Are Singapore mangas any good?

I saw some titles at an anime club, and I was told they are manga style works from Singapore. Anyone heard of Return of Herman and ???Condor? They looked interesting, but I am not sure what kind of cultural center Singapore is.

I'd have to disagree that the artwork isn't as detailed as certain manga. While there might be a few title that are more detailed you'd be hard pressed to find them. A page that is busy isn't necessarily detailed; Return of the Condor Heroes is highly detailed on almost every page and very rarely do any of the panel become too busy to view.

Return of the Condor Heroes is a romance story, with at least one major battle every other chapter. The martial arts are grandiose, with characters leaping off of leaves, and blocking attacks with paintbrushes, but the story is a good one. As a side note: as with most foreign stories it helps to know something of chinese history and culture where reading Return of the Condor Heroes.

Right now I am working on my webpages, and I'm planning to include a review on the 18 books that make up Return of the Condor Heroes, with scans of the beautiful cover-art and selected scans of the interior work. When I finish the pages I'll post the URL here.

-Gerald Clark

he Signapore comics that you are referring to all come from a single artist, Wee Tian Beng, released by a single company, Asiapac, and have been translated into English. Here is the company's web page:
http://www.asiapacbooks.com/

The books that are available in English are the following:

Adventures of Wisely Wisely & Bai Su: The Return Of The Hermit Mystery Of The Golden Sphere Hide-And-Seek The Old Cat

Dream Allegory

Return of the Condor Heroes (At least 16 volumes are available in English)

The art of Wee Tian Beng is very detailed, very clean and is of the highest quality. The only thing I would fault him for is not using enough shading, but that might come from his earlier career as an advertising artist. I am particularly fond of Return of the Condor Heroes. These book will be extremely difficult to find, because the only place they can be found is solicited in the Previews Comic Catalog and a shop in California that is mentioned on the Asiapac web site. They deserve to be more widely

It's probably Return of the Condor Heroes, a manga adaption of a chinese swordfighting novel, artwork isn't as detailed as certain jap manga, but the artstyle is a fusion of hongkong and japanese styles. The story takes place in ancient china and is actually the sequel to an earlier novel by the same author.

Asiapac does accept mail-order. See their order form at http://order.asiapacbooks.com/

I thought all of their prices were in Singapore dollars and still that seems a little too difficult. I would prefer a U.S. source. If you are really interested, I would say go for it, the books are very nice.