Reza Salleh's Fantasy World

A singer-songwriter has a thing for superhero stories.

THE sun was streaming into his bedroom and singer-songwriter Reza Salleh, was settled comfortably in bed with a comic book.

Entitled 100 Bullets by Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso, the comic series had won the Eisner Award for best serialised story in 2001 and this 27-year-old, who has been a comics and anime fan since he was 14, said that this was one of his favourite titles.

Avid gamer: If left to his own devices, Reza can ‘game’ through the whole night.

The story, as Reza revealed, was about a guy in a suit who went round giving people a briefcase filled with a gun and 100 untraceable bullets, plus evidence revealing the whereabouts and identities of their enemies who had wronged them. The plot, Reza said, was interestingly filled with twists and turns, walking the thin line between right and wrong and adding to the element of suspense was in establishing the identity of this man and how he had come to play the role of the vigilante.

Born in Kuala Lumpur, Reza was on a roll academically – studying in Melbourne, Petaling Jaya, Kedah, Kuala Lumpur and then Melbourne again, in that order. This former Bukit Bintang Boys School student revealed that comics, fantasy, anime and playing computer games (he has been known to ‘game’ for whole nights without sleep) have become mainstays during his leisure time.

But just who is Reza Salleh, you may ask? For one, this prolific musician who holds a degree in business and IT is the main person behind the Moonshine series of musical gigs for the past three years. With over 35 shows in his credit, Reza explained that the main objective of Moonshine was to act as a platform for young performers to showcase their music.

Reza’s work was recognised when he won the KLue Blue Chilly Award three years ago for his efforts. The award, he explained, was in recognition of young people who had excelled in their respective fields and are blazing the trail for others to follow. His EP, Smokecity, has been slowly making its rounds among fans and to regular subscribers of Facebook, an online mail and chat portal, Reza is but an all too familiar name.

And while it is his guitar which inadvertently makes him tick, Reza admitted that when he needs a break, it is his well-kept collection of comics, anime and computer games which keeps him going.

“I have a vivid imagination so that is why I like reading about things that are beyond reality, like getting in touch with a character that shoots laser from its eyes or to follow the chronicles of the last human being on earth as in Y The Last Man by Brian K. Vaughan, Pia Gueria, Jose Marzan, Jr and Paul Chadwick,” said Reza with a boyish laugh.

Reza recalled that his earliest collection had been from a small bookshop in Kedah, where he had spent his primary years.

“I was a bit of a kaki bangku then. While the other kids were playing football I was more into reading. I guess I was a bit of a ‘culture shock’ to the other Kedahan kids because I was the only one with an Australian accent, having spent my kindergarten years in Melbourne,” recalled Reza.

Over time, Reza, who now gets his literary fix from Kinokuniya said his penchant for superhero stories have diverged into the fantasy novels set within medieval and the modern Japan.

“One of the most riveting titles I have read is Almost Transparent Blue by Ryu Murakami, who has the ability to take you on an unbelievable imaginative trip. There is also another book by the same author, In the Miso Soup, which tells about a tour guide who unwittingly takes a psychotic murderer around Tokyo,” said Reza of his recent reads.

And while Reza fully realises that these works are nothing but fiction, he admitted that he cannot help but feel for the characters. Case in point is an anime entitled Full Metal Alchemist, a story about two brothers of whom one would lose his body and had to walk around in a suit of armour.

“Damn the writers for such a sad story! What had disappointed me the most was that at the end of the stories, the characters were back where they started despite all the suffering and hardship they had gone through,” said Reza.

At the end, when asked if Reza derived his songwriting inspiration from his literary collection, the answer was a surprising ‘no’. Coming from a family of three siblings with a librarian mother and an engineer turned business man father, Reza maintained that his head has always been screwed fast to reality.

“Most of the stories are too far-fetched and my songs are about my experiences in real life, so the two don’t correlate,” smiled Reza knowingly.

If you have a story to share with Reza, e-mail him at djembeboy@gmail.com or visit http://www.myspace.com/rezasalleh.