Monday, April 18, 2011

Dusting off an Old Read


I find that stories I write and illustrate have their origins in the books I was exposed to as a child. I have many good memories of reading comics with my brothers when I was very young. It's interesting to re-read old stories to see how they have influenced the kind of stories I enjoy telling today.

Sometimes, I stumble upon an old book I have not read in a long time and it's wonderful how turning its pages blows the dust from memories that have been patiently waiting for me to recall. It's terrific to be humbled when one's imagination soars high - realizing that no matter how old we get we still secretly crave that child-like sense of wonder, without which our lives would be all the more impoverished.

This book is "Our Fighting Forces #164". One of my brothers had a National Bookstore reprint of this issue back in the 70's. It was one of my earliest introductions to war comics. As a child who could not yet read I would open this book and take in the appearance of the format -the heavy textured inks, and the word balloons containing words which I did not know the meaning of. Yet in my own limited way I did know some of the words. Stringing those few words, placing them in context with the pictures, I managed to come away with the sense of a story - whether it was the intended story or not. But for a boy of four or five, it was more than enough to feed a hungry imagination.


After Many Years of Silence


As one can expect, much has happened to me between this post and the last one - which my cat typed in 2007:

I've made lots of mistakes, and have had my share of successful moments.

I have written and illustrated a few more books (and some comics) for the Philippine market. Those were fun.

On the more dramatic side of things, I closed a 40+ year old family business and from the ashes of that, I helped our good and loyal employees form a cooperative. That was very stressful, but more important - it felt like the right thing to do.

Then at the start of 2010, I became a father. At the end of the same year, I lost my father. Both events were life-shaking - but in very different ways. Both are constant reminders, however, that whatever past life I have been trying so desperately to hold on to truly belongs in the past.

Which brings me to today. I have given some thought to starting up this blog again without the assistance of my cat who, as I should have expected, left it abandoned for over three years. I can only hope to do a better job. My cat would not bet good money on it. Neither should you. I'm hopeful, but let's just see how things go, okay?

The picture above is me at the 2011 Philippine comic convention. I stayed at the Polyhedron Comics table where we sold stuff - some of which included my work. I wrote and illustrated an all-ages silent comic called "Poso Maximo" appearing in the comic anthology entitled "Triple Punch Komiks". We also sold copies of my latest children's book "Bullysaurus Rex" published by Hiyas books. My latest comic work was a four page job drawn from a script by good friend and University of the Philippines professor Emil Flores. The title of the piece is "Colloquy" and it appears in the comic anthology "CADRE classified".

If you want to see some of my work, please visit my page on deviantart.com