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RIP sir jim fernandez, creator of zuma , for my money the most badass dude (and most original creation) in our komiks pantheon. watching zuma get run over by a road roller and getting back up like nothing happened was a seminal moment of my childhood.      

sat down with komikon's jon zamar and my partners in crime ardie aquino and cy vendivil to talk about making komiks with other people, and how collabs are basically like relationships: the give-and-take, the need for constant communication, and the chance of things getting toxic.    

 thanks to PICOF for taking my books with them to the frankfurt book fair!  

  ASO, written by myself and aj bernanrdo, and illustrated by aj, is a dystopian action adventure set in an alternate Philippines where players compete in a brutal Pokemon GO-like game where you track down"enemies of the state" in exchange for real-life rewards. Coming soon from PICOF !

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 ...

it would be difficult to overstate the effect sir gerry has had on today's pinoy comic book industry. he was uniquely suited to act as a guiding (if curmudgeonly) voice for pinoy komiks during its troubled transition from the old bangketa model to the dynamic multi-outlet market we have today. through his influential blog , message board (the now-defunct PKMB), and personal connections here and abroad, he helped gather around him the generation of komiks creators that would establish the "indie komiks" scene. a lot of people talked about reviving pinoy komiks back then, but i don't think anyone did more to actually bring that dream about than sir gerry. i stopped making komiks several years ago, and one of my last purchases at the time was this: inside were autobiographical stories about a couple of stray dogs he adopted and how one fell ill and died, and about how sir gerry first learned that his kidneys had begun to fail, the crisis that stemmed from that,...

this comic was a finalist in a recent comics-making contest held by the french embassy. the theme was "manila 2050: city of the future."

yes, reading and counting and other life skills , but also an appreciation of music and animation , and a deep love for silliness. the "milk song" gave my six-year-old self my first taste of melancholy, though i'll never be able to explain why. diversity and getting along. linda was the first "handicapped" (as was the term at the time) person i ever saw. being smart is a good thing. dealing with loss . and then there's kermit the frog. one of my earliest memories is an image of kermit that my mother had cut out of someplace and scotch-taped to the inside of my crib. today i've got kermit in my soul. from his "breaking news" reporter sketches i absorbed an exasperated yet ultimately hopeful world view, a sense of humor that hoped for the best and took the worst with a crumpled face but with dignity intact. i was a lonely kid, and like many lonely kids i found solace, instruction, and a sense of belonging in fictional worlds that i ...

i made a tumblr (late to that particular party, i know) for anyone who hasn't read my school run series. the first issue's already up and i'll be updating a page a day until it's caught up.

costumed do-gooder phoenix jones is retiring . My whole life has been about making a balance.. in the end, there is not a balance. I’ve seen it on the streets. I’ve seen what people do to each other. And I live with it every day. Every day I live with horrible, horrible things. And I think to myself, ‘I made a difference.’ But I didn’t make a difference.

my first comic convention in a while. i have much to learn, and relearn

click here for english version

the story pitch i submitted to komiket's first philippine international comics festival made it into the finals, and i couldn't be happier. i'll be working with the awesome cy vendivil , who generously agreed to lend his talents.

on the air pa pala si triggerman. he was doing his old bit, "the top 20 at twelve,"  only it was on a different radio station, and he was doing a buzzfeed-type list ("20 infuriating friends you find on social media") instead of counting down the most-requested songs, and the "twelve" was twelve midnight instead of the radio primetime lunch hour. he was even using the exact same "triggerman!" and "the top twenty at twelve!" soundbites from, what, thirty years ago? it's like he had resigned himself to a very specific circle of hell where we was doomed to play the same bland 90's music surrounded by sad affectations of his past fame. i listened for an hour until about midnight, after which cherry woke up and changed the station.

the komik ninja (also of jumpercable) posted some nice feedback a few days ago! "This is the one that is not the walking dead, and as it winds down to its conclusion, its unique attack on a difficult trope is why it is an important part of the indie age. "

meganon comics ' tepai pascual, who's set to break into the mainstream this year with visprint's publication of her opus maktan 1521, recently blogged about reading the latest few issues of school run: 'The depth of the story usually contradicts with his cute, doodle-like art style but still manages to convey the message to the readers—- spot on... The drama and the tension are written and visualized wonderfully. I couldn’t put it down! And of course at the end of it all, I can only say this—- “Seriously Macoy? Seriously?! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”' i love the gif with which she punctuates that last sentence:

so, got my face on a komikon poster and i guess it's all downhill from here. the maskot film and DVDs seemed pretty well-received, and by that i mean no one's complained about it, except maybe for that one social studies teacher at the panel (mediated by jason inocencio of and the geek shall inherit the earth ) who wanted to know why ketchup had to swear so much in that one scene. ketchup and i made long-winded explanations about maskot's pent-up rage and need for catharsis, and then direk chris just says "it was funnier that way." people seemed excited to get two new issues of school run , and to hear that the end is in sight with about four issues to go--that's only two more releases, if i can stick to two new issues per event. i feel rather proud of school run 6 and 7, the culmination of quite a bit of setting things up between robert and maki. still, it feels like i've been doing school run for a decade, and it'll be good to start on s...

(some spoilerish but general plot discussion here) the Hero is a man from a different time and place, and the world has changed without him. he is treated as a symbol of goodness, but his idealism seems antiquated. this leads him to doubt himself, although never his principles. the military complex adopts him, makes use of his powers, but he later learns that all is not as it seems.  the only person he can trust is his female companion, who is physically weaker but knows more about the world, and so helps him uncover the achilles' heel of the rogue military operation.  his nemesis, with whom he shares a unique shared past, is in many ways his equal in combat, but with the advantage of being completely ruthless. in the end, the hero triumphs not by destroying the baddie, but by convincing him that their shared history, what they have in common, is more important than their differences. captain america: the winter soldier is the superman ...