In a note at the end of his graphic novel Moms, Yeong-shin Ma makes a surprising revelation: much of what takes place in the book is sourced from his own mother. In a moment of inspiration, he bought her a pen and “an expensive notebook” and told her to write everything she could about her life. It turned out to be a gold mine: “Her writing was at once a confession and letter to her son, with every entry concluding in regret or resolve, or in love for her children. Thanks to the melody and the chorus she provided, I polished and revised her story and brought it out into the world.” 

     Ma brings that same level of urgency and detail to his latest graphic work, Artist (note the singular, even though we see three men in profile on the cover). We follow the lives and artistic journeys of three forty-something men—Chun Jonseop, a struggling musician; Kwak Kyeongsu, a part-time professor and divorcee (who appears in a small cameo in Ma’s Moms); and Shin Deuk-nyeong, a published but little-read writer—who are constantly facing (and often dodging) the responsibilities and uncertainties of a creative path. 

     Again, Ma turns to biography, but this time it’s his own. In an interview tied to the English release of Artist, as in Moms, Ma reveals a connection to all three characters: “From when I was twenty-five until I was in my mid-thirties, the things I felt, the things that happened around me, I condensed them and offloaded them onto Kwak Kyeongsu to Shin Deuk-nyeong and to Chun Jonseop. I incorporated them into these three goons. I see myself in all three of them. I have inconsistencies, since I’m a person. After I fleshed them out, I thought ‘Oh no, that’s me!’ but it was hard to admit.”

     This candid approach brings real energy to a question Jonseop articulates early in the book: “You ever feel like you’re becoming irrelevant? Now that we’re getting older?” This fear of failure looms over all three men, and it shapes their paths throughout the book. Ma does not flinch from the unflattering or the humiliating in chronicling what all three do to escape irrelevancy. 

     Jonseop despairs about his music career and seriously considers taking a job running a friend’s bar. Before throwing in the towel on his art, Deuk-nyeong urges him to pursue his writing. Deuk-nyeong backs up this suggestion by helping Jonseop shape and edit his manuscript, nail down a title (Mostly Jackasses), and submit it. 

     Soon, a major publisher has bought the book and Jonseop finds shockingly quick success. The book is a critical and popular hit, and the unease Jonseop confessed at the beginning of Artist seems cured by the sudden mix of recognition, huge payouts, and the fawning attention of many women.

     As the writer Robert Caro once put it, “Power reveals.” In the wake of his new-found success, Jonseop reveals himself. His memories of slights from the past, his failed romantic pursuits, and his artistic frustrations fuel his destructive behavior. He becomes impatient with others, aggressively attempts to seduce women, and is unwilling to recognize those who helped him along the way. In an interview about his work, Jonseop is asked how he came to put together Mostly Jackasses. He gives a three-word response that will torment Deuk-nyeong after he reads the interview: “It just happened,” effectively eliminating Deuk-nyeong from his personal success narrative. 

     Ma never shies away from fully capturing these moments of selfishness and harm, as when Jonseop is caught mistreating a server at a restaurant and is made to pay hush money to keep it out of the news. His friend points out, “Even when you do something wrong, you act entitled.” Jonseop, by all accounts a successful artist, finds himself hollowed out, unable to participate in or appreciate the joys of art as he did before he hit the big time. As he says mournfully to a friend, 

“. . . nothing’s fun anymore.” 

     For Kyeongsu, his attempts to squirm to the top of the creative heap are depicted by Ma in absolute gross-out terms. He’s the oldest of the three wannabe artists, and is visually Ma’s most grotesque creation. His body is a house of horrors (at one point he mistakes one of his nose hairs for a roach leg), his ever-swelling ego standing in contrast to his quickly decaying figure. 

     He spends much of the book farting and burping, picking fights with close friends and passersby, and blowing up professional relationships left and right. With the little power he briefly accumulates in the book, he wields it brutally and selfishly. His flailing can be funny (at one point he dresses up in a dog suit), but often it’s unsettling. Over dinner with Jonseop, he wistfully says, “I wish a war would break out and blow everything to hell.” When Jonseop asks why, Kyeongsu answers, “‘Cause I wouldn’t be the only loser then.” 

     Shin Deuk-nyeong, with his alarmingly shaped head, is the tortoise in this creative race, but at some point in the story it doesn’t even seem like he cares whether he wins. Deuk-nyeong’s head is something to marvel at. For reasons never explained, it’s long, about as twice as long as the heads of everyone else in the comic, and is never addressed. It’s as if he needed this much extra brain space to make the kind of careful choices he’ll make in the book. 

     Raised to watch out only for himself, Deuk-nyeong has a Eureka moment while serving in the military when a colleague tells him, “Food always tastes better when shared.” It’s a concept he initially finds shocking, but echoes throughout the rest of his creative life. 

     Deuk-nyeong struggles to find or build a shared creative community, something that echoes in Ma’s other work. As in Moms, when Lee Soyeon tries and fails to form a union with her fellow janitors to stand up to their sexist and violent boss, Deuk-nyeong also seeks a kind of solidarity and community. 

     Just like his friends, Deuk-nyeong also has numerous faults and weaknesses. Prone to angry outbursts, he is overly serious and severe towards himself and others (when a woman makes a pass at him in the hopes of boosting her work, he calls her “trash”). But Deuk-nyeong’s imperfections are outweighed by his consistency and his willingness to keep trying, and to listen, and to change, even as his friendships with Kyeongsu and Jonseop have withered away. 

     The core of Artist in many ways is less about the act of making art, and more about what the structures are that must be found or built to continue art. A woman who falls in love with Deuk-nyeong tells him: “When I look at you . . . I see an empty house. You think I can come live inside?” In Artist, Ma asks again and again if we have the strength to share our creative fire, even at the risk of being burned or watching it sputter out.

Lucas Adams

Writer, Cartoonist

Co-founder & Editor, New York Review Comics