Babbling Point

Well, I finally did it. I wrote a story. A 24-page comic book script. Something I haven't done for a very long time. I sent the script to Mark and Gerry. Taps already gave his comments. Gerry just emailed and said that one scene in the story is all too similar to his story, which is why I sent it too him-- to check if I did rip him off. So, I now have to find a different way to end it. But that's okay. I wrote it and finished it and that's all that matters to me. I guess that's the best birthday gift I can give to myself. I turn 30 this Saturday and last year I had hopes that by this time I would have already published a full-color graphic novel. Well, I've got a 24-page script. It's a start. Maybe next year.

As some of you may have noticed (or not noticed at all), no Alamat comic book/book/project was released for the year 2002. I sent an email to the fine and wonderful people of Alamat last Monday, greeting them "Happy Anniversary" and pointing out that we've had no projects for the whole year and hope that in the coming year we will be busy. Well, in the past two days I've been informed of two really exciting projects that... I can't really announce right now. I'm just waiting for a go signal from the creators of those projects and we'll be announcing it like crazy. Everything should be set around end November. Abangan!

This month marks the beginning of Alamat Comics’ 8th year. Seems like every year is star-up mode for us. Below is an article which is suppose to appear in the revised Alamat website, but that might take awhile, so I’m posting it here. The Secret Origins of Alamat Alamat Comics started some twenty or so years ago, when we were still kids and made our own superheroes using crayons and papers, when we traced and copied our favorite characters and made up stories about them. Alamat Comics started in 1992, when comic book artist Whilce Portacio came home to the Philippines and judged a drawing contest. Hundreds of “Pinoy mutants” were submitted and it lined the walls of a ballroom, where the contest/ party/ autograph signing session was held. Little did we know that the people who later be the founding members of Alamat were all in that ballroom. Alamat Comics started in 1993, when a group of La Salle college students published the “first comic book” as far as Western ...

The Brotherhood of Annoying Movie-Goers Watched BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF last Saturday. I liked two out of the three hours of the movie. Well, maybe it wasn't really three hours long but it certainly felt like it. The fight scenes were great, even the scenes with the Beast were well done. But I think it was just too damned long. As you discover more and more about the secret of the Beast, you'd think the pace of the movie would go faster, leading you to the final revelation about the brotherhood, but NOOOO! We keep getting this pauses in the film where they devote time for this character and that character. At that point of the movie, all the set-up about plot and characters should have been done and we should be one our way to the ending. To make matters worse, behind us sat the Brotherhood of Annoying Movie-Goers. They were five or six guys that just had to give a running commentary through-out the movie. From the sound of it they were Magic: The Gathering pl...

Gerry in the Journal Dirk Deppey of THE COMICS JOURNAL reviews Gerry's site/blog. An interesting point-of-view from someone outside looking into the Filipino comic book scene. _

Didn’t get blog yesterday. The hysteria here at the office reached an all time high. Well, maybe not, but it sure felt like it. The project I worked on last week, that ate my Friday evening and Saturday afternoon was “de-prioritized” Monday morning. I just love it when that happens. And it happens all too often. Friday night… after I finally got out of work. Met up with office mates at Segafredo. As usual, it was a regular Ad Congress that night. People from different agencies were there getting drunk or sobering up. One of my office mates, Icel, read my palm and gave me a very interesting reading. She said that there was a time three girls liked me and I didn’t know it. Had I know that they liked me at that time then I might done something about it. Why don’t I get a memo about these things? They could’ve at least texted me about it. As usual, I’m the last to find out. Well, there is supposed this other girl and that something may come out of it if I do something about ...

Well... that was that. I knew my 15-minute interview with the PiPOL crew would be reduced to a 15-second soundbite. I have become a resource person. I wonder if that's such a great thing? All in all, it was nice piece. Too bad it was shown too late for kids to see. Nothing like finding out that the guy drawing your favorite comic book is a Pinoy. It would be great if transcripts and images from the show would be put online. I think CNN and ABC NEWS would do that. Talking about Filipino comic book artists... Nonoy Marcelo died yesterday. God bless him. When I was in grade school, I was crazy about ninjas. I bought the books, the costume, and the equipment. I was one fat ninja! It was during that time when Nonoy Marcelo did several strips of IKABOD as a ninja. I clipped out those strips, pasted them on bond paper, and stapled them together. I even drew Ikabod on the cover. I think that was one of the very first comic books I "published". I don't know wher...

NeXT oN PiPOL OcToBeR 22, 11pm ABS-CBN Popular, sikat at mabiling-mabili ang imported comic Books na may iba’t ibang superheroes. Kabilang na rito ang X-Men, Superman, Spiderman at iba pa. Pero hindi alam ng marami, mga Pinoy ang may likha ng mga imahe at istorya ng mga tanyag na comic book na ito. Sino nga ba itong world-class Pinoy cartoonists at paano nila itinatayo ang bandila ng Pilipinas sa bawat pahina ng mga imported comic books na binabasa ng buong mundo? Samahan si Ces Drilon para sa mga totoong istorya ng buhay lahad ng mga tunay na tao sa PiPOL, Martes pagkatapos ng ABS-CBN HEADLINES. =========================== The crew interviewed Jay Anacleto , Gerry Alanguilan , Gilbert Monsanto , James Palabay , comic book store-owner Fil Barbasa, and me. I wonder how much of my interview will be used. I just hope they show the pages from BATCH72 and GLOBE XTM. :)

Ready? Get set! TEXT! Tomorrow night starts THE GREAT GLOBE ADVENTURE . This is what I've been working on for the past weeks with Argem. The "great dreams(G)" tv plug has been airing for a week. A Creative Director from another agency texted our bosses to say that it was a "great commercial". Which we should consider a really great compliment considering it was done using the TV (betacam) equipment and not with film. The shoot started at 8am on a bridge somewhere in Balara, where we had to stop traffic for over an hour to shoot the the opening running scene that actually just appears for two seconds. Our day ended at 3am at GMA studios, shooting the "team" in their living room. The show itself looks exciting. I guess you can call it the Pinoy version of AMAZING RACE. The pilot episode will have celebrity contestants (a usual ploy to make people watch). Succeeding episodes will have "regular" people. But from what I've heard, ...

FROM THE FWD. EMAIL DEPT: ----------------------------------------------------- Your Guide to Philippine Newspapers: A Must Read 1. The INQUIRER is the newspaper read by the people who run the country. if you don't know who runs the country, don't read the inquirer, as you may end up thinking that a newspaper actually runs the country. 2. The MANILA BULLETIN is read by people who don't care who runs the country, as long as the telephone numbers in the classified ads are correct, and the prices negotiable. 3. MALAYA is the newspaper read by people who used to run the country and think they still do. it is confusing to read Malaya because while the date may be correct, the administration is always wrong. 4. The PHILIPPINE STAR is read by people who will run the country, as soon as their newspaper overtakes the inquirer in circulation and advertising revenue. Until that happens, they will be happy to read the absolute latest in show business news. ...

I finally got my copy of THE COMPLETE COPYBOOK TALES and was shocked to find out that J.Torres and Tim Levins ripped-off my life. Even worse, they wrote a more exciting version of my life. (Actually, I said the same thing after watching Kevin Smith’s MALLRATS.) Each episode of THE COPYBOOK TALES happens in two timelines. It always shows the lead character Jaime Cruz, as a comic book fanboy in the 80s and as a struggling comic book writer in the 90s. And every little detail of his life just seemed to mirror my life. Jaime Cruz had a barkada who loved comic books. They always rushed to the comic book store every week during New Comic Book Day. He had a younger brother who called him kuya and pestered him when they were kids. He wore a black jacket, which he never seemed to take off. He and his friends watched STAR WARS dozens of times and acted out scenes in public. He kept a journal, which he called his Copybook, which eventually became the source of his comic book, which is th...

By the time I post this GLOBE XTM would have already been launched. GLOBE XTM is the name for Globe’s new GPRS services that allows you to send text messages 480 characters long and lets you email with your GRPS-capable cellphone. I joined in and helped out in writing the comic book which will be inserted in newspapers, magazines, and given away everywhere. They are supposedly printing several hundred thousand copies to be disturbed nationwide. That would be make it the highest circulating comic book I’ve ever written. Another factoid: the GLOBE XTM comic book is the first comic book I’ve written ever since Batch72. Crazy, huh? The artist of the book is Ian Sta. Maria, who was one of the inkers of Batch72. When we went through the script of the second story, he commented, “ Parang Batch72, ah .” And that struck me… in a good and bad way. I find it funny that someone can actually say that a particular story is like a Batch72, like it’s become some trademark style that can a...

And All Things Nice by Budjette G. Tan Manila, 2072 A.D. She never really bothered to find out what her father did for a living. All that mattered was that her dad uploaded her allowance to her cred-chip every week and that she was allowed to use the grav-car on Friday nights. She’d leave little holo-notes to her dad, being the sweet daughter that she is, to remind her dad that she loves him and that she needed some extra creds for the sale at the Ayala-Infinity-Mall. She never knew that father was one of the most important men working for the Hexagon BioCorporation, that her father was known as The Smith in certain circles, labeled the WeaponSmith under classified files, and was called the Blacksmith by his enemies. So, it was quite a shock to her (and embarrassing) when her cred-chip was denied at the club due to insufficient funds. How could her dad forget to reload her account? That night, she went home to their unit, on the 171st floor of the Rockwell complex,...

Text me, baby! Turns out the office upgrade my SIM so I'd have the myGlobe menu. So, they deactivated my old one without telling me and the person who was supposed to give me the new SIM went on leave. So, when I finally got the new SIM today and swtiched on my phone, 30+ messages flooded in my InBox! :) Ahhh... I can text again. :0)

Cellular Frustration For some strange reason, my phone can’t pick up a signal. Noticed it around lunch time. I now wonder if it has anything to do with using my cellphone while I was microwaving my lunch. Maybe the microwaves melted some circuit in my phone. Maybe it’s because I dropped my phone several times already. So, I brought my phone to Semicon who said that it would take a week to just check what’s wrong with it. I called up one of the Nokia Care Centers and they said it would take three days. Of course, I could take this to Greenhills can get it repaired in a couple of minutes but that would void my warrantee. Bummer. I haven’t been able to text or receive text since lunch. Very frustrating. Frustrating how we’ve become dependent on this device. So, it’s back to my 3210 until I get my phone fixed. My Happy Pill I finally got a copy of Neil Gaiman’s CORALINE . Found it in T.B.F.K.P.O. (The Bookstore Formerly Known as Page One). Only P800++. And that made me...

11:32am Should’ve been here earlier. It’s not like I had a late night. It’s just that I ended up staying in bed longer than usual. Just wanted to warm up, write some things down, clear my head before getting down to work. (Or from the looks of things… lunch.) So, how was your weekend? Saturday night, we successfully staged Mark’s surprise birthday party at Area 51. (Organized and masterminded by Petite and Wowel.) Well, it wasn’t exactly like the surprise party in FREE ENTERPRISE , but he was surprised nonetheless. I just don't think Petite would have agreed to have a green-skinned-alien-slave-girl lap dance for her Markie. :) From Area 51, I went to another party/dinner/get-together/reunion of the Globe `99 Team. (Sounds like a superhero group, huh?) They were the creative & accounts team that handled the Globe Handyphone account back in 1999, back when I started work in the agency. One of them is now a director of TV commercials. Two of them now work for t...

Lights! Camera! Pasta! If you click here , you'll see Noel F. Lim aka FLIM, me, and Gerry at Italianni's, Greenbelt 2.We met there to practice my scene with Gerry for WASTED THE MOVIE. I arrived around 6:30pm. For some reason, Noel was wearing his motorcycle goggles, which is weird because he sold his bike years ago. I guess he misses it. We started our "reading" / workshop after dinner. I thought we'd go elsewhere to practice our lines and try-out the blocking of the scene. But we didn't. And I'm just glad the place was full of people and noisy, else they would've heard me bumbling around and Gerry cursing about love lost. We did two readings, enough to figure out which lines needed to be edited and got directions from Noel on how to say this line and that line. Noel also started to sketch some ideas on how to shoot the scene. He said he wants to shoot the scene in one continous shot! No cuts! Which means it's going to be a very long da...

an email from Paolo Manlapaz Jonnel was a quiet, simple, unassuming person. He didn't stand out in a crowd or draw attention to himself. He may have looked timid, but if you pierced that disguise, you'd find that he could be fiery and passionate about many things. During our elementary and high school years, I would often spend weekends with Jonnel, either at his Malabon or Xavierville residence. Day and night, we'd fight ninja warriors in Legend of Kage, listen to When In Rome's The Promise, and walk around Virramall in Greenhills. We'd go through his stacks of Teen Titans, watch veritechs dogfight on Robotech, and strafe Kilrathi ships in Wing Commander. We'd drink those pulpy Japanese orange drinks that came in aluminum cans. We'd draw (hopefully) like Ryoichi Ikegami. When we'd play with miniatures, we'd make ridiculous battle sound effects. It was all simple, honest fun and it didn't get better than that. Over the last few ye...

Filipino comic book writer J.Torres will be one of the contributors to an upcoming issue of X-MEN UNLIMITED . I asked him how he got that writing gig. Below is his answer. My first Marvel gig was a text piece in Marvel Knights: Millennial Visions edited by Mike Marts. I first met Mike when he was an associate editor at Acclaim about three or four years ago. I was supposed to do some work for them, but the company's comic division folded before that happened. After Millennial Visions, Mike asked me to write a two-part Black Panther fill-in (which will probably never get used given the series' problems). Around the time I was finishing up that assignment, C.B. Cebulski was offered a position at Marvel. C.B. was my editor at Fanboy Entertainment, the company that originally published Sidekicks. He was initially brought on to manage the Mangaverse books. But about three months into his tenure he was assigned as the assistant editor of X-Men Unlimited, and at the time Mike wa...

Not a hoax. Not a dream. Not an imaginary story. I just received a text that Jonnel Mendiola, a batch mate from Ateneo died yesterday in an attempted kidnapping incident . I met Jonnel because we were the geeks that hung out at the covered courts, not to play basketball, but to talk about comic books. (Of course, Jonnel was usually at the covered courts because he was part of Ateneo Rifle&Pistol team.) After college, Jonnel set-up a comic book store and was one of the people to support Alamat Comics during our early years. God bless Jonnel. God bless his family. God bless our country.