VISUAL ESSAY: The Auteur and The Personal Comic: A Reconstruction of Online Identities

When comic artist creates a personal comic, whose identities portrayed in the comic? Himself or his reconstructed image? More so, when the comic is published in social media, many viewers presumed that the comic is a mirror of the auteur life itself. This is where the constructed identities and real identities is reconstructed: negotiated, blurred between fiction and non-fiction.

as well as a popular commercial entertainment product, comics are in an interesting ambiguity. Comics are always categorized as low art, mass culture and childish (Sabin, 1996). However, as a very well developed branch of art (especially in Europe, and the US), comics can also be viewed from an artistic perspective. Where context-content, message-ideology and auteur identity are also important elements. As a medium of expression for the auteur, comics are equally great; comics can be biographies or autobiographies.

As a ninth art medium (Gravett, 2005),
Guy Delisle's journal comic is a complete example of an autobiography, which records Delisle's career as an animator (Shenzen Travelogue, Burma Chronicles, etc.) as well as constructing Delisle's image as a bad father (A Handbook to Lazy Parenting, A Users Guide to Neglectful Parenting ). In his interview with Kenan Kocak in the journal European Comic Art volume 7 no. 2, Delisle jokingly said that he wanted to make the comic artist image funny, ridiculous, by presenting himself as such a character. The reason Delisle wanted to do it was because he wasn't like that in everyday life.
This means that a comic that displays its auteur can function as a medium for reconstructing identity.
In the midst of the rise of comics distributed through social media in Indonesia, comics experience three things. One, the democratization of the medium itself. Second, as a personal platform, social media content can also be read as a construction of the identity that auteur wants to present to him through his work.
Third, the comic industry in Indonesia is getting bigger, organically multiplying in number, with very fluid content.
as well as the construction of auteur identity are the writer's attention in designing a counter narrative for one of the biggest antagonists who most often appear in comics with the school / campus life genre. Lecturers / teachers often appear as extras and antagonists who, unfortunately, rarely have the role of mentor (Campbell, 1990). Comics that focus on school / campus life also often place students as one of perspective orientation in the narrative. The lack of comics with the main character as lecturers, the rarity of comics in the campus life genre with a perspective from the lecturer 's perspective makes the perception of this character in one direction.

Comics as a medium of personal expression
As a lecturer who is also experienced working as a comic artist, the writer was intrigued to make a counter narrative on student-oriented themes in relation to lecturers. The author wants Indonesian readers to have an interesting alternative to student-oriented comic choices so that they reconstruct the identity of the lecturer in a more holistic and fair manner.
In this comic, the writer does not try to improve the character stigma that tends to stick to the lecturers; conservative, grumpy, often bullied, and antagonistic to the protagonist's goals. This comic character actually amplifies the stigma of the lecturer character so that it becomes an a n t i -p r o t a g o n i s t (antihero) character.
Second, the author is also intrigued to reconstruct his identity in cyberspace through his characterial representations. The author creates comics with characters with the same profile as auteurs, with the aim of blurring the boundaries between non-fiction-fiction, comic character-auteurs, essential identities-reconstructed identities.
the comic created by this completely fictional author is often associated with the author. Readers often find it difficult to distinguish the boundaries of fiction-non-fiction in comic writers, as well as linking the characters in comic strips with the identity and even ideology of the auteur. Regardless of whether or not there are characterial similarities between comic characters and auteurs, the writer finds that with representation on social media, the auteur's identity can be negotiable, fluid, and can be changed at will.