Comic Strips For (The Rest Of) Us
List of contents for The Kaleidoscope edition
The Kaleidoscope archives and showcases the best of image works throughout the world according to certain topics. The series will be covering illustration, vector graphic, photography, digital arts, architecture and almost every kind of visually designed arts we find noteworthy. If you have any suggestions, please leave a comment or email at writer[a]marisaduma.net.
User Friendly [Website]. User Friendly must be the only comic strip out there that is perfectly suitable for hardcore netters. As described by Wikipedia: “User Friendly is a daily webcomic about the staff of a small, fictional internet service provider, Columbia Internet. The strip’s humour tends to be centered around technology jokes and geek humor.”. User Friendly’s daily statics consist of: A.J. Garrett, The Chief, Dust Puppy, Miranda Cornielle, Pitr Dubovich, Sid Dabster, Pearl Dabster (named after the computer language, Perl.) and others.
Dilbert [Website]. Exposing office culture in its cubicle world, Dilbert have managed to emphasize all the best there is from the corporate bureaucracy–which is good for nothing except to conceal managerial incompetence. As described by Wikipedia: “Dilbert is known for its satirical humor about a white-collar, micromanaged office, featuring the engineer Dilbert as the title character.”. Dilbert’s main characters are: Dilbert, Point-Haired Boss, Alice, Wally, Dogbert, and Phil as The Prince of Insufficient Light–originally named Satan, the Prince of Darkness.
Gaping Void [Website]. Gaping Void’s tagline is: “cartoons drawn on the back of business cards”. It isn’t exactly a comic strip; Gaping Void is a combination of graphic art and copywriting in a somewhat more unconventional ways. No definite characters portrayed in these illustrations drawn and written by Hugh MacLeod, only figures and bubble text-like typology. Its humour (if any) is satirical and almost poetic. Read on “How to be creative” for a better description of the idea behind the scribbles.
Sinfest [Website]. Tatsuya Ishida’s Sinfest is a grossly mutated derivative of Japanese-influenced cartooning. As described by Wikipedia: “Sinfest is perhaps best summarized as Eastern art with Western writing. Ishida’s drawing is clearly influenced by manga but not limited to that particular style. The subject matter of Sinfest is often human nature, with particular attention paid to sexuality and religion. Less frequently, the strip will parody popular culture or indulge in political commentary.”. Characters on Sinfest: Slick, Monique, Squigley, Seymour, God (yes, God.), The Devil (of course.), Jesus, Buddha, The Dragon, and Pooch-and-Percy. There’s also a new character named Teletron, Slick’s transformer TV, just like in the movie.
Benny & Mice. An Indonesian made comic strip, Benny and Mice portrays the ordinary life of two ordinary men living in the not-so-ordinary capital city Jakarta. Benny & Mice are Benny and Mirsyad, the cartoonists themselves. From Jakarta’s seasonal floods, TV shows, celebrities, malls, citycentrical trends, or just randomness, Benny & Mice kept finding their own unique (and hillarious!) way in adapting and blending in with the crowds, without conveying urbanity as *The Evil Being* but more of as a compliment to their gullibility. The strip is weekly published on Kompas every Sunday.
Another Indonesian-made comic strips we should mention is Chickenstrips [Website] webcomic written and drawn by Diki Niwatori, an IT staff located in Bandung. It isn’t available (yet) for media publications offline.
And the cast of characters.
How this relates to urbanity? Quite simple. It’s witty. It’s real. It’s evolving. It’s all something we can relate to. The characters mainly exist to create a plot out of simple, original, and yet eye-opening occurrences left scattered in our everyday surroundings–surroundings where even heroes can be as absurd as its villains. By transcribing characters in that certain way, real life issues seems a bit more contemplative rather than intense oppositions between protagonism versus antagonism. It does not understate their readers’ intellect and judgments, or at least their courage to accept certainties as obscure as it may be.
Concerning its unique sense of creativity that could also apply to other forms of media publication, it conceptually allows the younger generation to breathe–no longer suffocating in the old-aged folklores and traditional depictions of slaves and masters, riches and rags, monsters and angels, innocence and elusiveness, good and evil, black and white, in which the generation have been finding hard to belong to and identify with.
The greatness of heroes, and the perversion of villains, along with each of their damsels in distress remain existent, however they are represented in various different ways of perceiving and different sets of values; different in a way how reality is different from anesthetic fantasy (or paranoia) which has been forcefully imprinted on the society’s morality and inevitably keeping the future’s revolutionary minds constantly in status quo.
That, and of course, because it made us laugh!
Related sites.
GoComics
Lambiek.net
Komik Indonesia
Kartunesia
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hi cha….comic strips? i love them….benny and mice is one of my favorite too. their jokes are really hit the recent topics of daily life especially in Jakarta
i’d also love comic strips on The Jakarta Post such as Ferd Nand, Peanuts/Snoopy, The Born Losers, Garfield, etc. They make me smile.
Comic strips are alternative ways to give critics for goverment, certain people or society, etc. Surely i agree with this quotation “Joke is a rubber sword that won’t hurt someone but it still can make him bleeding” Cool.
Dear MD, please link to my blog k? Thanks.
- C-list dude
hihihihi
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These are hillarious! Where did you get them?
Comic strips is very important in urban society as they evolve with the way of living and the current events of our lives. It shows where a particular society stands in a certain point in time.
Great great post. Can’t have enough of them.
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Now, you should know I DID put up a fight to resist the temptation. Because the number of bookmarks has been growing totally out of control. I need to put an end to the ongoing extension of the list. But your review of these gems made me give in once more. The irresistibly funny/creative “Gaping void” has been added to my regular destinations.
If I die of overdose it’s your fault.
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@ yonna
Haa. Yes, that’s political cartooning, commonly drawn/written by editorial cartoonists.
You can find them here: http://www.gocomics.com/editorials/index.phtml
Dwi Koen’s Panji Koming is some sort of political cartooning as well. However, it’s still using the opposition approach, and it only represents a particular ethnicity. Perhaps the cartoonist should consider illustrating other *victims* from various different ethnicities in Indonesia?
@ deka
Ha!
@ Andie
To show where a particular society stands in a certain point in time. Stand, ..and also to walk forward.
That is a fine perspective, Andie. Really, that is *thinking outside the box* is all about.
@ colson
Heheh, enjoy! Gaping Void’s great, yeah. And great articles too.
Thanks for posting this article - I’m trying to get my blog a bit of a kick by adding comic strips, because although they seem simple they require fully-developed concepts in order to communicate the message straight away. Dilbert is one of my fave since it’s so to the point and so, so true! Man, office jokes and politics never get old. Recently Jennie referred me to have a look at http://www.angrylittlegirls.com and that’s some piece of work - all those girl angst are put to a good use, I must say.
As for me I simply think of comic strips in a away I think of trance music - once you get hooked to it, you keep wanting to find out what the artists have come up with next, simply because you enjoy the emotional sensations it gives you.
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I just manage to grab all chickenstrip comics…
It’s just so funny… for a web designer 
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