Babbling Point

DAY OF THE DEAD Neil Gaiman wrote an episode of BABYLON5 where the dead came back and spent a day with their loved ones. I forgot the details of the story, but each crew member of Babylon5 was only visited by one person from beyond. Which makes me wonder who will come and visit me if that strange cosmic event ever happened on Earth. So, let me take the time to remember three people on this day. BUDDY TAN: That’s what a lot of people called me dad. I wonder if his mother ever called him “Salvador!” when he was being naughty or disobedient. A lot of people also called him “Boss.” When me and Brandie were still kids, we used to sleep in between my mom and dad. When we got too large to fit in one bed, we started sleeping in the other room with my mom. My dad would make me stay with him. He’d tell me that the aswang might come and he’d need me to stay and protect him. Now that I think about it, knowing that an aswang would come should’ve scared me more and made me run to the othe...

MYSTERY AT THE MALL On the night we watched “Stardust” in Powerplant, something strange happened. When we parked the car at the 2nd level basement of the mall, we left the following things in there: on the dashboard, Wella left some chocolates (Madel’s pasalubong from Jakarta) and I left copies of TRESE in the backseat. The comic books were place behind the passenger seat. Behind the driver’s seat was a box full of copies of Batch72. After the movie, we got in the car and the chocolates were missing. We found the plastic bag and the empty wrappers stuffed in the side compartment on the driver’s side. The lid of the box was left open. The copies of Trese were found behind the box. Other than those few pieces of chocolates, nothing else was missing. So, was a thief with a sweet tooth, who didn’t like comic books? Could it have been a duwende looking for midnight snack and something to read? We tried not to talk about it on the way home.

Bio-blography Have you noticed the number of parents now blogging about their children? These blogs are filled with pictures and anecdotes about what their child did today and what they said today. Some have even started to upload the video / pictures of the ultrasound of their baby. In a way, these children are lucky to have their biography uploaded online day-by-day. When they're older, all they have to do is click on that bookmarked link and they can read about their early years. For our generation, we have to open dusty cabinets and pull out the albums. We crack them open because the plastic pages have gotten stuck together. The plastic, as well as the pictures, have become yellow with age. The scent of the past makes us sneeze as we flip through the pages. Depending on how diligent your mother was, we would be able to read captions on each picture. Some captions would've been made using that Dynamo tape, while others resorted to writing the blurb on paper and sticking them...

RAK EN ROL COMICS I was Comic Odyssey today, collecting the sales of TRESE (where it got sold out! thank you, all five of you who bought!). While waiting to chat with Sandy, the owner, a butterball of a boy came running in the store. He was probably 11 or 12 years old. He ran to one of the sales ladies and asked, "Miss, do you have Umbrella Academy?" The lady quickly lead him to the shelf that had a copy and grabbed it with both hands. "MOM!" he yelled, "This is the comic book!" He looked towards the door and his mom had not yet stepped in the store. He stared at the cover, both hands still on the book, and he whispered, "I've been looking for this." I couldn't help but ask, "You're a fan of Umbrella Academy ?" Before he even said anything, I knew what his answer would be. The kid smiled and said, "I'm a fan of Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance!" His mom finally caught up with him and he ran to his mom with hi...

WE HAVE SUCH SITES TO SHOW YOU I still remember Andre lending me his copies of THE PUNISHER WAR JOURNAL with that dark artstyle that just blew you away as a kid. (Well, we were already in college, but I still felt like a kid.) The artist signed his name with Japanese characters, so I never really thought about his nationality even after reading that his name was "Whilce Portacio". When Whilce took over X-FACTOR, "Marvel Age" ran an interview about him and that was the first time I found out he was Filipino. His Iceman vs. the Cyborg-Ninjas is still one of my favorite X-Factor stories. So, after getting to draw most of the Marvel Universe, it seems like Whilce is setting his sights on the DC Universe. He just finished a gig at BATMAN CONFIDENTIAL and is now working on a SUPERMAN/BATMAN story arc . (Of course, he's still drawing WETWORKS.) Go do the click-click thing and see new his art at: http://whilceportacio.net/ http://www.chemsetcomics.com/ CUT-AND-PASTED FR...

HH Client: URC / Product: Presto Agency: Harrison Communications ECD: Alex Arellano DECD: Budjette Tan ACD: Mervin Ignacio Art Directors: Mark Mendoza, Louie Aquino Copywriters: Bonsai Fojas, Louie Aquino Accounts: Monday Gonzalez, Sinta Rosales-Baguio, Ethel Dino Broadcast: Jho Moya, Bambi Gonzales

DAMN THE COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS Just when you thought you’ve come up with something original, you come across someone else’s work that just proves you wrong. I know there’s no way I can claim that TRESE is an original idea, but it is an attempt to tell certain stories from a different point of view. Like I’ve said before, Trese was supposed to be a man, but we decided not to go down that road because of characters like John Constantine and Karl “The Nightstalker” Kolchak. So, we made Trese a woman and one of the first reactions we got was, “Hey! She’s like Kate Beckinsale in `Underworld`!” DOH! Well… no… not really. Then, another reader pointed out to me an anime that had a female lead and her assistant /bodyguard was this tall man who wears a mask. (Thankfully, he didn’t have a twin.) The other week, I was in Fully Booked when I saw this novel and the cover art attracted my attention because she looked like you-know-who. Then I read the blurb in the back: “Something is...

13th Month 'Why do people love us? We are always trying to figure that out, but only by using our own point of view. That way is so limited. Sometimes they love us for things we don't even know about ourselves. For example they love our hands. My *hands*? Why would anyone love my hands? But they do and they've got their reasons why. You must accept that and realize the person they know and love is different from the one you know.' Jonathan Carroll, THE GHOST IN LOVE (photo swiped from Rina's blog)

Additional Evidence The latest piece of evidence for EXHIBIT 13 has been submiited by Scene of the Crime Officer DINO IGNACIO. See the rest of the evidence at: http://exhibit13.blogspot.com/ See more of Dino's work at: http://www.dinoignacio.com/ Read the latest TRESE case at: http://tresekomix.blogspot.com/

TRESE 7: EMBRACE OF THE UNWANTED At the lowest basement of the MagnaMall, the mangled body of a woman is found. The trail of blood brings Alexandra Trese face-to-face with what was once thought to be an urban legend. When all is finally revealed, midnight madness at the mall will never be the same. Read the complete story at: http://tresekomix.blogspot.com/2007/09/trese-7-embrace-of-unwanted.html Story by Budjette Tan Art by Kajo Baldisimo

For this special online edition of 13 Letters Down, we did a very quick Q&A with Kajo Baldisimo, artist and co-creator of TRESE. What comic books are you reading now? What was the last comic book /graphic novel you read that you really liked? I keep re-reading WATCHMEN (ang aking paborito) from time to time and I’m still in love with it. Pero, teka… if that’s not counted , uhm… the latest comicbook I’ve read na nakaka-aliw … Kiko Machine ni Manix. Who are your favorite artists? We’ll run out of paper if I put everyone kaya siguro yung top 5 lang: Jim Lee, Nestor Redondo, Fernando Amorsolo, Alex Nino, Mar Santana, Alex Ross… saka Hal Santiago. Why the change in art style in this issue? What inspired this? I’ve been experimenting since issue 1, looking for that definitive TRESE look. I want something gritty yet clean (an’labo no?). I think I’ve hit it with issue 7. This is the same style I used dun sa Trese pinup sa Ish 1 . I will be re-drawing Trese 1-6 after I’m done with Trese 13....

TRESE 7: COMING SOON Previously in TRESE... Read all the latest cases of Alexandra Trese at: http://tresekomix.blogspot.com

Telling True Stories in the Living Room Hey, you’re here! You’re just in time. Grab a chair. There are still a few empty chairs up front. The band’s just about to start. Can I get you anything? San Mig Light? Vodka 7? Tequilla? Welcome to The Living Room. Now on stage is the beautiful Kelly Flint the rest of and Dave’s True Story. SPASM EVERLASTING NO DOG STORY There is a playlist in my iTunes marked TYPING , which is the music I listening to when I’m typing down notes I’ve written in my notebook or when I already know what to write and just need to bang away at the keyboard. Included in that folder are the songs of Dave’s True Story. I found out about them when I was looking for a soundtrack that would get me depressed. At that time, I was re-writing a storyboard for Globe called “Closure” (and for those you who are familiar with that story, then it just means you come from that G-moment batch of Harrison… I still hope to get that approved and produced some day. B...

The Illegal Facilitator IF: Illegal Facilitator, a criminal whose crimes facilitated the crimes of others. “He’d looked, Milgrim thought, like an ethnic version of a younger Johnny Depp. Brown had once referred to the IF and his family as Cuban-Chinese, but Milgrim would have been unable to make an ethnic identification. Filipino, in a pinch, but that wasn’t it either. And they spoke Russian. Or texted in an approximation of it.” — Spook Country by William Gibson In Gibson's first novels, his characters surfed cyberspace by jacking-in, literally plugging themselves into the net with a hardwire connected at the back of their necks. With his new novels set in the present, they jack-in using the usual monitor and keyboards and by going to Google and Wikipedia. Still, he introduces concepts like "locative virtual art" that just gives you the same mindfuck you got when you first read about the concept of cyberspace. So, if the IF was texting in "an approximation of...

IMMORTAL KOMBAT There are no decent comic book shops here in KL. (Well, they're not like Comic Quest, Comic Odyssey, and Druid’s Keep.) They do have enormous stores like Kinukoniya and Borders where they have a huge selection of graphic novels and an even larger section with manga. In their Chinatown, I found two stores / comic book libraries that had original manga and anime DVDs. Anyway, since I have no access to the single-monthly titles that come out, I’ve had to do with reading their summaries at: www.majorspoilers.com . (Yeah, I know I can probably down scans of comic books, but I don’t.) The site recently reviewed Matt Fraction’s THE IMMORTAL IRON FIST . Fraction’s work has been getting rave reviews from the likes of Brian Bendis and Warren Ellis, which takes a whole lot of restrain from buying the IRON FIST HARDCOVER TPB that I saw in the store recently. But check out these very, very cool villains from the latest issue. THE IMMORTAL IRON FIST will definitely be on my pull ...

What am I thinking of right now? Couple of months ago, Arjun showed me this site called TWITTERVISION , where you see a map of the world and every couple of sections a word balloon would pop up on some part of the map and it would be someone leaving a note on this big world map about what they were doing in their part of the world. At that time, Arjun thought that would make for a nice execution for a TV commercial. (Has anyone done anything like that lately?) Anyway, I later found out that the foundation of Twittervision was the site / service called Twitter . I eventually got an invitation get a Twitter account, which I did and got excited by the feature that let me text in my “blog entry” or my whatever it was I was Twittering about. It also allowed me to receive (via text) the Twittering of other people. So, ever now and again I would get a text/Twitter from the people I’m linked up with and I’d get to know little things happening in their day. They’d Twitter about where they were,...

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Commentaries: babbling about movies I recently watched BOURNE ULTIMATUM If ever Hollywood decides to do another Daredevil movie and if they really want to do it right, then they should get Paul Greengrass to direct it and Tony Gilroy to write it. Heck, while they’re at it, they should get Matt Damon to play Matt Murdock (aha! They even have the same first name!) And maybe Ben Affleck can start as the cop that gets killed by Bulleyes in scene one. Did you see that rooftop/ le parkour chase scene? Did you see all those close-quarter combat scenes? Aren’t all those just classic Frank Miller-Daredevil scenes?!!! I could already see the sfx word KRESHHH pop on screen when Bourne crashed through the window. Out of the three BOURNE movies, I liked this the best. It did have the advantage of having two previous movie provide all the set-up for the character, so for most of the movie you just see him getting his mission accomplished. The movie wasn’t burdened with too much backstory and we di...

NOW SHOWING Gerry Alanguilan's TIMAWA http://www.webcomicsnation.com/komikero/cresthut/series.php?view=single&ID=84338 WASTED: Episode 4 http://www.webcomicsnation.com/komikero/wasted/series.php?view=single&ID=79874 This is probably my favorite episode in the series, where Eric delivers that monologue in the car. I read that page during one of those poetry reading sessions in Mars (some of you might not even remeber that place). Yeah, I cheated and didn't read any of my own work. Anyway, after reading that poem, I saw Barbie Almalbis and gave her a copy of WASTED. After she read it that night, she was so moved and affected by the story, she ended up writing the song "Dancing" the next morning. COMING SOON More preview art at: http://iantoy.deviantart.com/

Over here, dusk arrives a little after 7:45pm. Tomorrow seems to take its time. It wanders in much later compared to its version back home. I wonder if it’s really raining in Manila. I am waiting for the sun to set.