mababang langit

if you add one blog to your subscriptions this year, make it teacher's pwet by motsmots. it's a hilarious, heartwarming, inspiring webcomic about a the life of a "barrio teacher." i really can't recommend it enough. someone give this guy a book deal! someone invite him to komikon!

mr. sheffer, thank you for selected shorts. listening to it helped me through many a rough time. thank you for showing me the special quality of a story told, the magic of a story heard, and the gift of a speaker of stories, of whom you were one of my favorites. yours in tears and laughter, macoy

aklas isip posted a rebuttal to yesterday's post here , which can be summarized in his closing quotation: "everything you know is wrong --god." not surprising, coming from aklas. it's actually a small comfort to debate with people and know exactly what expect to hear from them. jerald uy also responds : "the issue isn't really that i said komiks is dead, macoy is just out to get me!" sorry jerald, not everything is about you. and don't blame me, you put your own foot in your own mouth.

as a comics fan and someone who makes self-published comics, i've spent the last decade or so watching pinoy komiks redefine itself and struggle to bounce back from the 90's malaise that saw mainstream comics dwindle down to near zero. i've watched the independent komiks scene, led by creators like budjette tan, gerry alanguilan, arnold arre, carlo vergara and the komikon team, make slow, gradual progress toward establishing itself as critically and financially viable. komiks shifted business models, moving from the banketa to the bookstore,  the newfangled comics convention circuit, and the web. and yet, some people still insist that pinoy komiks is "dead." their definition of death varies slightly, but the thought remains the same. the longtime komiks blogger/s who goe/s by the name "aklas-isip" posted a blog titled "WHY THERE IS STILL NO COMICS INDUSTRY IN THE PHILIPPINES Part 1" late last october, where he/they stated: "...we...

how do you drive this thing?

 my respect for mr. brand just went up several notches. via

right click on image --> open link in new tab to enlarge character sketches for a story idea about a bunch of tweenage mythological creatures going to a magical high school that is nothing like hogwarts. this is waaay down the line, with so many issues of school run still to go (i pretty much have the entire plot for school run all finished in my head, just need to set it down on the page). i just wanted to call dibs on the concept, and a few specific ideas. still deciding on a working title... "lamanglupa high" "aswang academy" "my PE teacher is a tikbalang"

Hominid from Brian Andrews on Vimeo  is an animated short featuring  "photo composites made from human and veterinary images creating hominid creatures."  

care of birdhouse bakers . yet another really cool komikon thing i missed.

i love it when people point out elements of my comics that i wasn't aware of as i was making it. case in point: taal volcano monster. i don't remember which komikon it was that carljoe told me he was writing a paper about that character (but i seem to recall that my first thought was something akin to, "psh, good luck.") and he asked me whether the "atsetse"-type comedy of tito, vic and joey had any kind of influence on the humor in that book. a light bulb went off in my head then, because TVJ was a huge comedic inspiration to me growing up. some people have monty python or bill murray, i had T.O.D.A.S. and "send in the clowns." it was by watching their stuff that i saw the power of being able to make people laugh and imagined that maybe i could do the same. in that conversation with carljoe, i realized (and he mentions this in his paper) that taal monster fits into a specific comedic tradition--not out of any conscious effort on my part, that ...

a few weeks ago, ubergeek  carljoe javier (that's him on the left) flew to mansfield college, oxford, UK to present a paper on taal volcano monster . yup. academic paper. oxford. taal volcano monster. three concepts i never would have put together in my wildest dreams. the paper is titled  " Filipino Humour and the Filipinisation of Foreign Tropes in Macoy’s  Taal Volcano Monster vs. Evil Space Paru-Paro " and is pretty damn readable for a scholarly work. i didn't experience any college PTSD at all while reading it (or at least the draft available online ). so, wow, my everlasting gratitude to carljoe and the folks over at mansfield college. and my everlasting inggit to taal volcano monster, who has visited places i'll probably never reach.