Busy, but not moving
After years of researching Indonesian comics, I keep returning to one paradox: almost everyone wants them to succeed. Artists keep creating. Communities organise events. Publishers search for readers. Universities produce new creators. Government agencies run programmes.
There is no shortage of activity. Yet we have been discussing roughly the same problems for decades: foreign dominance, a small domestic market, weak distribution, precarious creative careers, and few pathways for turning comics into sustainable intellectual properties.
Perhaps the problem is not that nobody is trying to fix Indonesian comics. We are incredibly busy, but not in the same direction. To me, this is one clear indication that the problems facing Indonesian comics are no longer simply individual or commercial. They are systemic.
We compare the fruits, not the trees
It is easy to say: "Look at Japan and Korea. Why can't we be like them?" So we reproduce their visible outcomes: comic magazines, tankōbon, Webtoon, IP markets, transmedia franchises. But we are comparing Output A with Output B while ignoring the different processes that produced them.
Comic formats do not emerge in a vacuum. They are shaped by purchasing power, reading cultures, education, distribution networks, technology, regulation, and history. Taking a solution from one ecosystem and expecting equivalent results elsewhere is a decontextualised, outcome-based comparison. We are comparing the fruits while ignoring how the trees were grown.
What Indonesia needs to learn from Japan is therefore not what manga looks like but what conditions allowed manga to flourish in the first place. Every borrowed system is a Galapagos Syndrome.
When Inspiration Becomes The Benchmark
Manga's massive expansion in Indonesia since the 1990s exposed generations of Indonesian artists to new visual languages, storytelling techniques, and genres. But prolonged dominance created another effect: Indonesian comics are increasingly judged against standards established by other industries. Art styles, genres, publishing formats, production speeds, and business models are all compared with Japan and Korea.
Foreign influence itself is not the problem; cultures have always borrowed from one another. The problem begins when inspiration becomes the default benchmark. We stop asking "Why aren't we like Japan yet?" and start asking
"What kind of comic ecosystem actually makes sense for Indonesia?"
Without that shift, our imagined future becomes little more than somebody else's present.
Many Fixes, Same Problems
Since the late 2000s, I have observed countless attempts to "fix" Indonesian comics: competitions, festivals, workshops, digitalisation programmes, incubators, IP campaigns, and government initiatives. Many are valuable. But they often operate as isolated interventions. We promote IP registration without necessarily having industries capable of developing those IPs. We encourage digital comics without resolving creator monetisation and sustainability.
In systems thinking, this resembles the Fixes That Fail archetype: addressing visible symptoms without changing the structures that continually reproduce them (Senge, 1990). A programme ends. The old problem returns in a slightly different form. Another programme begins. The problem is not that these interventions are useless. The problem is that we keep fixing individual parts while expecting the whole system to transform.
Every Road Is A Compromise
Systemic failure becomes most visible to those trying to make a living inside the system. For many Indonesian comic artists, publishing is not a choice between "good" and "bad" options; it is a choice between the bad from the worst, each path requiring different compromises. A major publisher offers production and distribution, but potentially limited margins and creative control. Self-publishing offers freedom, but creators carry production, marketing, and distribution themselves. Digital platforms provide enormous reach, but attention does not necessarily translate into sustainable income.
Many artists therefore maintain other professions simply to continue making comics. We often celebrate this as resilience or entrepreneurial spirit. But there is another way to read it: when survival continually depends on individuals finding ways around the system, perhaps it is not the industry that has adapted. It is the people surviving it.
Everyone wants progress. But progress towards what?
Publishers, creators, communities, academia, and government may all say they want to "advance Indonesian comics," but they do not necessarily define advancement in the same way. Publishers think about markets. Creators think about sustaining their practice. Communities keep the scene alive. Academia develops knowledge and talent. Government works through programmes, mandates, and performance indicators. Institutional logics help explain how different values, assumptions, and practices shape how organisations understand problems and make decisions (Thornton, Ocasio & Lounsbury, 2012).
These actors do not even need to be in conflict to produce fragmentation. They can know each other, collaborate, and genuinely want the same thing while moving towards entirely different futures. The problem is not a lack of activity. It is a lack of alignment.
Collaboration ≠ coordination, busy ≠ advanced
Indonesian comics are actually full of collaboration: festivals, indie publishers, specialist shops, reading communities, crowdfunding projects, workshops, exhibitions, and grassroots initiatives. But many collaborations remain episodic, transactional, and project-based. People assemble around an opportunity, produce something together, then disperse until the next project appears. As a result, collective energy does not necessarily accumulate into institutional capacity or long-term strategy.
Collaboration does not automatically produce coordination. And coordination does not automatically produce transformation. This explains how an ecosystem can appear extraordinarily busy while remaining structurally fragile. Indonesian comics are not inactive. They are collectively busy, but strategically fragmented.
Fragmented in action, centralised in expectation
When transformation fails to happen, conversations repeatedly return to the most powerful actor: the government. Why isn't the state doing something? Where is the policy? The state does possess regulatory, financial, educational, infrastructural, and institutional capacities unavailable to most other actors, so expecting its involvement is not inherently wrong.
But here lies the contradiction: our actions are highly decentralised, while our expectations for transformation remain highly centralised.
We demonstrate considerable grassroots agency, yet continue imagining systemic transformation as something that ultimately requires the state to initiate, legitimise, or finance it. I describe this condition as fragmented in action, but centralised in expectation.
Perhaps the better question is no longer "Why won't the government help?" but rather: "Why have we come to imagine transformation as something only the government can make possible?"
Government Cannot Create The Ecosystem For Us
Japan offers a useful lesson, but one frequently reads backwards. The Japanese government began developing its Cool Japan strategy around 2010, when manga, anime, and games had already spent decades building substantial markets and infrastructure (METI, 2012; 2013).
The government did not create manga. It helped scale an existing ecosystem. Indonesia needs government involvement too. But systemic transformation cannot simply be outsourced to the state. The larger challenge is building collective capacity among creators, businesses, communities, academia, society, and government to negotiate (and pursue) a shared direction.
Perhaps we should stop asking "Who will save Indonesian comics?" and start asking: "What would make us capable of transforming them together?"
