazine.

In this interview, we will discuss Larry's creative process, explore the inspirations behind his latest books, and discuss the significance of this reunion with Bookazine. Don’t miss this opportunity to engage with a true master of storytelling as he reflects on his journey and shares his insights!

Hi Larry, it is wonderful to meet you. We are delighted that you could take time off your busy schedule to answer a few questions.

My wife and I came to visit her sister in Kowloon for a few weeks while waiting to move to Tokyo, where I had a job offer with Walt Disney Animation. Staying in a housing estate in bustling Ngau Tau Kok, it took me 48 hours to fall head-over-heels in love with Hong Kong. So, why not see what kind of illustration work might be found here? Within two weeks, I had so much freelance work that I had to hire a full-time assistant. Not long after, the Hong Kong Standard invited me to be their first-ever daily cartoonist. It seemed that I was meant to be in Hong Kong. I told Disney to find someone else.

 

 In 1986, your best-selling cartoon collection, AIEEYAAA!, was launched at Bookazine in Prince's Building, drawing large crowds and long lines for your signing event. Were you surprised by the overwhelming success?

I was gobsmacked. What delighted me most of all was that more than half the people who came were local Chinese. I’d been in Hong Kong for only a year and a half, yet my cartoons had struck a nerve with both Chinese and foreign residents. I felt blessed to have made such a connection.

 

After a year of doing daily one-off cartoons, I felt that I needed a continuing comic strip with regular characters to best express my view of Hong Kong and its people. I asked my editor and he approved. Although it centered around a Chinese-Caucasian couple, the strip was not based on me and my wife. Lily was her flesh-and-blood person in my mind and heart. Her perspective was based less on my own opinions than on what I would overhear on the bus, in restaurants, or from Chinese acquaintances, as well as the often-hilarious cultural misunderstandings I witnessed on all sides. My job, then, was to find a funny or ironic way of illuminating various points of view.

Sometimes I would sketch a rough idea with a snappy punchline, then I’d hear an inner voice—a woman’s voice—tell me, “That isn’t what I’d do!” and a new and better comic would emerge. On the best days, I wasn’t in charge of the writing. I’d clear my mind completely, assign a situation—for example, Lily visits a typical pill-pushing Hong Kong doctor, or her scheming brother Rudy hears of a new get-rich-quick scheme—and they would dictate their own lines. I think it was this autonomy in the characters that made Lily and her family come alive for me and for many readers.

 

More than anything else, it’s the characters. They should be relatable as living, breathing personalities, with recognizable wants, needs, likes, dislikes, contradictions, and weaknesses. You can get by with bad artwork and weak gags if the characters are strong and funny. But not even the best artwork or gags can give life to a comic strip with one-dimensional or stereotyped characters.

 

My characters start as archetypes, and their personalities evolve from there. For example, Lily’s brother Rudy. My wife and I were having lunch at a Buddhist vegetarian restaurant in Wan Chai that we’ve been going to since our first arrival. A new waiter came along. He was rude, surly, sloppily dressed, his hair permed high over his head (as was the fashion among mainland men at the time), and a cigarette dangling from his protruding lips. He delivered my soup with his thumb immersed in the broth, then dropped it in front of me so it splashed my shirt. At the end I left a tiny tip on the tray, an obvious message to him. He flipped the three ten-cent coins in my face. He was the living caricature of the rude Hong Kong waiter. I decided: he has to be in my comic strip!! So, Lily gained a brother. His personality fleshed out over the years, turning him into my most popular character.

 

My advice for anyone who wants to be an artist or writer: Marry a doctor!

I’m the wrong person to ask about breaking in. I was lucky: right place, right time, in another era, years before the Internet. Newspapers, magazines, and book publishers were the only options, and extremely difficult to get into.

These days, there are so many more possibilities. I don’t need to list them. My main advice is to not place so much emphasis on legacy media, which are all dying anyway (deservedly so). It can be soul-sucking to search for an agent, a publisher, a newspaper position, a gallery, a record label. Forget about those. You can do better by self-publishing. I learned this a long time ago from the founder of Bookazine. See my story below.

 

That’s too long a story to tell here. In a nutshell, I first heard of her from a Tai O fisherman. I was intrigued and started to find out more about her story. I quickly realized that most of the information about her was obvious nonsense. That inspired me to explore deeper; I ended up spending five years on the research. It astounded me that in the past 200 years, no one had ever written a book in any language about this amazing woman, the most powerful pirate leader in history. I took it as my mission to tell her story as authentically as possible.

 

It started as a daily writing warmup. I worked at home in this quiet little village, a rare sanctuary from the rest of the world, with no cars, where everyone rode bicycles (please let there never be cars allowed there!). I took breaks by going for a walk nearby and taking note of anything interesting. It might be a rusty old mailbox, a conversation with the woman who swept the footpaths, or a huge snail in my path. Then I went home and wrote about it and posted it on a blog. I set myself a limitation: I would only write about things within the village boundary, nothing else. Gradually, a portrait of the village started to form—from my own perspective, of course.

The most interesting thing that came out of this for me is the fractal effect: when you examine your surroundings for the smallest of details, a whole assortment of rich little worlds emerges. You look inside those little worlds, and you find even more subsets. Look in a field, you see a pretty tree; look on the tree you see leaves; on one leaf you see a cocoon; inside the cocoon is a larva; when that little moth emerges, will it experience the world in the reverse? The leaf is all it knows of the universe, until it flies and sees so many other leaves, flies farther and sees them come together as a tree, and so on. It isn’t about describing a pretty tree. It isn’t about a pretty moth. It’s about another creature’s perception of the same environment you’re standing in. These are the kinds of contemplations that intrigue me. What appears at first to be a nondescript, somewhat unkempt little village, one you’d never see photographed for a travel magazine, turns out to be a place filled with history, natural wonder, and personalities.

 

I’m currently working on the sequel to The Flower Boat Girl. Then I have three other projects that I can’t wait to get started on: a romantic comedy novel, a silly children’s book, and a graphic memoir.

 

A few special people have completely changed the course of my life, but none introduced themselves in such an unforgettable way.

It was 1991. The phone in my home workroom rang. A deep, rich voice on the other end said:

“Are you Larry Feign?”

“Yes,” I said.

“You’re pretty stupid, you know.”

As a daily newspaper cartoonist, I was used to receiving occasional criticism and insults, but this was the first time someone had found my phone number to deliver them. Well, at least it wasn’t a death threat…so far.

“Who am I speaking to?”

“This is Mohan Mirchandani.” Was I supposed to know the name? Before I could say anything, he added, “Who publishes your books?”

I assumed he meant the annual collections of my cartoons which came out each October.

“Macmillan,” I replied.

“That’s right. And how much do they pay you?”

“Who is this, again?”

He explained a little about Far East Media, the book distributor, then repeated his last question. I told him what my royalty percentage was.

His disapproving grunt made the phone rattle in my hand. “And who does the design and layout?”

“Um. Well, they did the first one. But it was so sloppy that I rejected it, and now I do it all myself.”

“And who does the promotion?” he said.

I saw where this was going, sort of. I admitted that, of course, the publisher did nothing.

He grunted again. “Like I said, you’re pretty stupid. Let’s have lunch. Like Indian?”

Thus began a warm and life-changing relationship with Mohan Mirchandani. He convinced me of the advantages of self-publishing in a place like Hong Kong—not just financial, but in terms of creative control and satisfaction. He taught me how to deal with printers, schooled me in what kinds of promotion worked. He even offered to front me the money to pay for my first print run (which I graciously turned down). And finally, he coached me on how to buy back my publication rights from Macmillan, even offering to call them on my behalf (again, I did it myself, following his advice).

Over the following years, Mohan was my mentor and my friend. I could open up to him about anything, including things that had nothing to do with books or business. He treated me like family. That, of course, included the occasional scolding, like when I published a little, shirt-pocket-sized book. “Why didn’t you ask me first?” He was truly angry. “No shop will display them on their shelves because they’re too little, and they won’t put them on the counter because they’ll be stolen in no time.” He was right. It was my worst-selling book.

Mohan changed my way of looking at myself and my art. His wise guidance was not just about selling books, it was a way of respecting, defending, and transcending the boundaries of my own work. Many years later, I was able to make the transition to online self-publishing through Amazon and others with a confidence and belief in myself that I never would have had if I’d never known Mohan.

I wish I had been able to say goodbye. I wish I could have continued our regular contact forever. And I hope that somewhere up there, my dear mentor and guardian angel is proud of the living legacy he left behind.

 

Thank you, Larry, for your time and for sharing such a heartfelt recap of your relationship with Bookazine founder Mohan Mirchandani. We are all looking forward to your upcoming book signing on June 2^nd from 6 to 7 pm at Bookazine, Prince's Building. It promises to be a wonderful evening celebrating your latest works. For those interested in attending, please sign up using the link below:

Thank you once again, and we can't wait to see you there.