Trese in FREE PRESS

Where Adam David writes about his Best Books of 2009 for the Philippine Free Press (January 10, 2009)

TRESE By Budjette Tan and Kajo Baldisimo (Visprint)
A series of slick done-in-one stories, exactly like CSI, only it’s steeped in traditional Pinoy monsters and mythologies and the main protagonist is a goth chick with guns and emo hair. It’s a working off of the more common vein of action horror comic books and once you really read into it there is certainly a formula to the construction of the stories themselves. But Trese manages to rise above it all above it all by simply resorting to the most obvious thing: it spins us a good yarn page in page out. Tan and Baldisimo show us what can be done with formula, why formula work, how formula can work for you, all the while not making it seem like formula. Komikero all over should not only read this for the words and art but also study it for its craft as there is certainly craft at work here. There are currently two books out, both utterly smooth, available absolutely everywhere (with good reason).

Comments

Will you Play it Safe in 2025?

One of my favorite songs which I learned about early this year. Our boss at the agency played this at one of our town hall meetings. It's reminder to all creators that we will always be told to "stick to safe ideas" (which is fine, if you just want to get the work done and go home) but there will always be this other voice at the back of your head that will ask, "Maybe there's another way to do this? Maybe there's a better way to tell this story? Maybe you can tell if from a different point of view and make this old story feel like new? Maybe you can spend a few more minutes working on it? How about it? Let's give it a try? Another hour trying to re-write? Let's give it a go!" What I love about this song is how the lyrics take on the conservative point-of-view and how the visuals show us the exact opposite. One of my favorite bits of this song is this part, where the lyrics starts to give you a "list of commands", like it's a list o...

the sons and daughters of Kanlaon

Last Friday, we attended the 40th Anniversary of KBS, the Kanlaon Broadcasting System, where my mom and dad once worked. I was still a baby when my dad worked there. I barely remember the people there. One of the first people to greet me was Lando, my dad's old driver. Him, I remember. As the story goes, when I was a baby, I could not pronounce his name and just started calling him "Agoong". Hence, he got that nickname and that's what everyone called him. I remember how we used to play chess while waiting for dad to finish work and how I always forced him to make me win. (Makes me wish I forced him to teach me how to play chess better and learn how to not win things so easily.) As expected, as my mom re-introduced me to her old office mates, they all looked surprised and delighted to see me. They would then immediately extend their hand, palm down, and show me how small I was when I first met them. Some would pretend to carry me and tell them they were the ones who ca...

Two Young Creatives of Equal Talent

Two Young Creatives of Equal Talent by David Lubars Executive Creative Director of BBDO North American Originally published in Communication Arts July Illustration Annual 2001 You and your buddy are just starting out. You’re a couple of juniors from ad school, or wherever. You both have killer books; maybe you’ve scored in the One Show college competition. You’re excited and juiced. You have tons of potential. Flash forward fifteen years. One of you has become the creative director of a brilliant agency. The other is brain dead in Punxsutawney. A fascinating scenario, and one I’ve tried to make sense of in the twenty years I’ve been at this. If you’re a kid, this is written to try to help you avoid the mistakes some of your talented but misguided predecessors have made. Here, then, are nine attempts at understanding why some people fall off the face of the earth: First, it seems that these people somehow get i...

Babbling Point

Search This Blog