Been spending the past few months traveling and collecting stories– generally just living before I have to go find a proper job. The in-between time was spend taking photos.

Severely Photoshop-challenged and shooting with a second hand and fucking filthy Nikon D40 and basic kit lens. But the stories and always brand-spanking new.

We– that is to say myself and my two brothers in crime, Erick and Pat– went off to Quezon naively believing we were going on a writing retreat. No real writing happened while we were there.

We stayed in a friend of a friend’s house, one that was across the street from the abandoned train station of Lucena. The rails were rusty and rotten, the stone pillars of the station had graffiti written on it. It was oddly romantic. The adults turned it into coop for their fighting cocks (hur hur), the teens turned it into a basketball court, and the kids turned it into a playground.

The dude with the cap by the door is Arien, the man o’ the house, the friend of a friend, who is now our friend too. And these are our other friends whom we met at Quezon. They’re mostly writers or local theater actors. They’re a riot. You probably can’t see us clearly.

This is Pat being bathed by the magnificent 5:00 pm light which I just discovered. He’s pretending to write.

These are a couple of young writers from Quezon. Poets and fictionists, some of the best I’ve ever read. They prefer to talk about words than to play basketball like normal teens. Freaks.

The thing about Quezon, it’s like the region breeds hard-core heavy drinkers. No beers for these people, just hard distilled local liquor called lambanog which tastes like ethanol and kicks like a virgin. They can go for days just drinking the stuff. The good thing is that lambanog doesn’t leave hangovers for the next morning.

Just a bit of segue: we came to Quezon during the last leg of the national elections. Campaign period was in full swing. A few friends of ours were working for the local politicians and this dude Alcala was running for Mayor. This was his campaign giveaway. Needless to say, we were hammered every day thanks to the healthy system of local politics.

This is fantastic. I have no idea what this old building is. The Mayor’s office? Kapitolyo? Whenever we passed it, there doesn’t seem to be much activity inside it. It looks abandoned from the outside, but look at that awesome architecture! Or don’t look at it, I’m a shitty photographer. Just trust me on this, it’s brilliant.

This is the abandoned Lucena train station. I hope they rebuild it and keep the facade.

This is Erick. He says he’s writing.

Some time in the night, Pat discovered awesome lighting while we were at the balcony of Arien’s place. We may have been hanging out too much with theater people, or the whole world truly is a stage.

The next day, we were going to Morong, which is a couple of towns away from Lucena, Quezon. How were we going to get there? The railway, of course. But I thought the trains don’t run anymore? The trains don’t run; don’t mean the railway ain’t used.

The communities that live by the rails–enterprising and resourceful as they are– built makeshift trolleys that can ride the rails. There are some for personal use (like the one in the photo above) and others that use motorcycle machines for passengers to ride on.

This is our friend Bea’s ankles. She has awesome tattoos.

The trolley was going fast. One has to hold on to something.

There was a fascinating system at work at the rails. Since there are more than one trolley using the rails at any one time, it is common for two trolleys to meet each other from the opposite directions. One of the trolleys have to give way to the other.

Let’s say Trolley A has 6 passengers (3 men and 3 women) going –> that direction…

and Trolley B has 6 passengers (all men) going <– direction…

the passengers of Trolley B have to get off, move their trolley from the rails, and let Trolley A pass.

Any trolley with a pregnant woman > trolley without.

Trolley with young people < trolley with elders.

Trolley with less passengers < trolley with more passengers.

Trolley carrying heavier things (like sacks of rice, regardless of the number of passengers) > trolley with less things.

The trolley system seemed to reaffirm the social taboos and values of the community in an automatic and unspoken way. This is goddamn fascinating to me.

Oh, and any trolley with the Mayor in it immediately has to be given way.

We reached Morong.

Further photos and stories forthcoming. When I’m not feeling so tired, maybe.

Kung tutuusin, si Bantay ang original gangster.

Bago pa ipatayo ang estasyon ng pulis dito sa pusod ng Maynila, nandito na si Bantay. Isa siya sa anim na tutang iniluwal ng kanyang inang walang pakundangan sa pakikipagkangkangan sa kung sinu-sinong aso.  Sa kanilang anim na magkakapatid, siya na lang ang buhay pa.

Hindi siya ang pinakamalusog o pinakamalakas na tuta sa kanilang magkakapatid, pero si Bantay ang pinaka-wais. Tuwing pasususuin sila ng kanilang ina, itinutulak at tinatahulan ni Bantay ang mas maliliit na tuta kaysa sa kanya. Dinidikitan naman ni Bantay ang mas malalakas na tuta, sinisiksik at sinisiksik hanggang sa kusang mapagod at umalis ang mga kapatid. Tuwing natityempohan ni Bantay ang inang katatapos lang makipagtalik sa mga galising gala, kinakagat ni Bantay ang suso nito, sinisipsip ang lahat ng nutrisyon. Inuubos niya ang gatas hindi dahil nagugutom siya kundi para wala nang makuha ang mga kapatid.

Ngayon, matandang aso na rin si Bantay– walang silbi sa marami at madalas kinatatakutan pa ng mga bata dahil sa gusgusin niyang itsura. Pakalat-kalat na lang siya ngayon at nakikitulog sa sahig ng estasyon ng pulis dahil malamig ang sahig dito– di katulad doon sa kalsada kung saan mainit at dumadagsa at napakaramin paa.

“Bantay,” ang ipinangalan sa kanya ng mga pulis, pero ang totoo, ang sarili niyang sikmura na lang ang kanyang kayang bantayan pa.

(Wala siyang imik nang kunin ko ang litratong ito. Dahil may takot ako sa mga aso, mula sa malayo ko na lang kinuha ang litrato. Nginitian naman ako ng mamang pulis sa pag-aakalang siya ng kinukuhanan ko, at hindi ang aso sa kanyang paanan.)

Sa unahan ng parada ang pinakamagagandang reyna– mga dalagang makikinis ang kutis at tuwid ang mga ngipin. Lahat ng mata ng manonood ay nakapako sa kanila. Todo ngiti sila, abot tenga. Napapabuntong-hininga ang mga tao sa bawat pagkembot nila.

Samantala, nasa hulihan siya. Mataas na ang araw ng tanghaling tapat. Pinagpapawisan na silang lahat, pero magaganda pa rin ang mga reyna sa harapan ng parada. Siya nama’y nanlilimahid sa tumatagaktak niyang pawis. Hirap na hirap siyang sumabay sa saliw ng musika. Makati ang costume na suot niya. Hinihingal siya sa pagsayaw.

Tuwing tumitigil ang parada, panandaliang pahinga. Nagsasama-sama ang mga dalaga sa silong ng puno, pinapaypayan ang mga sarili. Ang mga lalaki nama’y nakikisilong sa isang tindahan, naghahati-hati sa isang supot ng sopdrinks.

Manaka-nakang tinutugtog ng isa sa mga lalaki ang tono ng funeral march sa kanyang torotot bago magsimula muli ang parada.

Tuwing may maririnig siyang hagikgik mula sa mga manonood, pakiramdam niya na siya ang pinagtatawanan. May bumulong mula sa likuran na yumayanig ang lupa, sakto naman sa kanyang pagkembot. Kahit sa pagpapatahi ng costume para sa parada, siya ang may pinakamalaking bayarin dahil maraming tela raw ang ginamit ng sastre.

Nakapikit ang kanyang mga mata habang sumasayaw sa huling tugtugin ng banda bago matapos ang parada.

(Samantala, nakaubos na ako ng dalawang rolyo ng film sa pagkuha ng litrato niya.)

The honest answer is that I live in a surreal environment. I live in a house in Quezon City– the New Jersey of Manila’s New York (only QC’s cooler than Jersey, and Manila’s filthier than NY). I share a roof with my parents, my younger brother, three dogs and a hundred thousand cats. Across the pond is the University of the Philippines, where I have been studying in for roughly six years already. This city is located in the same Metro as the capital of the country. The Philippines is a third world country located somewhere in the ass crack of South East Asia. So what’s so surreal about that?

I’ll just let the latest national fiasco speak for itself and repost something a better writer than myself has written.

I’ve had this hella-interesting conversation recently with some kick-ass people. Adjust your perceptions accordingly because the kick ass people I hang out with may very well be geeks and nerds to the rest of humanity, but that’s how I roll.

Anyway. One of them, let’s call her M, asks why people blog. She had this condescending tone of question, which may or may not mean she was condescending at the moment of questioning, as she’s got this habit of sounding condescending all the time. I think it’s because she’s from Bulacan and their accents are hard to my soft and often-ignorant Tagalog ears. Since I have a blog, I had this knee-jerk reaction to defend myself.

I told her I keep a blog so I can write about things I can’t write about when I write for the newspaper. There are standards and the weight of so many years of tradition pressing down on writers, and there are particular things you’re expected to write about there but I can do fuck all here. I can say fuck here, for example, and I can devote entire paragraphs to how awesome Batman is.

Bottom line is, with this blog, I speak for myself. If I am accidentally racist or my spelling sucks, I am wholly accountable for that. In the newspaper, there’s a pantheon of editors who’ll take the burnt of mistakes, not to mention the rest of the writers who’ll suffer secondhand embarrassment when you fuck up an article. And a battalion of alumni who’ll tell you how much you suck and how better everything was back in their day.

All right, M says, so it isn’t much of a personal blog. So why do people keep personal blogs?

This girl, M, she doesn’t go online too much. She does when she needs to– like when she needs to look up some research. But she’s a 21st century rebel who doesn’t have a facebook account, or a multiply account, or a twitter or a plurk. She’s an internet ninja. She doesn’t like leaving cyber footprints.

Anything you need to know, she says, you can find out in real life. Or in the library. She’s impressively hard core.

I explain to her that sometimes, people like other people to read/ find out how interesting their real lives are.

Do you let your internet friends know about your real life?, M asks.

No, I answered. Well, bits of it. Bits of it I want people to know (like the fact that I write in the paper, and that I love Batman, and sometimes what color bra I’m wearing).

Then it’s not your real life, M says. It’s a made-up life. You sift through the real and present to the world wide web a version of yourself that you’d like the internet to know. And in the internet people’s minds, they have a tiny You, and made-up You that is nice and charmingly quirky but never overbearing. A Sims character, she said.

I stared at her, turning the idea over in my head. To her face I said, Gurrl, no one plays Sims anymore. Get out of 2001.

The point is, M explained, the internet You that you make up may or may not be the real you.

Well, yes, I said. Then I explained to her about 4chan and ONTD and all the other shit-sucking blackholes of the internet. It’s fun, I said. The anonymity is empowering.

M asks me if I join in on the discussions.

Fuck no, are you crazy? Then I proceeded to explain to her, in more depth, about 4chan and ONTD. I told her I don’t believe the people on these forums are that rude to other people or that stupid in real life. But they’re all very much prone to being incredibly witty most times, which I think is real enough. And while they’re probably not that rude or that stupid in real life, the important thing to consider is that the internet has afforded them a space and opportunity to be that rude and stupid. The internet can bring out the potential in people. The scrawniest little runt with not even the faintest trace of a chin can be an internet tough guy. The unpopular high school outcast can be a fierce diva overnight. That’s the beauty of it. A substitution of reality.

M thinks on this. You mean people who are not satisfied with real life will go to the internet and create a different version of themselves? Living vicariously… through themselves?

Yes, I answered.

M thinks some more. I don’t want to create another Me on the internet, she says, resolute. I’ve already got enough problems being me in real life.

Ah, but in the internet, the You can exist without any problems, I said.

She frowns. No poverty? No race? No discrimination based on class, or gender, or nationality, or age?

Pretty much, I answered.

That’s fucked up, M says. And I’m inclined to agree. #

Here is an explanation.

what is this I don't even

This… may be the strangest meme I’ve encountered. And I’ve encountered quite a few in my time, being a recovering /b/tard back when /b/ was good.

What makes this meme so far out is that it pretends to be done for a cause, as a part of breast cancer awareness or some such. Let’s wrap our minds around this for a moment.

Besides, you know, not really helping with cancer awareness– I mean, if I write ‘LIGHT GREEN’ as my facebook status, that just adds to the general confusion– what are we really seeing here? The great myriad of colors brassieres come in, basically. And one of the many secret ways women come to self actualization.

There is an unspoken system at work here, and all we see is the tip of a code. This system is older than feudalism, older than Jesus, and light years ahead of the laughable Bro Code. It doesn’t have a name, no, because it doesn’t have to have a name. Anyway, it’s man who insists on passing his name on to next generations like it matters. Women, we know better. Names, words– these things are insignificant, limited to the material realm. What I speak of, it’s ingrained in blood (not period blood, jeez).

It’s kinda like Fight Club in that no one is supposed to talk about it, but hey, since we’re breaking our ~silence~ about bra colors, why the hell not?

The same way skinheads have color-coded bootlaces and the S&M community have a color-coded handkerchief system, women have that bra/ panties code.

The most common bra color is the one no one admits to wear. This is the godawful flesh color. It’s also the cheapest. Women of a certain age like this bra color, heaven knows why, and they lie when they say flesh colored bras can’t be seen when one wears a white shirt over it (pro tip: it’s more visible than the moon on a clear night).

Honestly, I can think of no reason for the existence of flesh-colored bras. That’s like wearing flesh-colored panties, and while those do exist, the women who wear them may have been forced to at gunpoint. It’s like wearing underwear to appear nude. I don’t see how this should appeal to anyone. Do men have flesh-colored briefs? They have tidy whites (named for irony, perhaps, because those emphasize everything but tidiness).

This leads me to the uneducated assumption that flesh-colored bras and panties are men’s creation. I don’t know why this should appeal to them, though. If anything, I suppose flesh-colored underwear would only serve as a mindfuck for when men and women begin to undress.

it's like TAKING A LAYER OF SKIN OFF

The worst thing about the flesh colored bra is that it doesn’t really look like flesh. These things come in three shades– light, fair, and brown. Like girls are supposed to come in those three colors alone.

The white bra, contrasting nicely with the tidy whitey briefs, is a decent bra color. Still very visible with white shirts though, especially if you’re, you know, not a white girl.

Black is awesome, and contrary to popular belief, it doesn’t show up under a white shirt (your millage may vary depending on the thickness of the shirt however). The manbot I am currently speaking to said black bras look sleek and gives the illusion of speed. Like your boobs are going very, very fast, I suppose. If school yard education is to be believed, black bras are for seduction. Popular among high school teachers and friendly neighborhood dominatrix (complete with metal studs).

Pink is a strange color. Given how society has shaped the perception of women to like the color pink, it’s surprising how there aren’t more pink bras. There are a lot of pink trainer bras though.

Now the red bra is controversial. If the black bra seduces, the red bra gets the job done. The upper echelons of the Order of the HBIC state that the red bra is for hunting, and then for being hung on the bedpost (preferably her bedpost. If it’s hung on his, the girl has to give up her HBIC membership card).

There’s tons more of bra colors out there. Check your facebook page. I won’t say any more about the colors and meanings or the shadow gallery of women would come to silence me. A couple of things though:

This meme, fun as it is in a ‘too much information’ way, is by nature mimetic. It’s spreading around the intertubes not to spread cancer awareness. Being vague by posting our bra color doesn’t make people more aware of anything except for our bra color. But it’s mimetic in that when someone announces to the world the color of their bra, fuck, that looks like a fun thing to do!

But the kicker is in thinking that the wearing of bras is a universal experience shared by women. It’s not. There remain many cultures in which the wearing of bras are a faux pas. And there’s nothing wrong with that either.

Someone, probably my ancient grandmother who doesn’t like wearing bras, told me that bras cause breast cancer. In a roundabout way, that could be the root of this meme.

A long, long time ago, when feminists roamed the face of the earth, they used to burn bras to symbolize their liberation from the (literal) constraints society has forced on them.

But maybe I’ve got this all wrong, and it’s not really about cancer awareness. Maybe it’s just about my awesome light green bra that no one really knows about, because I keep it hidden under my clothes. Maybe it’s about her bra– her, the quiet one, the one who keeps to herself and looks like the most exciting part of her day is when she pays her electric bill, and her metal-studded, leather bra. Maybe it’s about that other girl and her rainbow-colored bra, or that other girl who wears a purple bra to feel like royalty. Maybe it’s about that.

We like colors. The colors, they may have a meaning or they may not. Maybe it’s about when we want to have sex, and maybe I’m lying through my teeth. But for something that’s 80% of the time (again, your millage may vary) kept out of sight, there’s a truckload of colors to choose from. On one hand, the colors could be for the boyfriend or the girlfriend, but mostly it’s for us. What we wear on the outside is for all the world to see, but the clothes we wear underneath the clothes, that’s all ours. Like most games women play, this one seems pretty close to the chest.

Annotated version when I fell like it.

20%  dazzling them with wit, baffling them with bullshit

20% beer, smokes, and other mood-altering chemicals

5% sex

55% What Would Batman Do?

My non-geek friends can never understand it, but I firmly maintain that the literature your grandchildren will be reading and discussing in their universities are being sold now at comic shops. And if you’ve read Y the Last Man, you know that I speak God’s truth.

Comics are clearly at the forefront of literature. They’re making movies and video games  based on these paneled stories. Hell’s bells, even literary cannon like Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis can now be found in comic form (<–this is AWESOME by the way, and you have to click it). It’s entirely possible that a person who has never picked up a comic book in his life would still be familiar with comic book icons. That’s how deep comics’ pop-cultural roots go.

We’re getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s go back to superheroes.

Can we just look at Batman for a minute? Just one minute.

Recently, a friend referred me to this link. To sum it up, there are many Filipino artists working in the American comics industry, rendering our favorite superheroes in glorious detail. One of them, Whilce Portacio, has grand plans of creating a Filipino comics artist network and such. I tip my hat to him. The Filipino comics scene needs gentlemen like you, good sir.

But what concerns me is his idea of creating a Filipino superhero as if he’s re-inventing the wheel.

First of all, it’s been done. There are Filipino superheroes in comics. From Captain Barbel to Darna, to Zsazsa Zatturnah, to Bayan Knights to Trese, to Andong Agimat. It’s  been done.

This is brilliant, by the way. Alexandra Trese vs. the storm Ketsana.

he question then is, why don’t Filipino superheroes work? Filipino comics writer, artist, and all around awesome man Gerry Alanguilan shares a few thoughts. I honestly think he’s on to something.

The superhero lives in an entirely fictional world and that’s part and parcel of the experience. Let’s drop all pretensions– I read Batman comics to escape. Oh, the art is well done, and Grant Morrison sold his soul to the devil to write gems like he does, but when all’s said and done, it’s escapist art.

Batman is a costumed vigilante beating up thugs and thematic criminals, with the ability to leap tall literary criticisms with a single bound. He’s the capitalist dream– billionaire playboy by day, above the law by night. He gets away with anything and doesn’t think about how that random Joker thug he crippled for life may have needed to feed a family of 12. To fund his elaborate batmobiles, batcaves, batcomupters and such, Bruce Wayne has cornered Gotham’s market with Wayne Enterprises. The batsignal is like a prototype of the Big Brother cameras used in George Orwell’s 1984.

But I try not to think about these things when reading superhero comics. In Batman’s relatively simple world, the biggest threats are homicidal criminal clowns. If you’re a student and one of your classmates has an ominous name like Humphry Dumpler or your professor is named Victor von Doom, PhD, then you know you’re running into a potential supervillain. So it’s time to pull on the kevlar and hockey pads to kick some ass.

Unfortunately, nothing is that simple in the Philippines.

On one hand, it’s not a far parallelism to say that Manila is like Gotham– a hotbed of crime, full of corrupt cops and scheming politicians. The difference is in those rare streaks of light: Police commissioner James Gordon can not be bribed or bullied, and you know Batman is Batman. Killer Croc, Two-face, Blackmask– everyone else is suspect, but Batman and Gordon can be trusted. Cookie-cutter good and evil with no shades of grey.

But let’s say some rich guy, heir to hectares and hectares of sugar cane plantation, or the business mogul of the chain of super malls decides to don a cape and mask to swing from building to building, beating up chumps who mug people for a living. Would that make for a Filipino superhero?

No. Because the cynical, logical part of us knows that the farmers who work in that sugarcane plantation earn less than 10 pesos a day, and the salesladies who work in the supermalls are forbidden to sit down through the 8-hour work day. The mugger was forced by circumstances beyond his command to steal from others. The masked vigilante then is not a hero, but a douchebag with a twisted sense of justice.

Batman’s Gotham and Superman’s Metropolis may be part of America, but they’re fictional cities of America. So while real-world New York, Chicago, or somewhere else deal with poverty, racism, and terrorism, all Gotham and Metropolis have to deal with is rampaging killer robots or the occasional death ray.

The Philippines is a complicated place. Good for writing hardboiled stories and comics, yes, but for superheroes? I’d put in Harvey Dent’s quote about heroes and villains from the last Batman film here, but that might be too much.

Even if we make fictional cities for the Philippines, it still won’t work for our Filipino superhero. For us to recognize that a fictional city is part of the Philippines, then it must still have the familiar characteristics of Philippine society. The same crime rates, the same corruption, the same appalling social gap. The same overwhelming rot that one man can alone can not solve. So already, your superhero is shot.

On a similar note, the Filipino superhero in a fictional city won’t work because there’s only one city. Well, there are many cities in the Philippines, but only one sprawling mass of chaos and that is Manila. You can’t expect villains like Lex Luthor or the Joker to make their bones pulling hoods over the eyes of Romblon cops.

Not this one.

This is where Darna– Old Darna– and Zatturnah got it right to an extent. By situating the superladies (I said ladies, not women) in unnamed provinces, the relative isolation of the place allows the story enough freedom to go wherever it wants to go.

Mysterious stone that falls from the heavens and grant our heroines superpowers when they swallow it? Sure. Now if something falls on a Manila girl, what are the odds that she’s going to put that in her mouth, let alone swallow (insert joke about Manila girls who don’t swallow, hur hur)?

The same rural isolation also allows giant rampaging frogs and villains with snake hair to terrorize the small town long enough for our heroines to fight and save the day. And while all of this is happening, the rest of the country remains unaffected. No one’s going to believe alien Feminazis came to wherever it is Zatturnah lives. You’re a small town, you’re not Manila.

Prove me wrong.

Not to say that we should support this ethnocentrism, but this is generally how cities with superhero guardians work. No matter how many Mayors get assassinated in Gotham city, America’s general socio-political landscape remains intact. Hell, even when the cataclysmic earthquake hit Gotham, decimated all infrastructure and unleashed the entire rouges’ gallery on an unsuspecting populace, what did the American government do?

Put a perimeter around the city and let those poor people sort their own problems. The result was the epic No Man’s Land storyline. No matter how crazy Gotham got, it was fairly believable because of its isolation from reality.

DAT ASS

However, because Darna serves as a local version of Wonder Woman, it’s difficult to completely claim her as a Filipino superhero. On the other hand, Zaturnnah thrives on the very essence of comics writing– building up on tradition and re-imagination. She may be Darna’s parody, but her conflicts and wit are original and Filipino.

My only problem with Zaturnnah, sassy superlady that she is, is that she’s a sectoral hero. She’s come to liberate the gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered from the oppressive claws of compulsory heterosexuality. While this is indeed a noble cause, we– that is, the Filipino people– still toil under the same socio-political chains.  Zaturnnah did not come to save me.

Who else, who else can we look up to? I’m discounting you, TRESE, even if you know how to make a good story in issue 3 and your art is superb. Because your main villain is retarded and offends my sensibilities. You want me to believe a supernatural DATU from BUKIDNON can be a PINTADO? Just because it’s comics doesn’t mean you can get away with lousy research. You want to write a Filipino superhero comic but you don’t know your own history, your culture.

Magnificent but WRONG.

So alright, let’s do a quick re-cap. The Filipino superhero must be A) Filipino (which automatically disqualifies you, Trese, because your villains come from some underworld that is clearly not Filipino), B) be the guardian of a Filipino city/ province (therefore the city/ province in question must clearly have the characteristics of Filipino socio-cultural landscape), and lastly C) heroic?

This last bit’s a killer. Because now I have bring up Andong Agimat.

No lie, I have a necklace just like his.

Andong is an ex-con. He’s poor as fuck, lives off alms and goodwill. Some could say he’s a racketeer. He’s got guns and he’s virtually indestructible, and he’s asking if he can have a meal and a few beers for free at the karinderya? You don’t say no to that kind of man.

He’s a dickback and he knows it. He’s a mercenary. The inept city cops pay him to kill criminals they can’t catch.

The ladies hate him but he’s got that charm. Maginoo pero medyo bastos, playing on the Filipino macho culture through and through.

He’s as dented and corrupted as the city he lives in (Manila, in case you’re wondering). He doesn’t want to save this city, he knows it’s already hell. But he’ll fight the big bad evil because it’s the right thing to do.

Andong’s a Filipino superhero, alright, but he’s a villain too. He’s like the Punisher in that respect. Andong Agimat got it right, but he’s no hero. He’s not saving anyone.

I remain skeptical of anyone who wants to make Filipino superhero comics because I doubt anyone can save us.

Someone like Superman, he can’t save us. With all his strength and x-ray vision, what can he do against centuries of ingrained corruption and systemic oppression? Not to sound like Luthor, but it’s not right for some outsider to fix our own mess.

Batman either, he’s got nothing. Some rich hobnob doesn’t know jack about how life is down here, why the criminals become criminals, why the law doesn’t work, and why, ultimately, a vigilante hiding in the shadows will only make things worse.

This is a long-winded post. GAHD I DON’T SHUT UP, but if you read all the way down here, you get rewarded with a one-paragraph summing up of everything I’m trying to say:

Before creating a Filipino superhero, we first have to establish what we’re fighting for. It’s the same question people ask of Batman: if Gotham is such a shithole, why do you fight for it? If the Philippines is a hopeless place, why do we bother? Who are we protecting? Are we on the side of the law, on the side of the people in power, or are we fighting for the masses? What are we fighting? A rogues gallery of corrupt politicians, army generals, businessmen ruled by greed, thematic criminals, or something else?

And are we winning?

I have a long potential post about what’s going on and how I’m making sense of this senseless period in history, but it sort of degenerated into a mouth-frothing rant, so I’ll save it as the intro to my Thesis proposal.  Meanwhile, have a comic.

This one’s drawn by Nico Zapanta and can be read in the Philippine Collegian 09-10,  issue 18.

Trying to fix the format of this jpeg is a pain. So, you know, click the picture to biggify and read properly. You know what to do.

]]> http://surrealistmanifesto.wordpress.com/2009/12/10/bring-the-noise/feed/ 0 shivering jemmy no way but UP ish 3 http://surrealistmanifesto.wordpress.com/2009/11/28/hot-off-the-press/ http://surrealistmanifesto.wordpress.com/2009/11/28/hot-off-the-press/#comments Sat, 28 Nov 2009 12:08:25 +0000 shivering jemmy http://surrealistmanifesto.wordpress.com/?p=53 Continue reading →]]> The next issue of the Collegian may be delayed (it’s coming out on Tuesday next week, promise), but here’s the second issue of No Way but Up. You got it here first, folks, even before the newspaper hits the pavement.

I’m not sure exactly why the Graphics boys are using Frauline’s name for the artwork, but the last issue was drawn by Nico Villarete and this issue’s by Janno Gonzales. Credit where credit’s due for all that lovely art.

Since we’re paying royalties, I may as well mention that it was Carlos Piocos who came up with the idea of making a comic set in a futuristic University of the Philippines– a post-UP Charter University after the passing of the damnable Student Code. I just ran with it.

Issue 3 in the works. All the codes I hid (they’re not that hard to see) will be revealed after the whole thing’s done.

(apparently, the only way to prevent the links toolbar on the right from blocking image is by placing the image really low. Scroll down to see it in full glory.)