Matthew Byrne | Writer, Founder, Digital Marketer

A Comic Book Born in Beijing

CUE — Chinese Urban Expression — is a bilingual comic book series born from the Spittoon Arts Collective. Its premise is straightforward: find the most innovative and promising young artists living in China’s cities, commission them to create original comics, and publish their work in a format that reflects the diversity of contemporary urban Chinese life.

Each issue contains contributions from four to six artists selected by the editorial team. Each artist is given fifteen pages to develop their own stories and environments. Some contribute self-contained single stories. Others develop concepts that continue across multiple issues. The only requirement is that the work is original, distinctive, and genuinely theirs.

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The Mission

One of the major goals of CUE is to showcase a diverse array of artistic styles, narrative themes, and storytelling strategies. The first issue featured contributions ranging from noir hallucinations to dimension-shifting delivery drivers — a deliberately wide range that reflected the breadth of what young Chinese artists were making.

CUE sits alongside the Spittoon Literary Magazine as part of Spittoon’s publishing output — but where the magazine focuses on Chinese literature in English translation, CUE focuses on visual storytelling. Together they represent Spittoon’s broader mission: to find Chinese creative voices and bring them to an international audience.

The Team

CUE was managed by Managing Editor Michael Marshall and Art Editor Brendan McCumstie, operating within the Spittoon collective’s wider editorial structure.

Recognition

CUE was featured at the Spittoon Literary Magazine Issue 5 launch in June 2019 alongside the magazine itself — presented as part of Spittoon’s broader publishing mission at Ballhouse Pub in Beijing. It was also exhibited at the MEGACITY Beijing zine fair at Dusk Dawn Club in December 2019.

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CUE was a project of the Spittoon Arts Collective, Beijing.

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