RAKHMAD DWI SEPTIAN,
Stripburger 58 "EXPLORING THE POTENTIAL OF INDONESIAN UNDERGROUND COMICS"
Rakhmad
Dwi Septian The 90’s were a difficult period for
the development of the comics scene in Indonesia. This was
caused by a plethora of foreign comics imported since the
80’s, but, on the other hand, the same period saw the rise
of the spirit of underground comics as well. The reason
for the decline of domestic Indonesian comics lies in the
presence of many foreign comics that were available to the
readers in two versions: as manga or as translated
European comics. This influence of imported comics
strongly affirmed the general public stance towards comics
as light entertainment for children and teenagers. Independent comics are open toward
different approaches to making comics. According to Hikmat
Darmawan, an Indonesian pop culture and comics connoisseur
& critic, the character of independent comics that
began appearing at that time was technical in style and
expressive in content. Previously mentioned mangas and
western comics have become more acceptable by the general
public and able to enter major book stores, while
underground comics were in this same period active only on
a lesser scale and tended to stay at the margin. Underground comics, one of many
possible types of comics, thus became a platform for
expression of social, economic and political issues that
were important at that time. They are also worthy of
scholarly interest in spite of their short lifetime,
mainly due to their background and the practice of their
creation which includes many hybrid and fringe ideas. This kind of comics in Indonesia was an
offshoot of the fine arts movement in the 90’s which
happened to include comics as well. Indonesian Fine Art
Institution in Yogyakarta is the formal educational
institution which has raised lots of students of fine arts
who later on, individually or collectively, became
pioneers of underground comics. Yogyakarta in the 90’ was
a synonym for progressiveness in many fields, for example
in music, art and fashion. This independent spirit has
exercised great influence on music and art (comics)
communities. The development of underground comics
was characterized by different content of their stories
from the mainstream comics. The context of underground
comics favors a huge variety of topics, such as daily
life, humor, sex, politics, violence, religion and
identity. These topics could not be covered in mainstream
comics because the government censored the comics and
limited their content span (comics published in the 70’s
had to obtain the approval from the police beforehand).
According to the scholar and researcher Laine Berman this
strict censorship prevented the appearance of any comic
that was critical of the society or the government. One of underground comics’ capital
ideas was that anyone could make comics, even those with
no background or previous experience in it. This was
clearly shown in Eko Nugroho’s Daging Tumbuh books, comics
anthologies/collections that gave anyone a chance to
submit their comics art and be included in these
compilations, as there was no limitation about the comics
content or form. This innovation of the book as a free
gallery space for anyone has influenced other similar
contemporary projects and today there are many anthologies
that are inspired by the idea of Daging Tumbuh.
Unfortunately not all comics artists from these books
remained in the field of comics, but the success of Daging
Tumbuh and other anthologies gave a chance to everyone to
make comics according to their preference, perception and
style. Here, underground comics artists
perform in other art fields as well, so naturally this led
to comics that were adapted to nonconventional spaces as
well, such as Apotik Comics (a comics collective, ‘apotik’
means pharmacy) that performed a project of mural comics
in public spaces, or art collective Mulyakarya who made an
ATM machine that would distribute their comics to the
public. Around the turn of the millennium the comics
activity intensified thanks to a higher flow of
information. This gave a chance to the underground comics
to present themselves in a new light, address the general
public and shorten the distance to it. Production costs limitations weren’t
really an obstacle for underground comics artists as they
made comics with simple layouts, used photocopy machines
to print them and thus lower the budget as much as they
could in the true spirit of ‘Do It Yourself’. This
approach is nowadays still used to publish small-scale
comics. However, Indonesian underground comics
are still facing lots of obstacles: from limited market
penetration and lots of foreign imported comics to a lack
of media, publications and other platforms to distribute
the artwork. Comic artists don’t just have to care about
making good comics, but to overcome said obstacles, they
must be able to work together and establish connections
between comics artist and the general public. |