four things we can learn from the success of TRESE

1- overnight success takes a long time

the first issue of trese the comic came out in 2005, SIXTEEN YEARS ago. it was indie as indie gets: a photocopied comic put out by two guys at a comics convention. no publisher, no facebook page, nothing. basicallly all these guys started out with were talent, an idea, and photocopying money.

then the indie sold well enough to attract a publisher, and with that came something completely unquantifiable yet immeasurably important: mainstream respectability. and after THAT came acknowledgement from the local establishment in the form of awards, news features, merch.

it's important to note that throughout all of this, tan and baldisimo kept churning out content with consistency and quality. over a thousand pages, on time, for over a decade.

and then they found a producer. who shipped the IP around for years before finally landing the netflix deal.

so that, to my understanding, was trese's road to netflix, each step only made possible by the previous.

success tends to feel inevitable in hindsight. "of course this would be a hit." it's easy to overlook the serious long-haul hustle that the trese team and their publishers had to put out to get to where they did.

2- own your shit

to put it another way, would you rather be a stan lee, who after creating some of the world's most beloved and lucrative IPs died with a net value of $50M, or a george lucas, who created midichlorians and is worth about $5B and possibly has his own spaceship?

the pinoy komiks dream has always been working for marvel or DC; drawing a batman book; writing spider-man. since the 70's, the philippines has been recognized as a hotbed of creative service workers--artists, designers, musicians, you name it--but not as a hotbed of creators. trese demonstrates the possibility--maybe even the viability--of pinoys owning and profiting off their own IPs. it's a monumental step in a new direction, and hopefully in its wake more of the multitude of truly unique, truly screenworthy stories that have been bubbling up in the indie komiks scene throughout the years will see the light of day. and by "light of day" i mean $$$$$$$$$$$.

of course, corollary to owning your shit is protecting your shit--and that means knowing your creators' rights. i tried googling around for a nice concise primer on the subject to link to, but couldn't find anything specific to the philippines. hopefully that changes in the future. still, don't sell yourself short, people!

3- know what works

it's much less so today than it once was, but hollywood is still built around formulas. and trese's formula game is solid. hot female lead? check. creepy supernatural action? check. police procedural? check. now before fans accuse me of calling trese formulaic, or suggesting that tan and baldisimo purposefully cobbled together a bunch of tropes to build an irrestible adaptation pitch, that's not what i meant at all. but when aiming for commercial success, it helps to know what the market likes and which paths have lead to prior success, and trese hit those marks, intentionally or not.

4- get an agent

(EDIT-- i'll need to post a correction  here. I was misinformed that the trese team had an agent--i was wrong and i regret the mistake. what actually happened is that tan and baldisimo partnered with a producer, tanya yuson, who shopped the title around to various outfits for 7-8 years before finally landing the netflix deal.)

for years pinoy komiks has been trying to build a complete ecosystem: creatives, editors, publishers, distributors, critics... we somehow overlooked management. we did not take into account the vast global entertainment market that exists beyond our little bookstores, conventions, and facebook pages. a market that is constantly looking for content to acquire, produce, and sell.

maybe we considered ourselves still too small and insignificant for agents. movie stars have agents. but comics people? nah. but just maybe, we're nearing a point where for certain creators, having representaion would make sense.