Pensri Panich, a Lecturer in the Political Science Program at the School of Political Science and Laws, has researched ‘komik,’ one of Indonesia’s most fascinating popular cultures. This research project, titled “Visual Vernacular and Popular Imagery: “A Preliminary Survey of the Evolution, Meanings, and Significance of Komik in Indonesian Society, 1970s-1990s,” was funded by Walailak University’s Institute of Research and Innovation.

After beginning the research in 2019, Pensri conducted field research in Indonesia, gathering data from archives, various university libraries, komik producer publications, and interviewing academics, readers, and artists who have created these komik works. This passionate field study sought to shed light on the origins and evolution of this interesting popular culture, as well as to properly analyze and comprehend the social implications of komik in Indonesian, particularly in the 20 years after its peak in the 1970s.

This study is undoubtedly another academic work that has bolstered the position of “Comic studies” in Southeast Asian studies, and it has the potential to bring a lot of color to Indonesian studies in Thailand.