mababang langit

some time after KFC's absurd "cheese top burger" went viral  last year, i posted a cartoon with a few variations on the theme , including the equally absurd (or so i thought) "coke top float:" and then at jollibee the other day, my kids ordered one of these: i can confirm that the ice cream and fudge syrup are at the bottom of the cup (it also costs nearly twice as much as a regular float). should i laugh or demand royalties?

ZOMG ZOMG ZOMG!!!!!!!!  I CAN'T WAIT!!!!!! OHMYGOOOOOOOOD

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true story.

from left to right: manix and jess abrera, the artist raymond and his sister jona, michael david and myself. check out more of raymond logronio's sweet vector toons at his istikitoons facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Istikitoons/230791854091

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so gma's news portal just started its first-ever webcomic, manix abrera's news hardcore . yay, right? mainstream media-supported webcomics. but then you notice that it's been filed under "home > nation > top stories". also it doesn't have its own rss feed for fans to subscribe to. it's like gmanews said, "webcomics, yeah whatevs, just slap that on anywhere." i am disappoint.

i am not the kind of guy who "likes" a lot of things on facebook.

i am usually very, very skeptical about (i.e. i hate) "first filipino blank-and-blank movie!" anyone remember ang panday the animated series? what about isko: adventures in animasia ? yeah, those went really well didn't they. i can just imagine the boardroom meeting that spawned these ideas: "let's make it reeeaaaally filipino! let's have the hero wear a maglalatik costume! how many tikbalangs and manananggal can we squeeze in, do you think?" what makes rpg metanoia look so promising to me is that it is forward-looking rather than backward-looking. there's no hint so far of the false nostalgia and out-of-place nationalism that weighs down the earlier films. cg animation? 3D? avatars and rpg's? it's too hip to be true! and in a sense it is. the project was begun in 2004 by local studio thaumatrope, and abs-cbn only came aboard in 2008. so there is at least some chance that this will be legit. their website's pretty nifty, and of course th...

by brian azzarello and lee bermejo: click to embiggen. via

my haul this year includes some priceless original art from dj legaspi and mel casipit . thanks guys! i got to sit at the komikon booth (thanks to jon zamar, syeri baet and the rest of the komikon peeps!). that's gio paredes at the right and lico reloj at upper left--his fifty peso ninja was the very first indie i bought at the first komikon back in '05. in between is markus of planetmarkus.com , who was kind enough to mind our tables for us while we walked around and stuff. being a comics blogger, he was almost as knowledgeable about our stuff as we were! it was a pleasure to see entire families trooping to the con. feedback from children regarding school run 2's brutal zombie attack scene ranged from "it was cool!" to "meh, i read 4chan so nothing new" to "i got scared". the rj ledesma was there. he bought a couple of my comics and twittered about them . ZOMG! 0_0 salamat boss RJ! speaking of showbiz, a hero tv camera crew came looking ...

by raoni neri . so you can add this to real-life mario real-life homer simpson real-life jessica rabbit , and real-life popeye (might not want to click on this if you've just eaten) via

by dan moynihan .

the calvin and hobbes creator talks about doing something cartoonists almost never do--retiring at the top of his game: By the end of 10 years, I’d said pretty much everything I had come there to say. If I had rolled along with the strip’s popularity and repeated myself for another five, 10 or 20 years, the people now “grieving” for “Calvin and Hobbes” would be wishing me dead and cursing newspapers for running tedious, ancient strips like mine instead of acquiring fresher, livelier talent. And I’d be agreeing with them... I'm proud of the strip, enormously grateful for its success, and truly flattered that people still read it, but I wrote "Calvin and Hobbes" in my 30s, and I'm many miles from there. An artwork can stay frozen in time, but I stumble through the years like everyone else. I think the deeper fans understand that, and are willing to give me some room to go on with my life. you tell 'em, bill. most of the "grievers" really just wanted more ...

2009 komikon awards best cartoonist hazel manzano-chua of callwork fame dishes out some solid advice on what to do and not to do (example at left) if you want your four-panel strip to make it to the newspaper comics page. especially noteworthy, and i think not nearly talked about enough, is tip #9: " Ipa- basa ulit sa mga kamag anak ang na revise mo nang script at drowing. Ganyan talaga kapag nagsisimula... Itapon mga strip na hindi nakakatuwa. Wag manghinayang." we've got a load of talented artists, a handful of good writers, but practically no editors. and you need all three to make good comics . some disinterested opinion can spell the difference between a self-absorbed, precious work and something truly compelling. like nathaniel hawthorne said, 'compose in white heat, edit in cold blood'--or at least ask your parents to. and then there's #7: "Infomercial ba ang ginagawa niyong comic strip? Nakakawalang gana kasi magbasa ng [masyadong mahabang] scr...