mababang langit

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 ...

brought to you by the la salle students behind panelmag , an online magazine about pinoy comics. i especially enjoyed his comparison of a long-term comics writer-artist relationship to marriage.

rocket kapre 's paolo chikiamco sat down with budjette tan and kajo baldisimo to discuss their recent national book awards win , trese fandom, and what it would take for them to quit their dayjobs and make comics full-time: Do you remember when it was that you first realized that you had a hit on your hands? That this was going to go beyond the convention circuit? BUDJETTE:   I’m not sure of the exact tipping point of Trese. I was getting an inkling of it when I would spot the occasional review online. (Yes, yes, I Google “Trese” once in awhile.) It amazed me that people took the time to write reviews that read like someone’s thesis report. These were very detailed and passionate reviews about the stories. It was also great to get feedback from guys like Gerry Alanguilan and Marco Dimaano about the book early on. And then, when we released TRESE: MURDER ON BALETE DRIVE, me and Kajo were invited guests at the Mangaholix Con in SMX, where we sold 100+ copies. By that time, we k...

huge news for pinoy komiks. but don't take my word for it, here's what the 2009 national book awards committee had to say : In Trese, Budjette Tan and Kajo Baldisimo has [sic] crafted a testament to the limitless capacity of the Filipino imagination, as well as one of the best Filipino comic books of all time. yeesss looks like the lit establishment has finally started taking notice. budjette reacts with a graceful, ovation-worthy acceptance speech , which impressed me so much i'm reposting it in full: To the National Book Development Board and the Manila Critics Circle, thank you very much for recognizing our work and giving us this award. To Ruey de Vera, who has shown support to local comics since 1995, writing reviews and interviewing local comic book creators, introducing them to Pinoys through his newspaper articles. Thanks to Bow, Taps, Arnold, and Mark --the skeleton crew who conjured The World of the Unknown, a radio show about ghosts, aswang, and wit...

click here to read it. but be warned: the site's flash interface is pretty horrible. via

It is great to see a local creator do a “pop comic” like this. A “pop comic”, as Warren Ellis defined it, is a finite story, a done-in-one, a wakasan-story, that even a non-comic book reader can appreciate. We need more stories like this, to get more people reading comics and to get more people reading locally produced comics. read the whole thing here .