The Multifarious Body (of Work)

The period after independence is particularly interesting for the production of comics not only as they began to be printed in book formats and gained popularity, but it was also seen as a time when Indonesia’s nationhood and its links with the world were being vigorously negotiated on the wide cultural front. Being culturally modern also meant participating in new forms of popular entertainment. This was a period of intense cultural mobility and cosmopolitanism, when the question of Indonesian-ness was both an outcome of independence and modernity, as well as an issue of culture. During this heady time of nation-building, Indonesian responses to the question of culture and modernity were reflected in different forms of artistic expression. Literature, drama, painting, sculpture and music were more easily considered ‘modern’ because their newness was inherent in both the form itself (non indigenous) and the language (Indonesian).

Research has often focused on analyzing this period of Indonesia’s search for a cultural identity as one of conflict  between the two main ideologies of the time that dominated artistic productions, namely between Lekra (People’s Cultural Association) and Manikebu (Cultural Manifesto). Yet there is scarce research related to how popular culture responded or marked this complex period, or the roles Chinese-Indonesian artists had within these complex socio-political and cultural changes. Comics were an even more visibly new and modern cultural form, which rapidly spread in the ‘50s as local adaptations of their Western counterparts. During this time, comics productions and the printing industry were mostly led by Indonesian artists of Chinese descent, such as RA Kosasih, John Lo, Siauw Tik Kwie, Lie Ay Poen, Kam Seng Kioe, Lie Djoen Liem, Kwik Ing Hoo, Kong Ong, and others. Amidst this search for an identity in post-independence Indonesia, what role did these comics producers play? How was the nation and the national identity imagined through the alternative world of comics and through the subjectivities of the authors?

As imported cultural forms from the “new” West (the “old” West from Europe was now replaced by the two new superpowers of American capitalism and Soviet socialism as the main sources of modern models), comics were increasingly penetrating the urban markets of Indonesia (mainly through Medan and other city ports) by the end of the 1940s and the early 1950s. During the first years of the fifties, increasing protests began to take place, by parents and educators demanding to stop the spread and consumption of Western comics considered to be a bad influence on the Indonesian youth. There was a need to seek out sources of national culture that could contribute to the shaping of a national identity, a need that publishing houses of the time quickly sought to fulfill. In 1953, RA Kosasih, also known as the father of Indonesian comics, was hired by the publisher Melodie in Bandung and began producing some of his most well-known comics, such as Ramayana and Mahabharata, which were inspired by a repertoire of Indonesian folk stories. This marked the beginning of Wayang comics.

While this period focused on that search for a modern Indonesian identity in culture, and in comics as well, the traditional sources of national culture  were being  re-imagined and re-presented in various ways by the comic makers and producers of the time. These sources ranged between Chinese folk tales, Malay history, colonial warfare, and local super heroes and heroines adapted from Javanese, Minahasan, Minangkabau, or Sundanese legends, among others, or local adaptations of Western characters narrated in Indonesian language. John Lo was another Chinese-Indonesian comic artist who produced famous characters like Putri Bintang and Garuda Putih by 1954. Two years later, Wiro Anak Rimba Indonesia was published by Toko Buku Liong in Semarang as another way to imagine a local Tarzan travelling across the archipelago, a teenage white-skin Java-born Indonesian boy named Wiro.

How did Toko Buku Liong play its part in imagining the nation through the authors’ own subjectivities, as emphasized in the previous volume? Is the heterogeneity of the comics produced a reflection of how they perceived themselves as Indonesians and the nation itself?