Quick Komik Queries with: Beng Rahadian

Foreground: Beng and snack cakes.

John Weeks: You’ve just moved back to Yogya [Yogyakarta, Indonesia] from Malaysia, bringing lots of comics. When did you come back?

Beng Rahadian: Three weeks ago.

JW: You were doing art and design in Malaysia?

BR: I was an animator. I made one page comics in the magazine ‘Aku Dan Sesuatu’. ['Myself and Nobody']

JW: I noticed you selling that at the convention. That’s a newsstand magazine?

BR: 2 magazines a month.

JW: Is it a comics magazine? Or comics and culture?

BR: I think comic magazine, maybe one page culture.

JW: What kind of animation were you doing?

BR: I worked in corporate animation, we make for TV film.

JW: It wasn’t the ‘Lat’ animation, was it?

BR: (Laughs) No. It was for local television.

JW: Now you’re selling some of your comics at the convention. [PKAN 4] They take place in Yogya. You have Muka Belai, Mindak Terbang, and Salamat Pagi, Urbaz.

BR: Urbaz is from ‘urban’. I say because Yogyakarta is mainly urban.

JW: Could you tell us a little about each one? Muko Belai?

BR: ‘Trunk Face’, it’s a dream story. It could take place anywhere.

JW: Mindak Terbang [Flying Objects] is next, there is a mystery.

BR: It is inspired from social conflict in Indonesia, about politics. The true conflict is about politics. They talk something about mystic, mystical happen.

JW: …but is really politics.

BR: Troublemaker magician – but actually the people are political activists.

JW: This happens in many countries in Southeast Asia I think. Black magic and politics.

Salamat Pagi Urbaz [Good Morning Urban People] is your newest one. It takes place in Yogya 2003, with a Jakarta person visiting. You see the city with her.

BR: And in the end, the visitor gives a question to this guy.

‘I must go.’

‘Why?’

‘Because school is very expensive.’

I have one [similar] idea with Agung [Komikaze].

JW: That’s interesting, I can recognize a lot of sights from Yogya, the different things on the street. And you have lots of details, like the pollution.

BR: [Pointing at comic] Pornography. This guy wants to buy a pornographic magazine, [they say] ‘we sell script to graduate’ – paper to graduate for examination.

JW: Oh – cheating! So they can use the paper for their school.

BR: ‘I sell to them.’

JW: And why is this person crying here?

BR: She feels ashamed. She tells to everyone ‘There is pornography here.’ Very taboo, in Indonesia.

JW: Now there is an explosion of pornography, with the opening of the press [after Suharto]. It’s a different publishing environment.

Do you hope to print these short stories?

BR: Yes, if one publisher want to publish this comic is OK but the content is not changed.

JW: So you create this first, then you will submit. What is in the future?

Will you do more cartoon stories like this?

BR: Yes, I enjoy to make like this.

JW: I notice it’s also a very animation oriented style. Things change according to people’s feelings. Sometimes realistic, sometimes surreal.

BR: I am influenced by Japanese cartoons, European too. And this [page] is influence from film, ‘The Shaolin Soccers’.

I saw the actress, she walks across the football field, very quiet, like the hero, and she brushes the goalkeeper and suddenly faces the goal, very surprised.