Visualising Piety: Muslim Comics in Contemporary Indonesia

Abstract

Indonesia has a rich history of visual culture, markedly by the present of relief in some Hindu and Buddhist temples, wayang kulit, and others. However, the comics culture only appeared in the late 1920s and flourishing between 1950s and early 1970s when the market overran by imported comics, notably Japanese manga. Some momentum is gaining for the reclaiming Indonesian comics in the end of 1990s until the present days, though those struggle to compete with the popularity of the imported comics. Against the above backdrop, Islamic comics are survivalists as they able to maintain the special position in the larger narrative of religious Indonesian. The postreformation Indonesia even a fertile ground for the development of it. The present paper is a sketch of Islamic comics, the development and its visual rhetoric. As it is not an exhaustive study, the observation is directed at some sample of comics that representational to disclose the dynamic of the subject. Though Indonesian Islamic comics demonstrated the predictable religious messages and rhetoric, there are some interesting progress and shifts, such as the tandem rhetoric of nationalism and transnationalism, engagement with social issues, and humorous element

Full text

Visualising Piety
Muslim Comics in
Contemporary Indonesia
Leonard Chrysostomos

Comic as the manifestation
of vernacular religion; the
religion of non-experts

Indonesian visual culture heritage

Indonesian visual culture heritage

Al-Bīrūnī, Kitāb al-āthār al-bāqqiya ’an al-qurūn al-khāliya
[Chronology of Ancient Nations]
Or.Ms. 161, Leaf 28, Date: 1307,
Centre for Research Collections, Main Library,
University of Edinburgh

Muslim Superheros/-ines

Muslim Superheros/-ines

Why Muslim Comics?

Gema Islam (1963)

SIKSA KUBUR
1970s-80s

ENSIKLOPEDI BOCAH MUSLIM (MUSLIM KIDS ENCYCLOPEDIA)

FELIX SIAUW
KHILAFAH
*REMAKE*

”Displaying the hospitable Islam, not the hostile Islam”
RAMAH
MARAH
Islam yang
bukan Islam yang

vbi_djenggotten’s comics

Projection and social imagination
of alternative/transformative
society (vs. Western modernity)
Transvaluation & translocation of
modernism
Nationalistic and transnationalistic
Moralistic and governmentality of
public civility/piety

Thank you