Laine Berman
(Reproduced from Comic Edge. P. 19 Issue 21. June 1998)
In the shadow of the great krismon (krisis moniter or monetary crisis), you probably did not know that from 2 – 6 February 1998, the Ministry of Culture and Education celebrated a National Comic and Animation Week in Jakarta. Since Ben Anderson wrote his excellent paper "Cartoons and monuments: The evolution of political communication under the New Order" (1990 [1973]), not a great deal has been written on the fascinating extremes that characterize the rise and collapse of the Indonesian comic book industry. More importantly, why is anyone paying attention to the indigenous comic now and why on earth did the Ministry of Education propose to support this sadly embattled industry?
In a nutshell, Indonesian comics depend upon sophisticated printing technology and an economy in which people are able and willing to buy daily, weekly, or monthly publications. Thus, they did not take-off until well after the end of WWII. While strips, editorial cartoons and propaganda posters were published during the Dutch and Japanese occupations, these reflected imperialist not indigenous interests, and would have only been available to a few Indonesians. Once the cartoon strip became established in the local press, these imported and translated strips eventually spurred on the indigenous cartoon. Bind a string of strips together and you have the comic book, referred to locally as cergam, an acronym for cerita bergambar or story with pictures. The comic book made its debut in Indonesia in the 1950s as American look-alikes which eventually evolved as adventure, silat (kung fu) stories adapted from Chinese legends, with Chinese settings and Chinese details. With American strips already flooding the local markets, an Indonesian artist named Kosasih printed Sri Asih in 1954. What followed was a proliferation of locally produced copies of foreign comics, the adaptation of Chinese legends, silat adventure stories, traditional hero, and local legend stories, which surged in sales during the 1960s to the 1970s. This era is referred to as "the golden age of Indonesian comics." Everybody was reading them thanks to a brilliant local innovation, the comic rental kiosk. Many Indonesians have described for me their happy memories of that time through images of people sitting under trees beside the huge piles of comics they have just borrowed from the rental kiosk!
So what about the seminar in Jakarta? The struggling comic artists who attended reported that they felt thoroughly unsupported and uninspired by the event. Even the lucky Yogya artists who won the prize for best original comics in 1996 and 1997, confess that their comics are now published by Balai Pustaka, but remain unavailable to the wider market. These excellent original and very indigenous efforts are not available in shops nor are they even listed in the publisher’s catalogue(fn1)!
Many of the officials and scholars who presented papers in the seminar ignored current realities in favor of historical views on the genre. While many claimed the Indonesian comic originated in the relief sculptures that decorate ancient temples and in other traditions of communicating ancient texts such as wayang beber (scrolled picture stories) and lontar (manuscripts on palm leaves, see Kusuma 1998; Tabrani 1998, Zaimar 1998), not one scholar reported on the current political and economic barriers to publishing comics. No one mentioned that President Soekarno had accused comic artists of subversion and denounced their work as garbage and a Western induced poison in the 1960s. Schools and kiosks were raided and the comics confiscated and burned. In the Soeharto era, comics were again attacked for fostering laziness and having no educational value. This is what killed the "Golden Age" of comics.
But that was then. Now, something of a comic revival has taken place but not one which benefits Indonesian artists or komikus. The president of Gramedia, Indonesia’s largest book chain, has reported that imported comics are now their strongest sales with 90 per cent of these from Japan. Book shop windows are full of Japanese super hero figures and the vast comic displays have been moved up to the front of the stores. It was not just the success in sales of foreign comics that has squeezed the local efforts off the shelves. Since production expenses are much greater than buying the rights to established foreign comics, local comics actually cost more than the imports do. All considered, producers have little incentive to support local artists regardless of how wonderful the comic may be. Thus, the modern Indonesian comic suffers from little support from local buyers, little opportunity for publication, a local tradition murdered by foreign marauders and presidents alike, and the scrutiny of the Minister of Information, who requires an application for permission to publish that must include no less than 20 official letters on top of a stamp from the local police attesting to a lack of political content or motivation. Where was any of this in the National Comic Seminar?
Even the independent comics, which most definitely do exist in various forms (2), suffer from similar neglect. Among local Yogya art students, many bold and exciting efforts have appeared only to disappear again because of political harassment, lack of public interest, lack of economic support, personal frustration, or just because of the recent rise in paper and photocopy costs.
So why did the Ministry hold a National Comic Week and promise to revise the ailing comic industry?
(footnotes)