At 62, the creator of Mr Kiasu is going to art school for the first time

At 62, Mr Johnny Lau did not expect to find himself back in a classroom, introducing himself to fellow students on his first day at art school.

Neither did he intend to tell them that he was the man behind Mr Kiasu, one of Singapore's most recognisable comic characters, until his course supervisor let the cat out of the bag. 

Among his six classmates, aged from their 20s to their 50s, only the older students were familiar with his creation. 

"The ones in their 20s definitely don't know of him," he said with a chuckle.

For those who grew up in Singapore in the 1990s, however, Mr Kiasu would need little introduction.

With his oversized glasses and protruding teeth, the cartoon character named after the Hokkien term for "fear of losing out" became an instantly recognisable caricature of the sometimes absurd lengths some Singaporeans would go to in their pursuit of success. 

Nearly four decades after he drew the first comic strip panels of Mr Kiasu, Mr Lau is embarking on a new artistic endeavour.

Earlier this year, he was awarded a scholarship from the National Arts Council (NAC) to pursue a two year full-time Master of Fine Arts at the University of Arts Singapore, which he started this August. 

The suggestion to become a student again came from the school.

While attending an event there, Mr Lau struck up a conversation with some staff who asked him if he would consider joining the university.

"I had taught there before, so naturally I thought, 'Oh, you're asking me to come and teach' ... They said, 'No, we're saying why don't you come back to school as a student?' 

"I'm like, are you kidding me? Do you know how old I am?" he recalled, adding that he mulled it over for five months before enrolling in the programme.

ARCHITECT OR ARTIST?

As a youngster, Mr Lau taught himself to draw, and by Primary 5, he was set on making a career of comics. 

He drew his first comic at just four years of age, and still has a copy.

It is a simple panel sequence depicting a character going through an adventure and fighting bad guys. 

"During that time, there's no such thing as a comic class. So what we did was we'd buy those comics that we like and copy," said Mr Lau.

Later in life, he came to admire MAD Magazine, an American satirical magazine that boasts cover to cover comics, and was inspired by how it poked fun at contemporary events. 

"When it came time for me to tell my family that I want to be a full time comic artist, they said, 'No, there's no way you can survive with this'," he said. 

At his parents' insistence, he persevered through a five-year architecture degree at the University of Southern California in the United States. 

"(My parents) probably felt like it's the closest thing to drawing, but it's totally different. In architecture, you're drawing a lot of straight lines, which I actually dislike," said Mr Lau.

When it came time for me to tell my family that I want to be a full time comic artist, they said, 'No, there's no way you can survive with this'.

He said he barely passed the first three years of university as he spent most of his time taking courses outside his degree, including pottery, fabric painting, glassblowing and filmmaking. 

Unfamiliar with instruments like a set square when he first entered school, Mr Lau would trade drawing human figures for his friends' assignments for their help with drawing straight lines. 

"I was not the conforming type. My models were very different – I actually included real water, real clay, sculptural pieces that I built into the building, and had music coming out," he recalled. 

"So people were like, 'Hey, what are you doing? Are you going to be an architect or are you going to be an artist?' Even then, for me, the line was always blurred."

After graduating and completing his National Service upon his return to Singapore, Mr Lau put his degree to use at an architectural firm, where he spent his days drawing floor and roof tiles for Ngee Ann City. 

"Of course, I dreaded going. Every day, drawing a floor tile, do you think I woke up, thinking, 'Wow, today I'm so happy to go and draw one more floor tile?'"

After just six months, he handed in his resignation letter. 

After announcing he planned to quit, his boss replied: "Actually we were just thinking of promoting you. We have a few hundred staircases we need." 

Mr Lau re-enacted his response that day for me. He gave an exaggerated bow and showed the way he handed his resignation letter over again.

ACCEPTING KIASUISM AS A SINGAPOREAN TRAIT

After quitting his first job, Mr Lau went straight to work on Mr Kiasu. He started by recruiting three friends he had met while working on the army magazine Pioneer during NS.

With their help, he brought to life the character he had first conceived as a recruit.

In 1990, when he was 25, the first volume of Mr Kiasu comics, which drew on Singaporeans' everyday quirks accompanied by Singlish dialogue, was born.

The comic, which premiered at the Singapore Book Fair, took off almost immediately. 

The first book eventually went through 17 print runs, selling close to 70,000 copies. A new volume, typically running over 100 pages, followed almost every year until 1998, alongside a bimonthly Kiasu Magazine. By 1999, the Mr Kiasu books had sold some 600,000 copies in total.

Around 1995, the comic was well and truly in its heyday, especially after the hype from a collaboration with McDonald's for a uniquely Singaporean item, the Kiasu Burger. 

The limited edition chicken burger had an extra big oblong bun, more meat and, most kiasu of all, extra sesame seeds on the bun. The fast food chain sold 1.2 million of these burgers. 

Poring over newspaper clippings kept neatly in a photo album, Mr Lau pointed to a special promotion where the Kiasu Burger was sold for one cent for just one hour, beginning at 6am. One rabid fan even started queuing at 4am.

Mr Lau thought back about the collaboration with awe: "Can you imagine? In 1993 when this came out, it was such a shocker. Why would McDonald's work with a local character like that, and why would they promote kiasuism?"

During this time, Singaporeans were not comfortable highlighting society's undesirable traits and were most certainly unable to laugh at themselves, said Mr Lau.

He flipped through old newspaper clippings of politicians and members of the public criticising the association of kiasuism with the Singapore psyche. 

Some members of the public wrote letters to newspapers criticising the McDonald's collaboration with Mr Kiasu for glorifying what they saw as undesirable behaviour.

Over the years, however, detractors have been more accepting of his comic character and it has found a home beyond comics in adaptations such as a radio show, a sitcom and even a stage musical. 

Even as Mr Lau and his team released fewer books in recent years, Mr Kiasu as a character continued to grow from strength to strength. 

In 2019, Mr Kiasu released a book with US cartoon series SpongeBob SquarePants to mark the latter's 20th anniversary. When Mr Lau first got a call from Nickelodeon, he thought a friend was playing a prank on him.

At his friend's studio in MacPherson where I met Mr Lau, he ushered me through but a taste of the hundreds of collaborations and items of merchandise Mr Kiasu has produced over the years – from a quickly sold-out 13-inch ruler in the 1990s, to blind boxes and even an appearance on sweet potato chip packets included in this year's National Day Parade packs. 

When I asked the secret to his success as a comic artist, Mr Lau did not mince his words. 

"The answer is very simple. You do it full time. You basically burn the bridge behind you, then the only way is forward," he said.  

Merchandising the character was something he did from day one, though he acknowledged that has brought criticism over the years for the character being "too commercial". 

"We are in such a small country, and we are such a local character, I think coming up to this level is already tough. You don't need to take this route, but you still have to find your own world."  

Though most of his family are not in creative fields, Mr Lau said they are supportive of his artistic endeavours. 

His wife is a beautician, and his 16-year-old son is not as much of a fan of Mr Kiasu as he is of his father's other comics – in particular, Jump Class, a Mandarin series about a student skipping school.

Jump Class was created when the Mr Kiasu comic went on an 18-year hiatus just before the turn of the millennium for Mr Lau to pursue other creative work including teaching. 

Eventually Mr Kiasu was back on the shelves in 2017 with the ninth volume of a series called Mr Kiasu: Everything Also Like Real.  

Just last year, a new book, Mr Kiasu.AI, saw the first artificial intelligence-assisted Mr Kiasu comic, created by feeding rough sketches into AI and training it to mimic Mr Lau's original style.

When asked what his views were on AI entering the art world, Mr Lau replied in his trademark matter-of-fact way and said his character must transform with the times. 

"I need it to happen because eventually it has to be independent of me. While I understand how it's interrupting industrial practices – we have two extremes, you either embrace AI or reject it. 

"I think the technology is here to stay, if you alienate yourself, you're going to be left behind," he said. 

That said, he still whips up a sketch of the iconic character by hand at lightning speed. 

Mr Kiasu's original design drew inspiration from the style many Singaporeans rocked in the 1990s: A crew cut, more formal attire and the fact that "almost everyone" was wearing spectacles.

Over the years, the design has settled into a few key features: A grey flattop hairstyle, thick eyebrows, big round glasses and a wide smile showing a bright top row of teeth.

"He always has this big grin. Not that he's happy, he's actually just tense," said Mr Lau.

BACK TO SCHOOL AT 62

As he prepares for Mr Kiasu's 40th anniversary in 2030, Mr Lau is going through a major transition himself – attending art school for the first time.

While he entered school planning to work on sculptures, he said he became drawn to the exploration of social phenomena through art. 

His current project is using screenprinting to explore what he called a "global visual body language", or simply put, queuing. 

"Around the world, people queue for different and strange things. People also queue to survive, people queue for water, for mundane things, to vote, to buy something cute," he said. 

Starting art school after a prolific career in the commercial comic world, Mr Lau said he is coming from both a position of strength and weakness. 

He considers himself "naive" to the world of fine arts. 

"I'm asking a lot of questions that maybe shouldn't be asked, but because I am naive to the industry, therefore I feel that I could ask (things like), 'How many works does a local artist produce a year? If these works get sold, how much do they get?'"

Mr Lau said he initially thought of fine art as a pure medium that should not be tainted by discussions of commercial output, but became fascinated with what is needed to support artists to pursue art as a full-time career in Singapore. 

"When I first started, everyone said, this is impossible, you cannot live just based on drawing comics. I've proven that it can be done, but fine art is an even older art form, it's been around for ages – why can't we make it happen?"

Aside from taking new leaps in his personal life as he prepares for Mr Kiasu's 40th anniversary, Mr Lau also has plans to make the intellectual property of his character available in the public domain.

When I first started, everyone said, this is impossible, you cannot live just based on drawing comics. I've proven that it can be done ...

He said he was taking reference from the Japanese cartoon character Kumamon, a black bear mascot created by the Kumamoto Prefecture government to attract tourists. 

Japanese companies can use Kumamon's likeness completely royalty free, though creators must adhere to usage guidelines and are subject to approval. 

With decades of history with Mr Kiasu, I wondered why Mr Lau was not sentimental about letting go of the reins of his beloved character. 

He said that when cartoonists and comic artists die, their intellectual property usually rests in the hands of their family estate, who may not know how best to handle these works. 

"Sooner or later, they start to fail, which I felt was quite sad, because some of these works are very good, and I still want to see them continue in some form and manner," he said.

Ultimately, a 40-year runway with Mr Kiasu is enough to express what he wanted with the character, he said, and he is open to seeing others render the character in their own style.

But after all these years of drawing Mr Kiasu, does Mr Lau still draw for himself? 

As we spoke, he showed me sketches of human figures from old sketchbooks, works he had never shared publicly, which were a far cry from the cartoonish style he became known for.

"I draw constantly. It's like breathing for me. If I don't draw, I feel very anxious. Even when I'm on the phone, or watching TV, I will draw. It's just exercise to me," he said.

Mr Lau is now juggling another kind of exercise, as he adjusts to the physical rhythm of going back to school.

"The first thing that struck me is that I need to get a personal trainer. My wife was like, 'What? You are not training for some marathon'," he said with a laugh. 

But he insisted that being a student again is akin to a "week-after-week marathon", as his schedule is packed with lengthy readings to analyse, lessons to attend and museum visits.

"I need to keep up with those in their 20s even if it's just walking – I can't be too far behind," he said, offering a glimpse of his iconic character's behaviour.

Source: CNA/ny/ma