Book-A-Day 2010 # 115 (5/29) -- Underpass (and Komikero Komiks #3)

This is, I think, the last day of Philippine Week in Book-A-Day; I've now run through all of the Philippine comics (or should I say komiks?) that I've read, and I don't expect to get any of the collections/anthologies/prose books done tomorrow in time for that day's review. So, once again, I have to admit that I really know very little about Philippine comics -- but that I've really enjoyed a lot that I've seen. And I also have to thank Charles Tan one last time, for his tireless efforts on behalf of Philippine SFF and comics.

Today I have two things to talk about: one (Underpass, an anthology from Summit Publishing and introduced by Budjette Tan, though not edited by any credited person) is pretty clearly a book, since it's squarebound, sits nicely on a shelf, and is a one-off anthology. The other (issue # 3 of Komikero Komiks Anthology, edited by Jonas Diego) is equally clearly a magazine (or maybe just 'zine -- it looks hand-collated and -stapled). The former is probably more "professional" than the latter -- although one creator appears in both, and there's good work in both.

Underpass is a slim book -- only 52 pages long -- with four separate comics stories in it. Gerry Alanguilan's "Sim" leads off, with the story of a horny young man, the phone sim card he finds, and the woman's voice that leads him to an unexpected end. "Judas Kiss" -- written by David Hontiveros and Budjette Tan (from Hontiveros's original short story) with art by Oliver Pulumbarit -- shows its prose origins by being essentially an illustrated story, told entirely in captions, and also has a family similarity to "The Tell-Tale Heart" and the stories of O. Henry. Third is a heroic fantasy story, "Katumbas" by Hontiveros and Ian Sta. Maria, that feels like the introduction to a character whose adventures will span many more pages, rather than a self-contained story. And last is "The Clinic," written by Budjette Tan with art from KaJo Baldisimo (the same team as Trese, working in color here), which brings a similarly fantastical slant to another piece of day-to-day life, when a rising actress finds herself with an unplanned pregnancy.

All four of the stories are solidly professional, and all tend towards the dark fantasy/horror side of the street -- this isn't a theme anthology, by any means, but the stories do have a similarity of tone that makes them work well together. The first and last stories are the most successful, to my mind -- but that might just be my familiarity with those creators talking.

Komikero Komiks is more loose-limbed and free-wheeling; it's the latest in a series published quarterly, and contains nine very different stories, at vastly different levels of ambition, craft, and expectations. Two of the stories -- the lead-off, Ariel C. Atienza's "Class" and "Graveyard Shift" by Hazel Manzano -- are almost entirely in Tagalog, so all I can really say about those is that Atienza has an appealing teen-comedy style, while Manzano's scratchier, rougher work doesn't work as well to my eye. There are a number of what I'd call journeyman stories in here, like the superhero punchfest "Servant" by Geoffrey Borgonia or the elliptical vignette "Alone" by Pilar Esber, or a couple of oddly cramped and violent science fiction stories near the front of the book.

But Gerry Alanguilan has a solid story about suicide and not getting what you want, "Timawa: Jumper," to finish out the anthology, and the whole thing has an energetic, lets-put-on-a-show, indy-comics vibe that's infectious. I hope Komikero Komiks continues, even if I'm unlikely to see it very often (if ever!); local communities should have their own hotbeds of experimentation and storytelling, to push each other to keep getting better.
Book-A-Day 2010: The Epic Index
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Listening to: The Indelicates - Our Daughters Will Never Be Free
via FoxyTunes