The Letter That Was Never Sent
November 1994
Dear ___________
Greetings!
In view of the growing number of FILIPINO comic book creators, we find it encouraging and hopeful that this might be the start of a new era in the Filipino comic book industry. But most of the comic book buyers are not aware of our creations due to the lack of exposure / advertisements and we are fighting for shelf space among hundreds of foreign comic books. Furthermore, we end up competing among ourselves instead of helping each other, which is only detrimental to the growth of the industry.
In order to address this situation, we propose the gathering of all our titles under a UNIFYING BANNER under this banner the creators would retain autonomy over all direction and copyright of their creations; free ad space will be provided to ALL our comic books to promote the others’ creations; the name of your printer / publisher will still be retained if you want.
We invite you to a meeting to discuss this in detail. Please come on ___ at ____. If interested call Ian Orendain (532-xxxx) or Budjette Tan (995-xxx).
Sincerely,
Gerry Alanguilan (Wasted) Ian Orendain(Lakan) Budjette Tan (Comics 101)
Noted by: Whilce Portacio
The Story Behind The Letter That Was Never Sent
The letter above was drafted after a meeting with Whilce Portacio back in 1994. It was supposed to be sent out to the different comic book groups, but we never got to release it. The meeting had to take place as soon as possible because Whilce was leaving in a few days.
Since we didn’t have email back then (oh, those was certainly the dark ages) and we didn’t have cellphones (what a barbaric time!), and since we couldn’t rely in snail mail to do the job, we did a “telephone bridge”. (Take note of my six-digit landline number in the letter).
It was a wonderful experiment on “six degrees of separation”. We just called up (and beeped) the people who we knew was doing comics and we told them to call up (and beep) the other people who also did comics.
At the meeting, that’s where they heard about this plan, this vision for a “unified banner”. And yes, you already know the punchline to this story, that group became ALAMAT COMICS.
The funny thing was, that “unified banner” idea was based on the “Image Comics business-model”. We didn’t really turn out to the “Image Comics of the Philippines”. We most definitely tried.
Prophesying
When we were starting Alamat and reporters would ask me, “Where do you see Alamat in five years?”; my answer was, “We will have 20 new titles! We will be distributed abroad!”
Five years after we started and reporters would ask me the same question, I’d answer, “Oh, I’m sure we’d still be doing comics… somehow… in some form or another… maybe we’d just be Xeroxing our comics.” (One’s expectations are made more pragmatic by the years.)
12 years later…
So, we didn’t really do very great.
I’d still like to think we did pretty good.
It’s encouraging to see the new publishers succeed where Alamat stumbled.
It’s inspiring to see young, new creators find the courage to share their stories.
As far the individual creators of Alamat are concerned, they have had their major achievements in the past 12 years. It’s good to see them continue to write and draw great stories, fantastic tales, and new legends.
November 1994
Dear ___________
Greetings!
In view of the growing number of FILIPINO comic book creators, we find it encouraging and hopeful that this might be the start of a new era in the Filipino comic book industry. But most of the comic book buyers are not aware of our creations due to the lack of exposure / advertisements and we are fighting for shelf space among hundreds of foreign comic books. Furthermore, we end up competing among ourselves instead of helping each other, which is only detrimental to the growth of the industry.
In order to address this situation, we propose the gathering of all our titles under a UNIFYING BANNER under this banner the creators would retain autonomy over all direction and copyright of their creations; free ad space will be provided to ALL our comic books to promote the others’ creations; the name of your printer / publisher will still be retained if you want.
We invite you to a meeting to discuss this in detail. Please come on ___ at ____. If interested call Ian Orendain (532-xxxx) or Budjette Tan (995-xxx).
Sincerely,
Gerry Alanguilan (Wasted) Ian Orendain(Lakan) Budjette Tan (Comics 101)
Noted by: Whilce Portacio
The Story Behind The Letter That Was Never Sent
The letter above was drafted after a meeting with Whilce Portacio back in 1994. It was supposed to be sent out to the different comic book groups, but we never got to release it. The meeting had to take place as soon as possible because Whilce was leaving in a few days.
Since we didn’t have email back then (oh, those was certainly the dark ages) and we didn’t have cellphones (what a barbaric time!), and since we couldn’t rely in snail mail to do the job, we did a “telephone bridge”. (Take note of my six-digit landline number in the letter).
It was a wonderful experiment on “six degrees of separation”. We just called up (and beeped) the people who we knew was doing comics and we told them to call up (and beep) the other people who also did comics.
At the meeting, that’s where they heard about this plan, this vision for a “unified banner”. And yes, you already know the punchline to this story, that group became ALAMAT COMICS.
The funny thing was, that “unified banner” idea was based on the “Image Comics business-model”. We didn’t really turn out to the “Image Comics of the Philippines”. We most definitely tried.
Prophesying
When we were starting Alamat and reporters would ask me, “Where do you see Alamat in five years?”; my answer was, “We will have 20 new titles! We will be distributed abroad!”
Five years after we started and reporters would ask me the same question, I’d answer, “Oh, I’m sure we’d still be doing comics… somehow… in some form or another… maybe we’d just be Xeroxing our comics.” (One’s expectations are made more pragmatic by the years.)
12 years later…So, we didn’t really do very great.
I’d still like to think we did pretty good.
It’s encouraging to see the new publishers succeed where Alamat stumbled.
It’s inspiring to see young, new creators find the courage to share their stories.
As far the individual creators of Alamat are concerned, they have had their major achievements in the past 12 years. It’s good to see them continue to write and draw great stories, fantastic tales, and new legends.