I just want to keep it interesting, and never want to stop evolving. I don’t want to deny anybody else’s art because I want to keep absorbing. Even if someone else’s art doesn’t seem directly relevant to my work, it could be very interesting if I get to know it.
– Taiyo Matsumoto (松本大洋) on drawing, in an interview conducted and translated by Misaki C. Kido
Nick Stember is a historian and translator of Chinese literature and popular culture who recently defended his PhD dissertation on “pulp science” in early Reform-era (1976-1986) comic books at the University of Cambridge. He is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the National Museum of Denmark, studying visual depictions of Daoist self-cultivation in comics, animations, video games, and other transmedia adaptations of xianxia or 'immortal fantasy.'
