Babbling Point

I am a Filipino – inheritor of a glorious past, hostage to the uncertain future. As such, I must prove equal to a two-fold task – the task of meeting my responsibility to the past, and the task of performing my obligation to the future. I am sprung from a hardy race – child many generations removed of ancient Malayan pioneers. Across the centuries, the memory comes rushing back to me: of brown-skinned men putting out to sea in ships that were as frail as their hearts were stout. Over the sea I see them come, borne upon the billowing wave and the whistling wind, carried upon the mighty swell of hope – hope in the free abundance of the new land that was to be their home and their children’s forever. This is the land they sought and found. Every inch of shore that their eyes first set upon, every hill and mountain that beckoned to them with a green and purple invitation, every mile of rolling plain that their view encompassed, every river and lake that promised a plentiful living ...

The secret origin of my dynamic team-up with talented Mr. Baldisimo aka KA-JO. I first met Kajo when he was part of Virtual Media Studios -- which was the unofficial tambayan of Alamat Comics way back when. During those years we'd drop by and hang out, I got to see Kajo and guys work on the pages of A.R.C.H.O.N. Kajo actually finished three fantastic issues of that comic book. All the art was colored and letter and then... their PC crashed and they lost all the artwork. So, we may never know whatever happened to that band of law-enforcers in outer space. Here's one of Kajo's pin-ups from A.R.C.H.O.N., showing Troy, the team leader. My first collaboration with Kajo was a comic book that only got distributed in Malate. We were hired by an NGO to make a comic book about AIDS and HIV. So, I wrote a story about a guy who sleeps around and ends up getting AIDS and gives it to his wife as well. The issue ends with some literature about the benefits of regularly going to...