Who should be among Singapore's pantheon of heroes?

SINGAPORE received an early National Day present two weeks ago. It's not another report on our students' top scores in the latest PISA study, or about our local universities' rising rankings against renowned institutions internationally. Neither is it to do with our world's best airport (five years in a row at last count), or how our national carrier maintains its iconic status amid a slew of Gulf-bankrolled upstarts - the Manchester Cities of the aviation premier league if you will. No.

Rather, the good news is that our own homegrown (albeit Malaysian-born) graphic novelist, Sonny Liew, has won Singapore's first ever …