Author’s bio:
Lai Tat Tat Wing has been very fond of comics writing since he was a kid. When he was at school, he would distribute photocopies of his works to his classmates and friends. Over the past 20 or so years, he has been experimenting the form of comics. Lai Tat Tat Wing’s comics are widely distributed in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Latvia, and France. Examples of his works are Picking Up A Pig Tale, Woody Woody Wood, The Magic Flute, A Parading Zoo in Taiwan, Far From Frustration, Poisoning the Chicken Soup, Stand Behind the Island Line, Twinkle Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, East Wing West Wing, 2600 Years Ago, My Dog Can Draw, Horror Horror Woody’s Cube, The Pork Chops Inferno, The Meatballs Inferno, The Cupcakes Inferno and the more recent work Three Senses of Youth 1234. The Pork Chop Inferno received the Silver Award at the Japan International Manga Award in 2019. Lai Tat Tat Wing has also involved himself in theatre production and casted in a number of plays, e.g. children musical called The Magic Flute Playground, and The Pork Chops Inferno Theatre.
Book description:
Juicy, fatty pork chops are grilled in inferno! Seven fat middle-aged real estate agents, devoured by flames in an office fire, become spectres. They can walk through walls and change size. When they want to eat, they burn magazines printed with images of food — in a way reminiscent of the Chinese tradition of burning joss paper offerings to the deceased — turning them into wonderful meals. Spirits multiply through the photocopiers. The dead cannot be resurrected, and the conflicts grow intense. The office is hell. Everyone plays Monopoly with human heads as dices. A real-estate version of Lord of the Flies, Lai Tat Tat Wing’s The Pork Chops Inferno intrigues every reader and invites rumination.
Lai Tat Tat Wing conceived The Pork Chops Inferno as he decided to create a story about hell. An artist who relies heavily on the visuals to develop his comics sequences, Lai Tat Tat Wing set out to create a wordless narrative driven entirely by the images and the actions of the characters. The drama of the ghostly goings-on unfolding in the panels is heightened by the creepiness of the setting of the story — the office of a real estate agency where everything turns bizarre after a fire. The ceilings can move automatically; the photocopier can print ghosts and monsters. Under the office desks are all architectural models and miniatures of show flats. The characters are at times as huge as giants, while at other times they are as tiny as ants. The Pork Chops Inferno is inspired by British writer William Golding’s literary classic Lord of the Flies, in which a group of boys are marooned on an uninhabited land after a plane crash in the midst of a raging war. They become bloodthirsty savages as they go undisciplined and crave for power. One of the boys, Piggy, owns a pair of glasses, which is used to generate fire — and this is the reason why he is killed. The scene is channelled in The Pork Chops Inferno, where the fat real estate agents are desperate to get hold of a cigarette lighter because they cannot touch anything unless it is burnt. The Pork Chops Inferno, with its terrifying portrayal of “office savagery”, can be considered an adult version of Lord of the Flies.
