A Blank Page. Benny And Mice

Welcome,welcome, this is a segment i like to call "a blank page" why? because this post is usually not movie related,and seeing at the top of the page it reads "MOVIE REVIEWS" this post will be irrelevant to some readers,or you know if i had any. so today we are going to talk and maybe pay some tribute then none other Benny and Mice

Benny and mice are graduates of the arts institute of bandung,from then they started to make sketches and/or comic strips mainly focusing on satirisation on the indonesian social culture most often focusing on comedy bits,they did this for a while until they caught up the attention of the Kompas newspaper agent,after that they work for Kompas  from as early as 2004 drawing newspaper strips focusing on the same topic,satire. they published the strip daily,on the back of the newspaper,turns out that the society loved their tongue-in-cheek satire and bashing of the society and was praised as one of the greatest artist in their bussiness.

A strip from 2006 edition

Not only they made newspaper strips but also comicbooks too, such as "Jalan-jalan ke bali" or complications of their own strips as well, but sadly in  July 2010 the duo of critics have to part their ways as benny decided to pursue his own projects and the strips are now drawn by mice,aptly named Mice Cartoons.

The duo's last strip

Enough about that though,because this post is for tributes so lets get tributin' shall we,from my opinion Benny and Mice is great and brilliant,the same for most people of course,but when people say that they like Benny and Mice they will mostly say because of the humor and their delivery,when in my opinion it's a little deeper than that,what i love from benny and mice is their satire and criticism,most artist may add social commentary or critic on a subtle way,but as you can see, in their strips subtlety is completely thrown out of the window here,they just blantantly draw them,even say it word per word in their strips,an act which several comic strips involving criticism considered it a tough act,obviously seeing the success of benny and mice.

Perhaps why they are so successful lays in their initial delivery,the comic in hand is relate-able to people and the humor itself is usually wrapped in hyperbole or overreacting resulting in a funny reaction,and considering how up to date they are its easy to bash society as we move on,but the feat that they made was really impressive, they made their satire targets actually love their criticism,they love how funny it was and how constructive it was etc etc, and also people are fond to bash easy targets,and the comic strips is like a full warehouse of weapons to bash them,but really the greatest factor is how relate-able the topics are in the strips,its just their signature look. 

In the end even though Benny and Mice parted ways they will still remembered as brilliant and revolutionary characters,and i as a critic,audience and a huge fan will still respect and enjoy their great works and i.m sure many people will still too.Cheers and stay awesome