Ouch! Big West: An Infinite Universe Inside a Partitioned Room
In 1986, Chen Hung-Yao, recently retired from the military, left his old home and rented a wooden partitioned room at Taipei's Jiancheng Circle to create his first full-length comic, Ouch! Big West. Based on the Chinese classic novel, Journey to the West, it is reimagined as a sci-fi comic set in outer space. The Heaven Palace, where Wukong wreaks havoc, is depicted as a space station; the cloud somersault becomes a zero-gravity skateboard. Within the limited space, an infinite universe is imagined. The comic was serialized in Fun magazine for a year, but when the magazine shifted to girls’ comics, Ouch! Big West could no longer be published. In 2017, Baksik Publishing released it as a special edition, bringing it back to public attention as a high-quality comic.
