Cergam: Inventing an Indonesian Identity for Comics (A Tribute to John A. Lent)

 Cergam*: Inventing an Indonesian Identity for Comics

(A Tribute to John A. Lent)

Iwan Gunawan

Association of Asian Comics Critics Asia (ACCA)

*Cergam means "illustrated story" in English

Among the many stories of Asian comics that John A. Lent helped bring to international attention, Indonesia’s offers a particularly fascinating case. While many national comic traditions developed through distinctive visual styles or narrative themes, Indonesian creators in the early 1960s attempted something more radical: they sought to create a new national identity for the medium itself.

 The story began in the years following Indonesian independence in 1945. Like many newly independent nations, Indonesia faced the challenge of defining its cultural identity after centuries of colonial rule. Debates over the nature of a future Indonesian culture intensified during the famous Cultural Polemic of the 1930s and continued into the post-independence era. By the late 1950s, President Soekarno repeatedly emphasized the need for a distinct Kepribadian Nasional (National Character), encouraging artists and intellectuals to move beyond cultural dependence on the West.

At the same time, comics were flourishing as a popular medium. Following the success of Indonesian comic publishers in Bandung during the early 1950s, artists and publishers in Medan, North Sumatra, began producing their own comics. Yet comics occupied an uneasy position within Indonesian cultural discourse. Because the medium had entered Indonesia largely through American newspaper strips and comic books, it was frequently associated with Western popular culture, capitalism, and cultural imperialism. Critics often regarded comics as trivial entertainment, unsuitable for a nation engaged in cultural nation-building.

The response from Medan’s comic artists was remarkably innovative.

In December 1961, under the leadership of the prominent artist Zam Nuldyn, a group of creators launched a magazine titled Tjergam. More importantly, they publicly proposed that the term Tjergam—an abbreviation of Tjerita-Gambar (“Picture Stories”)—should replace the foreign-derived word “comic” as the national designation for Indonesian comics. They argued that “comic” was a Western term that no longer reflected the personality of the Indonesian nation. The new term was intended not merely as a magazine title but as a contribution to Indonesia’s cultural vocabulary.

This act of renaming was deeply significant. Much like Japan’s use of the term manga, the adoption of Tjergam represented an attempt to localize not only the content of comics but also the language through which the medium was understood. The creators sought to establish comics as a legitimate expression of Indonesian culture rather than a borrowed Western form.

The movement extended beyond terminology. Throughout the period from approximately 1954 to 1966, Medan artists produced hundreds of comics that explored local folklore, regional legends, historical heroes, and national struggles. Stories such as Malin Kundang, Puteri Hijau, Kisah Gunung Toba, and numerous Malay and Batak legends appeared alongside adventure, romance, detective, and fantasy narratives. Even when borrowing narrative structures from popular international genres, creators localized settings, characters, costumes, and cultural references to align with Indonesian experiences and aspirations.

The significance of the Cergam movement lies not simply in its artistic production but in its cultural ambition. It demonstrated that comics could participate in the construction of national identity during a formative period of Indonesian history. Rather than rejecting a global medium, Medan artists transformed it into a vehicle for expressing local values, histories, and cultural imagination.

For scholars of comics history, the story of Cergam reveals how sequential art can become part of broader debates about language, identity, and nationhood. It also embodies a theme that ran throughout John Lent’s pioneering scholarship: local creators do not merely imitate global forms. They adapt, redefine, and ultimately make them their own. The Medan artists’ invention of Tjergam remains one of the most compelling examples of that creative process in Southeast Asian comics history.

Editor’s notes by CT Lim:

The question remains why comics were popular in cities like Bandung (Java) and Medan (Sumatra) in the 1950s and 1960s and not in the capital city, Jakarta. What were the factors that enabled comics to prosper in Bandung and Medan? The latter was the center of pulp publishing in Indonesia in the 1950s and 1960s. In the case of Jakarta, the capital could be too embroiled in political battles for it to be a cultural center for the arts and literature, and comics. Medan declined as a publishing hub after the 1966 coup and riots, and there was a nation-wide shortage of paper. In the 1970s, with the consolidation of Suharto’s New Order, Western investments and mass media returned to Indonesia.

There is also a need to examine John Lent’s writings about comics in Indonesia, especially cergam, and how his articles differ from earlier writings about comic strips, cartoons and comics in Indonesia, e.g. those written by Benedict Anderson.

For more on cergam in Medan, see Lintasan Cergam Medan: Catatan Seorang Kolektor (2016) by Henry Iswmono. This book is not translated into English.