Suriname.
Suriname
1982
Surinamese comics are a small field that grew out of the Paramaribo press.
Ro Heilbron drew the newspaper strip Terugkeer naar het graf for De Ware Tijd before he left for the Netherlands in 1970, and in 1982 Rihana Jamaludin illustrated De grote kleine man, described as the first Surinamese comic book. Today the tradition lives mostly in political cartoons, from Reinier Asmoredjo's long-running Fawaka panel to Richenel Piemoe's online strips, which were collected in books from 2022.
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4
1982
1980s
Artists from Suriname in the archive.
Comics from Suriname in the archive.
De grote kleine man, the earliest comic from Suriname in the archive.
The decade when the most new comics from Suriname began.
strip
Suriname in 4 chapters
A short history you can leaf through. Click a page, use the arrow keys, or press Turn the page to read on.
Suriname.
4 chapters
Chapter 1
1964
to 1970
Heilbron and the Paramaribo press
1964
to 1970
Chapter 01
Heilbron and the Paramaribo press
The graphic artist Ro Heilbron drew the strip Terugkeer naar het graf for the daily De Ware Tijd, with text by Celsius Tjong A Kiet. With his wife Jeanet Callender he published the youth magazine Yeah from 1964 to 1970, the year he moved to the Netherlands.
1982
to 2009
Chapter 02
The first comic book
In 1982 the Stichting Kinderkrant published De grote kleine man, a comic about the priest Petrus Donders written by Father Bas Mulder and drawn by Rihana Jamaludin, with a cover by Paul Woei. It is described as the first Surinamese comic book.
2010
to 2020
Chapter 03
Fawaka and the slavery comics
By 2020 Reinier Asmoredjo's Fawaka cartoon had run in Dagblad Suriname for 18 years, with about 5,400 drawings, and the paper dropped it in August 2020 after a cartoon of vice president Ronnie Brunswijk was condemned as racist. Dutch-made comics about slavery in Suriname also appeared, Jacquelina in 2010 and Quaco in 2015, and in 2017 the education minister kept Quaco out of Surinamese schools, calling the comic format didactically unsound.
2020
to today
Chapter 04
Strips on social media
Richenel Piemoe, born in Sipaliwini in 1993, began posting near daily political strips about Surinamese events in 2020. A first collection appeared in January 2022 and a second, covering 2022, in December of that year.
The comics to know
- Terugkeer naar het grafcomic stripRo Heilbron and Celsius Tjong A Kiet. Newspaper strip in De Ware Tijd, drawn by Heilbron to a text by Tjong A Kiet.
- De grote kleine man1982 · graphic novelBas Mulder and Rihana Jamaludin. Comic about Petrus Donders, called the first Surinamese comic book.
- Fawakacomic stripReinier Asmoredjo. Political cartoon in Dagblad Suriname for 18 years, stopped in August 2020.
- Quaco. Leven in slavernij2015 · graphic novelIneke Mok and Eric Heuvel. Dutch-made slavery comic commissioned by a Surinamese foundation and kept out of Surinamese schools in 2017.
The people to know
- Ro Heilbron1938 to 2014Paramaribo graphic artist who drew Terugkeer naar het graf for De Ware Tijd.
- Rihana JamaludinBorn 1959Illustrated De grote kleine man (1982), the first Surinamese comic book.
- Reinier AsmoredjoBorn 1962Painter and cartoonist behind the Fawaka cartoon in Dagblad Suriname.
- Richenel PiemoeBorn 1993Cartoonist whose political strips have run online since 2020.