Comic Book Artist (Vol. 2) #4 Preview

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Captain Fear '2004 DC?Comics

“For the Celebration of Comics” SERVING READERS SINCE 1998

Jon B. Cooke EDITOR/CREATOR/DESIGNER

Chris Staros & Brett Warnock Top Shelf Productions PUBLISHERS Manuel Auad SPECIAL CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Barbara Lien-Cooper MANAGING EDITOR George Khoury SENIOR ASSOCIATE EDITOR Christopher Irving ASSOCIATE EDITOR/CHIEF CORRESPONDENT Chris Knowles ASSOCIATE EDITOR Steven Tice TRANSCRIBER Greg Preston CBA PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHER

MASTHEAD AND COVER DESIGN Bissel & Titus www.bisseltitus.com EDITORIAL INTERN Aaron Kashtan CONTRIBUTING EDITORS David A. Roach Fred Hembeck Michelle Nolan Joe McCabe TITLE ORIGINATOR/CBA CLASSIC LOGO Arlen Schumer CBA MASCOT Woody J.D. King ISSUE THEME SONG “Gasoline” Audio Slave COVER ARTIST

Alex Niño

www.topshelfcomix.com Editor: JonBCooke@aol.com Publisher: staros@bellsouth.net Comic Book Artist ™&© 2004 Jon B. Cooke

This issue dedicated to friend and kindred spirit:

Eddie Campbell With affection to a good chum and fellow traveler in comics

PHEW! Finally! The Filipinos

You hold in your hands the most comprehensive examination to date by an American publication about the sublime accomplishments of an entire generation of Philippine artists, a talented group who worked stateside in the 1970s to make a significant impact in the U.S. comic book industry. This baby’s been in the oven for quite awhile, and it’s a confection we’ve wanted to serve for a helluva long time as we believe the Filipino “School” to have been grossly neglected by the fan press… but here’s hoping this ish of CBA — while a good start — is but an opening volley as a substantive history of this subject is absolutely essential. Certainly many of the artists herein are well-deserving of entire issues — nay! entire books! — composed about each of them… the late masters, Nestor Redondo and Alfredo Alcala, rate their own respective libraries, for heaven’s sake! (The latter artist, it is important to note, was the subject of Heidi MacDonald & Phil Yeh’s 1994 book, Secret Teachings of A Comic Book Master: The Art of Alfredo Alcala (published by the International Humor Advisory Council), a handsome (albeit slim) 72-page trade paperback that’s been long out of print.) We hope you enjoy this issue as much as we loved bringing it together.

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KUDOS 15 Manuel: The Man!

Our greatest thanks go to friend and comrade MANUEL AUAD, San Francisco publisher of some of the best books about comics ever (and an Eisner Award-winner, to boot!), as well as this issue’s special contributing editor. Ye Ed’s association with the guy goes back to the early days of CBA, and Manuel’s devotion to the field and affection for many of the industry’s greatest artists has long been inspirational. But our pal’s work for this issue is nothing short of phenomenal: Not only did Manuel compile a stunning selection of previously-unseen Filipino artwork and serve as go-between and facilitator for a number of his artist friends, but he also composed biographical essays on quite a few creators, all of which you will find scattered about this ish. Ye Ed was so astounded by Manuel’s dedication — never mind the superb volumes produced by Auad Publishing! — that he asked Mr. Auad to consent to an interview about his lonesome, which you’ll find in our “Comic Book Chit-Chat” section. Thanks, M.A.!

DAR’s Dedication CBA must also give public acknowledgement to one of the most valuable assets in the field of comic-book research, Cardiff, Wales artist DAVID A. ROACH, a friend of Ye Ed, killer artist in his own right (now drawing the exploits of Judge Dredd in 2000 AD!), and unparalleled funnybook scholar. DAR’s essay on Filipino artists in American comics, A to Z, was composed in record time. (Look for Ye Ed’s latest collaboration with David, a history of DC Comics from 1967-78, in a year or two… we first edited The Warren Companion together.)

And Lent the Gent JOHN A. LENT, of course, is another mensch who contributed mightily to this special ish, giving us an enlightening overview of the strange and wonderful history of Filipino komiks. John is the editor-in-chief of the scholarly digest, The International Journal of Comic Art, an invaluable research for us comic-heads!

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DEPARTMENTS Ye Ed’s Rant Back from the Abyss 4 Knowles Knows Comic Books as Counter-Culture 6 Khoury’s Corner On George’s latest book, True Brit 8 10 McGregor’s Riding Shotgun Pop Culture Irving on the Inside Tony Millionaire’s Sock Monkey 14 Comic Book Chit-Chat Will Power: The Brothers Cooke documentary on Eisner 15

By GUM! There’s a new magazine to chew on 17 Grocery Bagge: Peter’s “Batboy” in Weekly World News 18 Paul Gravett interview on Manga: 60 Years of Japanese Comics 19 Backstory: Fred Hembeck Destroys the Marvel Universe 21 Alexa the Great: A rising star emerges from the Kitchen clan 27 A Touch of Class: A chat with publisher Manuel Auad 31 39 Fred Hembeck Dateline: @*!?# To Be Continued… What’s coming & Chris Irving bio 112

FEATURES Tony DeZuñiga Hex and Other Blessings 40

Shaun Clancy chats with the first artist of the “Filipino Wave”

Alex Niño The Fearless Artist 49

40 49 55

The brilliant visionary creator on early days in the old country, hitting it big in the States, and a career beyond comic books

Comic Book Artist Klasik Filipino Komiks color cover collection The Philippine Question: Ye Ed on the ’70s Artist Invasion Context: A Brief History and Overview of the Philippines A-Z A Guide to the Filipino Comic Book Artists

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David A. Roach gives a Who’s Who of Philippine Artists in U.S. Comics

Filipino Komiks A History by John A. Lent 74 The noted comics scholar provides a look at the home-grown comics COMIC BOOK ARTIST™ is published as often as possible by Top Shelf Productions, P.O. Box 1282, Marietta, GA 30061-1282 USA. Jon B. Cooke, Editor. Chris Staros & Brett Warnock, Publishers. Editorial Office: P.O. Box 204, 3706 Kingstown Road, West Kingston, RI 02892-0204 USA • 401-783-1669 • Fax: (401) 783-1287. E-mail: JonBCooke@aol.com. Subscriptions are currently unavailable. All characters © their respective copyright holders. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted.

All editorial matter © their respective authors. ©2004 Jon B. Cooke. Cover acknowledgement: Captain Fear ©2004 DC Comics.

Art ©2004 Alex Niño. First Printing. PRINTED IN CANADA.

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Don McGregor’s Riding Shotgun Full-Circle Pop Culture From comic book mythology to television series mythology… and back again

10 CBA V.2 #4

BY DON MCGREGOR Sometimes, things really do seem to come full-circle.

It’s not just a storytelling device that can give a sense of dramatic fulfillment, a bringing together of disparate people, places and events, in the midst of chaos, to make a satisfying whole; it also occurs in real life, and can have just as satisfying an impact as fiction.

In this specific full-circle circumstance, I am referring to Joss Whedon and J. Michael Straczynski, and the influence of — and passion for — comics to their collective TV series, and back to the medium both acknowledge they love.

Both Whedon and Straczynski have brought the continuity of mythology and the journeys of characters’ lives over a vast periods of time, once the prime domain of the comics medium, since the 1960s, to their respective television series.

Straczynski’s Babylon 5 and Whedon’s trio of shows — Buffy, the Vampire Slayer; Angel and Firefly — are all wonderful, more or less weekly, TV series which seized upon the idea of epic mythologies filled with iconic characters, all told in a episodic and periodic format.

Comics were formally the primary domain for that kind of storytelling, though their release schedule was seldom weekly, but normally monthly or bi-monthly (occasionally as statically released comic series). A serial dose of words&- pictures on the printed page, with each unfolding issue capable of shaking up the status quo. That long wait between issues. Who knew what could happen to those characters next?

And, curiously, as the comics medium continues to struggle with whether they should keep continuity or abandon or revise it, some TV, and even movies, have come to embrace the concept.

Even more curiously, as many comics creators look to Hollywood to option their comic creations as TV series or movie franchises (in other words, to give ’em their big break in La-La Land, and maybe financial salvation), Whedon and Straczynski have traveled in the opposite direction, coming back to a medium they have both said many times influenced and inspired each as a storyteller.

Comics to film to comics.

So much talent in comics has always been passionate about film, and just as many filmmakers have reveled in comic books.

I have always loved books and comics and

films. I was working on film projects and novels before I ever wrote comics.

From my first regular comics series for Marvel, in the early 1970s, to my first graphic novels, Sabre (written in 1976-77) and Detectives, Inc. (’69, in a rare, seldom-seen edition, and ’81, from Eclipse), I wanted to give my readers stories that meant something to me, with characters the audience hopefully would come to care passionately about, something both Whedon and Straczynski do consistently in their medium of dramatic television.

These days, those first editions of Sabre and Detectives, Inc. would, in television terminology, be considered pilot episodes for proposed shows.

Oh, I never thought of the books in those terms, although I certainly saw each in my head as their own continuing series. I had conceived of at least ten plot-lines for Detectives, Inc. before finishing the first one in 1969. Conceptually, I had seen that series as not just rooted in the mystery genre, but also capable of encompassing any genre I desired. For instance, I had at least one that was a straight-out fantasy horror motif.

Another example: Roundtable Gladiators took place during an all-night game of cards, with visuals swirling about various players, as the night goes on and stakes raise higher, to culminate with early morn revelations. I also had a story that was completely mainstream, with no murders, no crimes to solve, per se, and Denning and Rainier — the stars of the series! — make only a walk-on appearance (somewhat like, say, what Will Eisner did many times with The Spirit, though my approach wasn’t inspired by that strip, as I hadn’t read enough of that comic at that time for Eisner to be an influence).

I hadn’t even completed the first Detectives, Inc., and I was already envisioning where I thought series could go, hopefully keeping myself open to new possibilities, if I actually got the chance to do new stories with Denning and Rainier. I imagined the major events that had shaped and changed their lives before the reader would first meet them. I also conceived of those smaller, unexpected, defining incidents which would reveal who they were, ideas that would come at the very moment I was scripting a certain scene. For all the forethought involved in writing, sometimes, in the midst of putting pen to paper, revelations of character come to mind so quickly and ferociously that they become real and undeniably true.

I never thought in the defining terminology of today, that popular culture parlance anyone who even half-heartedly follows what’s going on in movies and TV knows to some degree. For example, I never thought of “story arcs” (a term, I believe, that gained popularity when Stephen J. Cannell’s weekly TV series, Wiseguy, initiated the long-form narrative in that medium). When I began the first series I wrote for Marvel Comics, “The Black Panther,” I thought of character and theme, and where I believed a scene would most effectively work. I knew, for instance, that

ABOVE: Sarah Michelle Gellar starred as Buffy the Vampire Slayer in the celebrated TV show created by Josh Whedon. ©2004 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation.

Panther’s Rage would be a continuing serial. I believe I had originally thought of it as ten issues in length (which seems odd to me in retrospect).

People are always asking me about influences on my work, and certainly, without a doubt, the Republic film serials of the 1930s and ’40s were in my mind when I wrote the first issue. Jungle Action #6 — “Panther’s Rage 1” — ends as a literal cliffhanger with the Panther being thrown off a cliff into a roaring waterfall.

The reason the tenchapter concept seems odd to me now is that Republic serials were most often 12 or 13 chapters in length and, while Panther’s Rage ended up as 13 separate books, that wasn’t my initial design. In originally planning the books, I knew thematically what each chapter would be about. I knew the reasons I wanted to write each one, even if I didn’t know how to write it. That is, I knew my intent, even though I didn’t know exactly what would happen to every character along the way.

Now, as anyone who has read those comics knows, Panther’s Rage only had that one cliffhanger. Editorial decided they did not want cliffhangers at the time. I’m not sure why, and I’m not sure when I was ever told, but I followed the edict, and it’s one of the few rules they imposed that I think helped make the series better.

Each issue held together entirely on its own.

Thus, theme, character and plot tied in more cohesively, which hopefully added to reader satisfaction, as they had to wait for 60 days to learn what would happen next. Then I didn’t have a label for it, but it is the same storyteller instinct that is so profoundly powerful in Buffy, Angel and Babylon 5.

One of the other reasons I decided to make the series one inter-connected storyline in “The Black Panther” was that, with all the fantastic events transpiring, I felt that if there wasn’t something cohesive in nature about it, it would seem as if the Panther’s kingdom suddenly had all these divergent threats, month after month, as soon as he returned as a ruler.This just seemed wrong.

Plus, in keeping with the thought of continuity, Wakanda was supposed to be a hidden African nation. That meant, folks, as I’m sure you and I would agree, that about no one outside its borders knew where the Hell it was!

Now, I had read every Panther story written by the time I wrote the first issue. In those days, you could do that, fairly easily, as there wasn’t decades of books to locate, in many different titles. (And in those days it was possible to afford owning every single issue in which a character had appeared!)

Don’t ask for specifics, because I can’t

recall them at this late date, but it was my impression that Marvel was already undermining one of the strongest elements of Wakanda: that it was an almost mystical place, imbued with its own reality, rules and ethics, separated from the rest of the world.

And yet, at that early stage, many stories centered around some white-skinned weasel stumbling onto Wakanda, then finding his way back out to the West, and becoming super-villain enough to return to steal its most precious commodity, that mythical metal called Vibranium.

This just couldn’t continue.

So I wasn’t thinking “story arcs” when I decided that the Panther stories had to be comic novels. And, in keeping with my approach to Detectives, Inc., before I’d written the first book, I’d already begun to play around with the idea that the next “Panther” novel would take place in South Africa. In my reading of the previous comics featuring the Panther, I realized there’d been scenes about his father, but really nothing about his mother. If I could get the story idea past Marvel, it meant I could have the Panther in a completely different emotional situation and locale, and I could write about Apartheid.

As a human being and as a writer, examining South Africa’s system of racial segregation seemed vitally important to me.

of my life to, it’s the fear that I won’t have a strong story once the current one ends, even if that’s going to be two to three years down the line. I need to know I have someplace to go that will intrigue me a storyteller, where I will learn something, that the lead characters will be taken to places we haven’t seen them go before, and the reader hopefully will be the prime beneficiary.

The term “back-story” is used by writers in interviews all the time now.

I don’t know nuthin’ ’bout no back-stories. Well, not until I read about them in those discussions.

I guess I just never thought much in terms of labels. I didn’t much like them, though I’ve certainly had a whole passel of ’em thrown at me over the years while writing the books.

Y’see, I was always thinking about the characters lives, what lay before them, and — just as important — what events had shaped them, to become the people they were, the individual men and women, whose lives, ones I came to care for passionately, we’d learn about as the stories progressed.

So, in retrospect, I was thinking about backstory all along, although it was, for me, always just about people, about how their experiences can sear into us, stay with us, those small things that return to haunt you, even after you thought you’d never think about that again.

Or that the joys of their fictional but so real existence, can brighten,

The idea of having some place to go, even if I don’t know where it will end, stems from fear. Yes, fear.

The same fear I feel approaching writing this column. For any series that I have committed a large portion

TOP: Cast of J. Michael Straczynski’s Babylon 5. ©2004 PTN Consortium and Warner Bros. ABOVE: Detail of Gil Kane and Frank Giacoia’s Jungle Action #10 (July ’74) cover art, featuring T’Challa — The Black Panther — written by our columnist, Donald Francis McGregor. ©2004 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Comic Book Artist’s shameless hype, capsule reviews, news briefs, mini-interviews & other ephemera of note • September 2004

Will Power Documenting the life and art of the great creator Will Eisner has its rewards!

BY JON B. COOKE (File this article under “really shameless hype and bald-faced self-promotion,” but when one has his own mag, what the hell, right?)

Eduardo Risso, the award-winning artist on Vertigo’s celebrated 100 Bullets, said it best (albeit in Spanish): “Will Eisner is God.” Well, the Argentine artist didn’t mean to imply the 87-yearold master cartoonist is some omnipotent deity; Eduardo (a killer delineator in his own right) meant that, in the world of comics art, there are few more highly regarded in his — or any — part of the world than the creator of The Spirit.

Eduardo was on one of his infrequent visits to the States (this time joined by his lovely wife, Ann) when he consented to an interview about Eisner’s influence, while attending the Comic-Con International: San Diego 2004, this past July.

Though the 100 Bullets co-creator was besieged by fans and kept up a heavy schedule at the show (before traveling to Las Vegas for a “real” vaca-

tion), he made time to talk to an equally busy and hustling film crew to pay his respects to The Master….

It comes as no surprise to most adroit comics fans that Will Eisner has fervent and passionate admirers throughout the comics field and around the world. And, while most pros (if they’re lucky) have one or two achievements on which to rest their laurels, Will’s unprecedented career is astonishing to highlight: Not only was the man virtually present at the birth of the form, beginning as artist in the mid1930s, and then quickly co-founding a studio with Jerry Iger (where the “assembly-line” mode of comics production was first established… penciler, inker, letterer, etc.), he then, just as quickly, helped establish the first comic-book insert in Sunday newspapers, where his widely regarded — and still in-print — creation, The Spirit, debuted.

Then to the U.S. Army, where he developed an innovative approach using comics as instructional

tools. Then back to The Spirit to turn the art form on its ear (with the significant help of writer Jules Feiffer and inker Jerry Grandenetti) by introducing daring cinematic storytelling approaches which, to this day, have been rarely matched (all on a weekly basis, people!).

While many thought Eisner had disappeared from the form in the later ’50s and throughout the ’60s, the creator was guiding his company, American Visuals, to take the business world by storm, convincing such monolithic corporations as General Motors to use comics as an educational, as well as instructional, device. But revivals of The Spirit, given the impact the strip had on so many comics readers, was inevitable, and, by 1972, Eisner arrived at his first comic book convention to begin receiving much deserved acclaim. But, no, Will was hardly there to bask in former glory; the man — one of the brightest and sharpest businessmen to grace the industry — immediately engaged other pros to catch up on

15 ABOVE: Will Eisner at the drawing board in the 1960s, drawing his most celebrated creation, The Spirit. Courtesy of Denis Kitchen. ©2004 Will Eisner.

CBA V.2 #4

Hembeck’s Tale of Destruction Fred tells us the true story behind Fred Hembeck Destroys the Marvel Universe

BY FRED HEMBECK It was supposed to be called Jim Shooter Destroys the Marvel Universe… Instead, for just about two decades now, I’ve had to live with the notion of Fred Hembeck Destroys the Marvel Universe (hereafter known, mercifully, simply as FH/MU). Not the actual printed book, though: While announced in 1983, FH/MU didn’t hit the nation’s newsstands until a full six years later, in 1989. And, therein, lies a tale… a long, convoluted one.

By the early ’80s, I’d gained some small amount of notoriety in the comics field as not only a creator, but as a character as well. This odd turn events opened some unusual doors for me, and when the editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics, the aforementioned Jim Shooter, decided to celebrate the 20th anniversary of their flagship title with the publication of a one-shot named Fantastic Four Roast, he chose me as roastmaster! Released in 1982, this fun-filled endeavor consisted of a multitude of Marvel mainstays saluting the group that started the whole ball rolling. My job was to emcee the proceedings, write a story stuffed with as many gags

as possible, and layout the art, dividing things up into neat one-page segments, which would then be turned over to that particular character’s regular artist for the finished illustrations.

Thus, John Byrne handled the FF pages; Marshall Rogers, the Doctor Strange episode; Sal Buscema, the Hulk appearance; Mike Zeck, the Captain America portion; and so on. (As a trivial aside: By providing breakdowns for the Daredevil sequence, I can claim a smidgen of fame as most likely the only artist to have ever done layouts for superstar cartoonist and innovator Frank Miller!

Hey, I’m just happy to help…) Despite the logistics of working with a score of different artists, the project was a joy from start to finish, and I was more than happy with the way things turned out. So, apparently, was Marvel. Enough copies were sold to warrant them asking me to come up with a follow-up. But it wouldn’t be anything so simple as, say, a Spider-Man Roast.

Uh-uh. That would be too easy….

Mulling over possible concepts on the phone one afternoon, Shooter and I independently, but simultaneously, came up with the same idea. Actually, he was the first to say it out loud; it had crossed my mind, but I was afraid it might be a bit too tacky to bring up. Y’see, way back when, news leaks would dribble out slowly, there being no Internet to dispense the latest scoops or rumors in the instantaneous manner to which we’ve all become accustomed these days.

Everyone in the field looked to cat yronwode’s “Fit to Print” column in The Comics Buyer’s Guide To Comics Fandom weekly paper for the up-to-the-minute headlines, and when she came out with a startling set of accusations from Doug Moench, a long-tenured but then departing Marvel writer, she soon had most of comics fandom up in arms. The unhappy Mr. Moench alluded to some radical plans about to be set in motion by head-ed Shooter : The destruction Asgard, home of the Norse Gods; a human replacement inside the Iron Man armor; a revamped Fantastic Four line-up; a new look for Spider-Man… in short, the kinda stuff that would This article was adapted from Fred Hembeck’s essay appearing on his Web site <www.hembeck.com> and is featured (slightly edited by Ye Ed and able CBA assistant, Aaron Kashtan) courtesy of the cartoonist. ©2004 F. Hembeck.

21 TOP: Slightly altered detail of Fred Hembeck’s cover art for his Marvel one-shot, Fred Hembeck Destroys the Marvel Universe (July ’89), on which we included a repro of the actual published cover. Courtesy of Fred Hembeck. ©2004 Marvel Characters, Inc.

CBA V.2 #4

Backstory

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get a dyed-in-the-wool comics geek’s knickers in a twist! And, being one at the time, I could certainly sympathize with the angst everyone from cat on down felt. We’d all grown up — or at least, grown older — with these characters, and we certainly didn’t cotton to the idea of someone coming in, trashing Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Steve Ditko’s creations, and remaking the Marvel Universe in their own image.

Sensing the mounting outrage, Shooter was quick to issue a series of denials, pretty much laying the blame for the uproar on the misinterpretations of some previous discussions by a now disgruntled ex-employee, Mr. Moench. The so-called “Big Bang”? Wasn’t gonna happen, Big Jim assured me, and here the head honcho was, offering me more work. I wasn’t going to broach the subject, but when Jim himself suggested I spoof the brouhaha over his supposed scheme to “destroy” the Marvel Universe, well, it sounded too good to pass up. If only….

(Oh, and for those of you totally unfamiliar with the situation: Guess what?

Everything that was reported to happen eventually did happen, maybe just not as soon as it would have originally had word not leaked out. Thus, a trend of radically rewriting comics history was established, and most older fans have become so inured to the revamping their childhood icons have had to endure over the past two decades that most can’t muster up enough energy to care, myself definitely included.

But, in 1983, the idea was so outrageous that it merited an all-out spoof….)

Time to talk specifics with my employers. The FF Roast was 32 pages with no ads, but aside from scribbling in good ol’ Fred on the various pages, I only got to pencil the covers. Howzabout we make this new one-shot a 48-pager — no ads, of course — and I get to pencil as well as write?

Let’s try and get Terry Austin to ink it. After all, he is the best there is, and didn’t he do a splendid job embellishing the wraparound cover of the Roast?

Jim agreed. Wonderful. And howzabout we call it what it is: Jim Shooter Destroys the Marvel Universe? On this point, Jim was a bit tentative, but he went along with me, at least for the time being. By our next conversation though, he explained why he had to decline title character status: his bosses said so. Seems they felt that, as a Marvel executive, it would somehow be bad form for Shooter to plaster his name across the

top of a Marvel comic. (“Mr. Stan Lee Presents” notwithstanding!) Jim could still be an integral part of the storyline — the star, even — but we had to find another moniker to attach to the title.

Hmmm… what to do?

“You’re a comics character, Fred!

Howzabout we call the book Fred Hembeck Destroys the Marvel Universe?” So sayeth Jim, and who am I to argue with the top cow at Marvel Comics? And, besides, if you haven’t picked up on it by now, I can be a bit of a ham. So, after a few mild protestations (false modesty is a hard habit to break, y’understand), I acceded to popular

(???) demand and took the mantle of mayhem upon my head. Who knew the headaches that lay ahead…?

Despite the billing, it was always my intention merely to play a supporting role in the newly christened FH/MU. As I plotted the book, about half of the 48 pages would be taken up by a framing story that would concern itself with the circumstances under which ed-in-chief Jim Shooter would hire me — freelance cartoonist and international man of intrigue, Fred Hembeck — to destroy the Marvel Universe for him. This portion of the tale was a hoot to come up with,

and flowed out quick and easy. I opted against any sort of true representation of the Marvel Bullpen, instead inventing three fictitious foils for Shooter: the suspiciously-named trio of Bruce, Clark and Diana. The meat of the book, the entire selling point of the whole project — the deaths of the Marvel multitudes — was another thing altogether. The object was to kill as many characters as I could, each in as funny a way as possible. While it seemed like a good idea while yakkin’ on the phone with Jim, when I actually sat down to perform the task as clearly spelled out in the previous sentence, I realized just how contradictory the concept was!

Laughs! Death! More laughs! And more death! Hey, I have as much an appreciation for so-called black humor as anyone, but that doesn’t mean I can produce it. Still, I took this job on, and I was gonna see it through. So, I wrote up a plot — the office antics, highly-detailed; the dying-laffing section, far more sketchy — and sent it in for my star’s approval… which I received. Remember that. It’ll be important later….

I was settling down to the task when disaster struck. My mother took suddenly ill, was hospitalized, and, just as she was about to have surgery, she died of congestive heart failure at the age of 69. From start to finish, this whole sad, sorry sequence of events took a mere two weeks. Losing a parent is always a tragic event in a person’s life — and (save for my grandma’s passing when I was 14) this was my first real brush with the Grim Reaper — but occurring during a period when one is attempting to have fun with the concept of death… well, let’s just say the timing could not have been worse.

The folks at Marvel were very understanding and sympathetic when I explained my circumstances, and allowed me to backburner the project while doing some other work in its stead, specifically penciling an issue of Spectacular Spider-Man during the infamous “Assistant Editors Month” stunt. Life must go on, however, and eventually I got back into the swing of things, first easing into the framing sequences, but ultimately doing the best I could muster with the demise-oriented section. And it seemed to be going okay, too, until I sent in the first 12 pages.

A trip to the post office was followed by the shocking news that a good friend had died….

Raoul Vezina was an extremely talented cartoonist who never really got his due, and now

ABOVE: Splash page of the initial (and unused) version of Fred Hembeck Destroys the Marvel Universe (July ’89). To compare the original and published versions, go to <www.hembeck.com> and have a ball! Pencils by Fred Hembeck, inks by Vinnie Colletta. Courtesy of F.H. ©2004 Marvel Characters, Inc.

A Touch of Class Manuel Auad on his Eisner Award-winning publishing imprint & love of comics

BY JON B. COOKE/TRANSCRIBED BY STEVEN TICE As mentioned on page two of this issue, Ye Ed and our next subject go back a ways, and Manuel’s participation was essential in the planning and execution of this special Filipino issue of CBA. But, most importantly, the gentleman is a discriminating publisher of fine books on some of the greatest comic book artists of this or any other age, including the Eisner Awardwinning Alex Toth (technically published by Kitchen Sink in 1994, but Manuel served as editor and compiler). The following phone interview took place on February 26, 2004.

Comic Book Artist: Where are you from, Manuel?

Manuel Auad: Well, I was born in 1935, in Beirut, Lebanon. When I was only two years old, we left that country. My mother is Spanish, and on my mother’s side, my grandparents were from Spain, and somehow, many years ago, they migrated to the Philippines, and thus my mother was born here.

CBA: How did she meet your father?

Manuel: He had a haberdashery in the Philippines, and that’s where she met him. They got married over there.

A few years later, they moved to Beirut, my father’s home. I guess the marriage didn’t work out and my mother moved back to the Philippines.

My mother didn’t speak about it very often, so I didn’t really know too much. I hardly know anything about my father.

We went to an island called Cebu, and that’s where I spent the war years. We were there during the Japanese occupation, of course.

CBA: Well, what was the occupation like?

Manuel: It was no picnic. I was six years old when the war broke out and about nine by the time it was over.

What I remember is that there was never enough to eat. We had a vegetable garden in the backyard.

Towards the end of the war, the Americans were taking one island after another from the Japanese (there are hundreds, thousands of islands in the Philippines). There was no electricity, no running water, during all those years through the war. It’s almost like time stood still. Nothing. You lived with just candles, making your own entertainment. You’d make shadow figures on the walls to entertain yourself. Or you’d

play a lot of checkers. Once in a while, we’d be looking at a magazine, and the worst part was you’d see an ad for a Betty Crocker mix, a beautiful picture of cake with the icing on it and all that, and we’d be drooling over it. [laughter] At one point, the Japanese told us that the Americans would be arriving any day now to take over our island, so the Japanese decided to not leave anybody alive. First, they burned the city down — all the houses and buildings — and, of course, at that time, there were no fire engines or anything like that. You weren’t allowed to even try

and put the fire out, because, if you did, they would shoot you. The plan was to scorch the whole city and, the next day, kill the remaining people still standing. I remember the following day the city was smoldering. There weren’t that many families left in the city. It wasn’t a very big island. But soon we started to hear shots. You see, they started killing at the waterfront, moving from one side of the city, just sweeping along the way, shooting people. We could hear the shots getting closer and closer. You could hear a lot of screaming and crying. There were no atheists

then.We were all shaking. There was no place to hide. Our house was just a pile of smoldering cinders. But then, in the nick of time somehow, the American G.I.s arrived, and suddenly all the Japanese jumped into their trucks and started taking off for the hills.,That’s the first time we saw a jeep. [laughter] Of course, we had never seen Americans before. So they just came marching down the street, offering us candy — Hershey bars — and that’s something I’ll always remember.

CBA: Were such atrocities common for the Japanese? Did they do that on a lot of islands?

Manuel: Basically, yes.

CBA: What were they trying to cover up? Or was it just malice?

Manuel: It was just malice.

CBA: It wasn’t necessarily like the Nazis, who were trying to cover up the Holocaust?

Manuel: Oh, no. It was just for spite and malice. Believe you me, we had just as many, just as bad, just as horrible atrocities committed in the Pacific as there were in the European theatre, which nobody seems to talk about too much.

CBA: Now, when you first came to the Philippines, did you have an agrarian upbringing? Was it middle class?

Manuel: It was middle class. Spanish was still a language very much spoken, at that time. The Philippines had been a colony of Spain for 300 years, so most of the Filipinos still spoke Spanish, at that time. Of course, I am talking about before the war.

CBA: Now, was there a concerted effort to eradicate Spanish as a language from the Philippines? You said, “This was before the war…” What happened after the war?

Manuel: After the war, English, more or less, took over as the secondary language. Naturally, all the movies were in English. All the magazines and newspapers are in English. You learn English in school. You spoke Filipino — Tagalog — among your friends. I spoke Spanish with my family and, in school, I spoke English. So the idea of eradicating the Spanish names, like the street names, especially, came during the [Filipino “President-For-Life” Ferdinand] Marcos era [1965-86]. He wanted to get really nationalistic, I suppose, so Marcos changed the names of many things. On the street where we used to live, that name no longer exists; it was changed to a Filipino name.

ABOVE: Mid-1970s shot of Manuel Auad, courtesy of the man himself.\

31 CBA V.2 #4

Comic Book Chit-Chat

32 CBA V.2 #4

CBA: When you were going to school, were they teaching Spanish in school at the time?

Manuel: Yes. CBA: That practice stopped by the ’50s or ’60s?

Manuel: I think that stopped by 1950.

CBA: So you read English?

Manuel: Yes. I went to grade school in Cebu, a little island, during the war. One of the subjects we were taught was Japanese. Every morning before class, they would play the Japanese national anthem, raising the Imperial flag in the schoolyard. We were taught how to count in Japanese and that sort of thing.

CBA: The occupiers, were they loathed? Did you guys hate them?

Manuel: We were in fear of them, because you never knew… They had a sentry every three or four blocks. If you’re going past them, you had to stand in front of them and bow. If he’s not happy with the way you bowed, he’d give you the butt of his rifle right on the head.

CBA: Ooh! Which could kill you, right?

Manuel: Oh, yes! You would have to say “Kumbawa” or “Tomadachi,” which means

“friend.” “Kumbawa” is like “good morning,” “good evening.” You’d bow your head as low as you can until they gave the sign for you to go along.

CBA: Did you see much violence and death as a kid?

Manuel: One time, we were walking down the street and there was a sudden commotion in the marketplace. I was maybe seven years old.

Suddenly, we see this poor man, a Filipino, running for his life, all bloody. Of course, Japanese soldiers came running behind him.

I don’t know if he got away or what happened, but the sight of this man running all bloody was enough to scare the hell out of a boy my age.

You have to remember, these were my formative years. But, after the war, in 1945, that’s when we moved to Manila, because my grandparents had a house there.

CBA: Now, were there any long-term effects, being so young under a culture of such brutality?

I don’t think it’s imaginable for an average American to comprehend the fear. Would you dream about those days, for instance?

Manuel: No, not me. I didn’t have that. Right after the war, when I was nine years old, I had a toy plane and was making the sound of a plane engine — like any kid would — and my grandfather would say, “Don’t do that!” Somehow just the sound would remind them of the bad times.

The thing that sticks in my mind was the fire.

There were always fires. Houses were always being burned, including ours. And there was nothing we could do about it.

CBA: So the Japanese used fire as a weapon?

Manuel: Yes. CBA: Man. So the liberation was when?

Manuel: Let’s see: On February 3, 1945, my birthday, we received the news that the American invasion had begun. That’s when we knew they were coming. So I guess a couple of months later we were liberated. That’s a feeling that nobody’s ever going to be able to relate! There’s just no way to adequately describe the liberation.

CBA: Now, what was the situation with comics in the ’30s, prior to the war?

Manuel: It was the Sunday funnies, mostly.

CBA: They reprinted American strips?

Manuel: Yes. You had the old standbys: Prince Valiant, Tarzan, those kinds of things. Barney Google. The comic strips of the ’30s.

CBA: Did you see them?

Manuel: I can’t say that I did, because I was only six years old when the war broke out. Then everything American stopped, there was nothing.

CBA: Right, but you grew older.

Manuel: Yes, and, of course, right after the war, we moved to Manila right away, where comic books were being imported again.

CBA: So these were American editions you saw?

Manuel: Yes. CBA: What was the first comic you remember seeing?

Manuel: I think it was called Sparkler Comics. I also remember Black Hood, Airboy Comics, Jungle Comics….

CBA: Do you remember the super-heroes?

TOP: Introductory page of Magic Carpet #1 (Comics & Comix Co., 1977), drawn by the great Alfredo Alcala, and featuring the artist, and issue writers Manuel Auad and Bill Blackbeard. ABOVE RIGHT: The cover of that magazine.

©2004 the Estate of Alfredo Alcala.

40 CBA V.2 #4

Shaun Clancy: Where you were born, Tony, and in what year?

Tony DeZuñiga: I was born and raised in the Philippine Islands.

I’m actually 64 now, I’ll be 65 this year.

Shaun: You’ll be retiring this year?

Tony: Yes, I already did. I was born the month before the attack on Pearl Harbor, so that would be 1941.

Shaun: Do you have any brothers or sisters?

Tony: Yeah, I have two sisters and a brother.

They’re all here, living in the United States.

Shaun: When did you come to America?

Tony: Well, I came here in 1962. I went to New York City because I started an advanced course in graphic design. After that, I went back to the islands, because I was doing a lot of work for advertising. Later, when I came back here, I was hired as what they called — I don’t know if there’s any position like it today — as the creative art director for an ad agency.

Shaun: Did you collect comics when you were a kid?

Tony: Oh, of course. I was so crazy about comic books. Captain America was my favorite when I was a little boy.

Shaun: Do you still have your comics?

Tony: You know, I’m sorry to say, when I moved from the islands to this country, I had my mom put them away, and now they’re lost, man.

Shaun: Is that what got you into wanting to be an artist?

Tony: Yes, it is was, really. I just got inspired by comics to do a lot of drawings…drawings, drawings, drawings!

Shaun: Who were your influences?

Tony: Are we talking about American comic artists? One would be, of course, Jack Kirby. Another one of my favorites was Alex Raymond. He did a syndicated strip called Rip Kirby. Oh, Raymond also did Flash Gordon, of course. I had a number of favorite artists, really.

Shaun: Ever met any of your favorites?

Tony: Some of them I did, like Alex Toth.

We went to his house one day, because we had a mutual friend. The friend asked me, “Do you want to meet the greatest? Let’s go meet Toth!” I said, “Sure, I want to meet the guy!

He’s one of my favorite artists!” Alex is a very nice guy.

Shaun: Toth has amazing hand-lettering.

…and other

blessings

TONY DeZUNIGA T H E C B A I N T E R V I E W

Tony DeZuñiga exploded on the scene at DC Comics in the early 1970s — the first of the tsunami of Filipino artists to arrive in the U.S. — most significantly as co-creator and artist of Jonah Hex, the “Weird Western” anti-hero. He also contributed significantly to Marvel Comics and long worked as a visual designer for computer gaming. Tony copy-edited this phone interview.

Tony: Most letterers put a light pencil-line before starting to letter, but Alex just gets the pen, writes it directly onto the paper, and that’s it!

Shaun: How’d you get involved in comics?

Tony: Well, I was very young then. I was maybe 16. They had a lot of local comic book publishers on the islands, because they come out weekly. That’s how good the business was. But I was really very, very fresh, very amateurish in those years. There was an outfit that published a magazine that came out weekly in, oh my God, something like six different languages, and each one had to be translated, so all the word balloons had to be changed! So they asked me if I wanted to do lettering. I said, “Oh yeah, sure!”

So I started doing that, and that’s how my career in comics began. I met a lot of artists who had already started in the business, like Alfredo Alcala and Nestor Redondo. They kept telling me, “Don’t get discouraged, Tony. Just keep practicing until you’re ready, and you’ll find out, sooner or later, and you’ll know when you’re ready. And then, that’s it!

It’s as simple as that.”

Shaun: You were friends with Nestor Redondo?

Tony: Yes, as well as with Alfredo Alcala. These were the guys who really encouraged me.

Shaun: Were they already doing some work for American comics when they were encouraging you?

Tony: No, this was in the early 1960s. At that time, some of them had tried getting work in America, but the distance between the countries was just too great. The answer they got was, “It’s really hard to give you work because you’re so far away.” There was no express mail service then, no DHL. So that was the problem.

As I said, I went to school in New York, then went back to the islands and worked for three years in advertising.

But I got bored doing that kind of work. I said, “Ink is in my blood, so I gotta get back to drawing!” Then I went back to New York and made an appointment with Joe Orlando at DC Comics, one of the editors there. I walked into his office and said, “Look at my work.” He said, “Well, Tony, if you really did this work, I don’t see any problem with you starting on a script right away. You just have to make sure, when you work on a script, that your work will be the very highest quality work, matching what you are showing me right now.” I told Joe, “Oh, I don’t think that’s going to be a problem. But it will be of even better craftsmanship than you are seeing right now.” He was very nice and

CONDUCTED BY SHAUN CLANCY TRANSCRIBED BY STEVEN TICE 41 OPPOSITE PAGE: Certainly artist Tony DeZuñiga’s most fondly-recalled series was “Jonah Hex,” a character he co-created with writer John Albano for All-Star Western. Cover detail from Jonah Hex #56 (Jan ’82). Courtesy of the artist. ©2004 DC Comics. ABOVE: The distinguished artist himself. Courtesy of Tony DeZuñiga.

CBA V.2 #4

CBA V.2 #4

except on the face? That’s the only obvious place where you can put it. So that’s it. I decided half of the face was blown-up by a cannonball. [laughs] That’s it. They loved it, loved the character, the design and all that. So that’s it. I loved Jonah because….

You see, John Albano was a cartoonist. He did cartoons for The New Yorker and I don’t know what else. So he would draw the script in cartoon form, and put the balloons with stick figures, and all that. All I had to do was just look at it, and I don’t even need to read the script. It was so unique. I fell in love with that strip, and that’s why I kept it all these years. [Prior to their talk, Tony had given the interviewer John’s original thumbnail script, along with Tony’s initial thumbnail art — Ye Ed.] Because the size of the script he made, it’s almost the actual size of a comic book page when it’s printed. So that’s what I did with the pencil. When I showed it to Joe, he said, “Well, how are you going to make this printable?” Because DC and everybody printed their own art paper, 11" by 17" boards, as they didn’t want any artists just drawing the work on their own paper. Somebody might draw on paper the size of a bedsheet, and that was bad. So that size fits their method, and that’s why they printed those boards and just gave it to the artists. I said, “That’s not a problem, Joe. All I have to do is blow it up on an opaque projector to that paper size, and then the printer will just shrink it again to the printed size.” “Oh, okay.” So they understood, and then that’s it. That’s why I still have those thumbnails. I really think it’s quite a collector’s item, because I don’t think any other artist had done that before.

Shaun: I don’t know if John Albano had done any other titles at DC. [John Albano wrote extensively for editor Joe Orlando from the late 1960s to the early ’70s and was briefly a DC editor himself in 1972 on Larry Harmon’s Laurel and Hardy #1. He also contributed some gag cartoons to Plop! — Y.E.] I’m not familiar with his other work. But I’d be interested in knowing if he had used that format regularly.

Tony: You know, that’s a good question. I’m not sure, though. I can’t even ask John today. I think he passed away a couple of years ago.

Shaun: I did notice that, in the copies you gave me of the pencils, it’s pretty close to the finished job. On page two of the first appearance in pencil

TOP: The young artist Tony DeZuñiga in 1964. Photo courtesy of Tony. ABOVE: Tony DeZuñiga’s stylish design sense was clearly evident in his innovative logo designs for the installments of the James Bond 007 knock-off serial, “Ten Yen Te Alegre,” appearing in the Filipino comic book Redondo Komix. Splash from #34 (Aug. 11, ’64).

©2004 the respective copyright holder. Courtesy of Manuel Auad.

42

told me, “You know, it’s not how much detail you can draw and how good it looks; you have to really tell a story well. The pictures you draw must tell a story.

It’s like watching a silent movie.

Without reading all the words, all the copy, a reader needs to be able to follow the story.” So I really learned a lot just from talking to Joe. I used to go to his office one day a week just to get instruction. Not on how to draw, but how to tell a story well.

Shaun: Did DC have a staff of artists there, or did you work at home?

Tony: No, I worked at home. I don’t think they had an art staff in-house, except for the colorist. Even their letterers were not working in the office. I think the freelancers were all doing the work on the outside and then they’d deliver it to the office. That’s what I understood. I may be wrong, but I didn’t see any artists who were doing work there, except for the guy who was in charge of production (whose job was to oversee the art, especially the covers). The printing process, at that time, was just not as good as what they’re doing today. It was very different in those years.

Shaun: Do you recall your first assignment?

Tony: Yeah, it was an Egyptian story for one of the mystery titles.

Anyway, I was so nervous that, I tell you, the job really didn’t turn out that good. [laughs] I was just so nervous. But, thank God, Joe Orlando understood the situation, so he was telling me, “You’ve gotta just relax and enjoy what you’re doing. Because you can draw, I see that you can.”

Thank God, he understood.

Shaun: Did you pencil and ink that one?

Tony: Yes, I penciled and inked the very first job.

Shaun: Did you have a month deadline or did he give you a week?

Tony: No, that was an inventory job. I remember that. Whether I finished it or not, it wouldn’t have mattered anyway.

Shaun: Oh, it was a try-out?

Tony: Yes, like that. Right.

Shaun: Do you still have that story?

Tony: Yes, I think I do. I remember looking at it recently and thinking, “Throw these pages away!” [laughter] It’s not very good.

Shaun: We all have to start somewhere! This was in 1971?

Tony: Yes, you’re right. That’s exactly when I started at DC. Shaun: Which ongoing series was your first? Was Jonah Hex the first continuing character you worked on?

Tony: I think he was. Carmine Infantino was president of DC then. It was his idea to put out a Western character, but it was going to be Joe Orlando’s book, because Joe was the main editor. But they wanted to do was ridiculous. They wanted to do was take a cowboy character, a Western character, who was a take-off on the Incredible Hulk — exactly like the Incredible Hulk, with a physique like that! Oh, my God — so I was telling the writer, John Albano, “I don’t think I want to do this. I think you’d better find another artist.” John told Joe Orlando, “If Tony won’t do it, I’m not going to write it.” So they argued. Finally, Carmine agreed, “Okay, if you can design a character you want to do, and then we’ll give you two issues of that book [All-Star Western], and, if it doesn’t do anything, we’ll just kill the title.” So John and I talked about it. John called me, “Well, what do you think about that deal, Tony?” I said, “I’ll risk it. It’s worth a try, instead of doing what they wanted. I can’t be drawing the Incredible Hulk wearing a cowboy hat.”

So that’s the start of Jonah. Then they told me, “Just design him.” He was a Confederate soldier who survived the Civil War and, if I make him so he’s battle-scarred or something like that, that already gave us a start on how to develop the character. So I did a lot of studies. This was the worst thing about the assignment. Well, where else can you put scars on a character

The artistry of Alex Niño isn’t easy to describe. Words like manic, graceful, surreal, hallucinogenic, subversive, and whimsical come to mind, but whatever it is, his work is utterly, undeniably original. Of the supremely talented Filipino school, Nestor Redondo and Alfredo Alcala may have unbeatable technique and incredible chops as artists, but few comic book creators in the world can match Alex’s visionary approach and unique brilliance. Quite simply, the man is an artist’s artist, one very highly-regarded by a legion of fans, many from outside comics, and we’re proud to present Alex’s first in-depth interview in his forty-plus-year career. This telephone interview was conducted on January 31, 2004, and Alex copy-edited the transcript.

Comic Book Artist: Where are you originally from, Alex?

Alex Niño: The Philippines, on the main island called Luzon. I lived in a province, in the countryside.

CBA: What was your upbringing like? Were you poor, were you middle class?

Alex: I came from a family of farmers who rely on what we produce! Money was not a problem —we don’t need any — we used barter trading. We lived in a village, days away from the nearest town. To a certain living standard, we were dirt poor, but we were used to it. One time, my father came home from a trip and brought with him coins to be used as buttons, necklaces, even nail washers! To me, those were the real happy times.

CBA: What crop did the farm produce?

Alex: It was a family farm, so we grew rice, not to sell, but for the family to eat.

CBA: Did you have brothers and sisters?

Alex: I have two brothers and one sister. I am the oldest.

CBA: When were you born?

Alex: On May 1st — May Day — 1940.

CBA: Do you remember the Japanese occupation at all?

Alex: A little bit.

CBA: Was it hard on your family and the village?

Alex: It was very hard! All able-bodied men in the village had to join the guerrilla forces against Japan — that included my father — and the rest of us were forced to leave the village and hide inside dug-outs, like rats.

Pearl Harbor and other movies we have today remind me of those fearful times when I was a kid.

Planes would engage in dogfights right over our village, and empty shells would fall right from the sky on top of the dugout where we were hiding.

We used to pick ’em up and play with them as toys. When the shells landed, they were still really hot, because they had just fallen from the planes up there.

PREVIOUS COLOR PAGES: Our intro page to the Alex Niño section is an alternative version of this issue’s Captain Fear cover (and yet another painting of the Caribe pirate is found — albeit reproduced far too small — on the reverse of this page). Captain Fear ©2004 DC Comics. Taken in the 1970s, the full-page photo portrait of the artist appears courtesy of and ©2004 Manuel Auad.

52 CBA V.2 #4

THIS PAGE: Various panels from Alex Niño’s much-beloved Adventure Comics serial, Captain Fear, one of the few continuing character strips the artist has worked on in mainstream American comics. Clockwise from top left: shamelessly modified by Ye Ed, the splash page from Fear’s origin tale in Adventure #425 (Jan. ’73); logo motif from #433 (June ’74); and the final panel from that same issue. The series was created by writer Bob Kanigher. All ©2004 DC Comics.

CBA: Were the planes really up high?

Alex: No, they were only a thousand or two thousand feet above us. They would have dogfights right above our village!

CBA: Did the Japanese physically occupy your town?

Alex: No, they didn’t, because we lived in a small barrio, a tiny village, with a population of only about 30 people. It was really small. The Japanese just passed by our village, every now and then. Later, every so often, there would be American troops who passed by! That’s the first time I ever saw an American, and we were pretty happy because that meant we were being liberated. It was a mixture of fun and also being somewhat scared at the same time.

CBA: So the arrival of the American soldiers, the liberation, was an exciting period?

Alex: At the time, we were really very excited. As a kid, I was quite curious about America. These soldiers were the first white guys I had ever seen. They would hand out candies and everything! These guys, like “Victory Joe,” gave us chocolate bars, you know? That was in 1945, when I was five years old.

CBA: When did you start drawing?

Alex: At the age of 10.

CBA: Did you have any interest in comic strips or comic books when you were young?

Alex: I was interested in the Sunday newspaper comics, and was really curious to see all these strips. We had Philippine comics, too, and I was really amazed at how these guys did it. I saw all the stuff Alfredo Alcala and Nestor Redondo drew. I was a newspaper boy at the time.

CBA: Was Filipino culture pretty Americanized? Did it emulate American comic strips and comic books?

Alex: After the war, yes, but you need to realize that comic art goes back a ways in the Philippines. Our national hero, José Rizal, was — among many other accomplishments — a satirical cartoonist. He ridiculed the Spanish occupiers during the SpanishAmerican War, in the 1890s. What he did resembled a comic book page. That was during the Spanish regime, before the Americans became involved.

CBA: So comics go back before the Spanish-American War in the Philippines?

Alex: That’s right. Rizal was an international hero and he knew how to draw, knew how to use cartoons to criticize the Spanish regime through satire, and he also did some illustration. When I saw his work in the Philippine Archives, it looked like a comic book page to me. So, I believe he did the first semi-comic book illustration in our country, because it was all panels. I don’t know where he got that idea.

CBA: Rizal told a story and everything?

Alex: Yes. He also wrote books.

CBA: So Hal Foster’s Tarzan got you started?

Alex: Right. I also saw these great Filipino comic books by Francisco Coching, Nestor Redondo, Alfredo Alcala…. continued on page 96

53 THIS PAGE: Alex Niño obviously had a field day when designing his splash pages for his assignments on Joe Orlando’s DC mystery books, especially in House of Secrets, where all of these examples are derived. From the top: HOS #106 (April ’73), HOS #109 (July ’73), and splash header from HOS #101 (Oct. ’72). ©2004 DC Comics.

CBA V.2 #4

Why?

The Philippine Question personal commentary by jon b. cooke

Anyone even slightly familiar with Comic Book Artist realizes that Ye Editor— my humble self — is a sequential art freak particularly obsessed with the American comic books of the 1970s, in whatever form they took in that day.

From DC’s “daring and different” titles under Carmine Infantino’s helmanship, to the faux comics of National Lampoon, to the mind-blowing underground efforts coming from San Francisco, Ye Ed is convinced that the story behind that era’s funnybooks is an important tale worth telling.

One severely under-appreciated aspect of U.S. comics in the ’70s is surely the arrival and accomplishments of the Philippine “school” of artists, a stunningly talented group of men who made an immediate and lasting impression on the industry and among appreciative readers. Strange sounding names — DeZuñiga, Niño, Redondo, Alcala, etc. — would quickly become familiar and quite welcome to those aficionados willing to venture outside the super-hero genre, and take a peek at the mystery, Western, science-fiction, romance and war anthologies of those years. Nestor was knockin’ ’em dead in Swamp Thing! Alex was blowing our minds over at Warren! Alfredo was astounding us with his inks on penciler John Buscema’s Savage Sword of Conan!

The Filipinos were everywhere in the ’70s!

While the comics of that decade have been examined ad nauseum by this magazine and others, as well as in a number of bona fide books on the subject, extremely little has been written anywhere about this “invasion” of the Filipinos. A single issue of the fascinating Philippine Comics Review (Oct.-Dec. 1979), a sole entry — under “Alex Niño” — in Comics: Between The Panels (by Steve

RIGHT: Writer Mars Ravelo and artist Nestor Redondo’s Filipino heroine Darna. From The Philippine Comics Review #1 (Dec. ’79)

Duin and Mike Richardson, 1998), a lone article in CBA (“Invasion from the Philippines,” by Chris Knowles, Vol. 1, #5, Summer 1999), and scant else can be found written about the experiences of the 90 or so artists from the Southeast Asian archipelago who toiled in U.S. comics for upwards of three decades. Regardless of all their efforts pumping out thousands of pages — among them innumerable masterpieces, often for a pitiful page rate — these artists have received virtually no recognition from fandom and historians, never mind being forgotten and disrespected by an ungrateful industry. For shame.

The question of why naturally comes to mind: Why have the Filipinos been so ignored over the years? Is it blatant xenophobia against “foreign” artists (similar to the neglect the Spanish and South American “schools” also suffer)? Or is it a sideeffect of the prejudice against non super-hero material (as few Filipinos — among them Alcala, Rudy Nebres, and Danny Bulanadi — were successful in the costumed character field)? Some major U.S. artists of that era have opined to Ye Ed that the Philippine art was “sub-standard” and “hardly comparable” to contemporaneous American efforts. Huh? In this editor’s humble opinion: As a group, these Asian artists were astonishingly accomplished and talented almost beyond measure. Certainly the top three talents — Redondo, Niño, and Alcala — stand shoulder-to-shoulder with any comic book artist the world over, bowing their heads to no one.

This issue is a particular labor of love for Ye Ed, as I’ve been fascinated by the work of these illustrators, ever since my oldest brother, Richie, in a dramatic gesture, held up a gorgeous Alex Niño comic book — this was back in the early ’70s — and exclaimed, “This is as good as anything else being published today.” Now, those were heady words, as Jack Kirby, Bernie Wrightson, Barry Windsor-Smith, Neal Adams, Mike Kaluta, etc., were arguably producing their finest work in that time frame.

So, needless to say, I’ve been eager to devote an issue to the Filipino school for a long, long time. Here’s hoping that this woefully short section is but an opening volley in efforts to rectify these shortcomings. No doubt, these gents are deserving of the attention.

In the following pages you’ll find not only eye-opening overviews of the accomplishments of many Filipino artists (by frequent CBA contributors Manuel Auad and David A. Roach), but also a brief history of their homeland (for context) and a solid look at the history of the Philippine “komiks” industry (by John A. Lent, editor-in-chief of the prestigious International Journal of Comic Art), amongst other goodies. Again, this is only a meager start in giving these wonderful artists the respect and coverage they warrant. Enjoy.

— Jon B. Cooke,Ye Ed.

57 TOP INSET: Nestor Redondo cover painting for The Philippine Comics Review one-shot (Dec. ’79).

CBA V.2 #4

Pearl of the A Capsule History of

PLACE: The Philippines consists of a group of some 7,000 islands off of Southeast Asia in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, and are volcanic in origin. Comprised of three natural divisions — the northern section, including Luzon (the biggest island where resides the country’s largest city, Manila) and Mindoro; the central, occupied by the Visayan Islands; and the southern, containing Mindanai and the Sulu Archipelago — the islands are politically divided into 55 provinces. The climate is predominately tropical. June-October is monsoon season.

PHILIPPINES LUZON

South China Sea MINDORO

CBA V.2 #4

Philippine Sea

PEOPLE: Total population in 1980 was 48 million, PALAWAN PANAY VISAYAN with almost half ISLANDS the people living CEBU on Luzon. People of Sulu Sea Malayo-Indonesian MINDANAO descent make up SULU 95% of the populaARCHIPELAGO tion. The national language is Pilipino, Celebes Sea a formal version of Tagalog, an indigenous language. More than half the people speak the national language and 45% can speak English (also used in secondary schools and in colleges).

Spanish is not widely used.

The vast majority of the Philippine population are Roman Catholics, but there is also a significant Muslim minority. Literacy rate is 80%.

Government is modeled after the United States: a republic headed by a president (elected to six-year terms), and legislated by Congress composed of the Senate and House of Representatives.

HISTORY: Early on, the Philippines were populated by Malayan tribes, and China began trading with the archipelago in the ninth century. By the 1400s, Moslems from the west began commerce with the southern islands. In 1521, Ferdinand Magellan explored the region during his renowned circumvention of the globe (and the Spanish explorer would eventually die there), and 20 years later, the area was dubbed Las Felipinas, for the infant who would become Spain’s King Philip II. Within another two decades, the actual Spanish conquest of the island group would begin, resulting in strong influence on Philippine art, architecture, customs, and religion.

The islands remained an important colony of the Spanish Empire for over 300 years, as well as a leading center for commerce in the Far East, carrying on a flourishing trade with China, India, and the East Indies. Though Chinese trade and the influx of their labor were important to the early development of the nation, in 1603, the Spanish massacred thousands of Chinese (with lesser slaughters taking place over the subsequent years). The colony was also subjected to periodic attack over the years by English pirates and, significantly, the Muslim Philippine warriors to the south — the Moros — who

ABOVE: A regular labor of love for Alfredo Alcala at CRAF Publications was to depict significant events of World War Two, particularly naval battles. Among the most revered of Americans by Filipinos was U.S. General Douglas MacArthur who famously vowed “I shall return,” after the Philippines were invaded by Imperial Japan.

©2004 the respective copyright holder.

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Manila

would remain a thorn in the imperialist’s side for hundreds of years.

Over the course of the Spanish occupation, the Filipino natives would frequently rise up to protest the colonist’s oppressive system of tributary labor — encomienda — imposed on the populace. (The process involved natives paying tribute for the “right” to cultivate their own land — rights “granted” by the invaders — in return (theoretically) for protection, religious conversion, and be allowed to grow food to feed their own families.) Local control was held by encomenderos, soldiers who helped in the conquest of the archipelago and were given huge estates called encomiendas.

By the late 19th century, Spanish influence was on the wane (especially after the British occupation of Manila during the Seven Years’ War, 1762-64), and a nationalist desire for independence was rising in the Philippines. Global trade — thanks to the opening of the Suez Canal and the advent of steam transportation — fostered the creation of a middle class, and a growing desire for democratic reform quickly became a demand for self-determination and freedom. Personified by the opposition leadership of José Rizal and his “Young Filipinos,” the nationalists demanded the ouster of the Catholic clergy from government and independence from Spain. Though Rizal was imprisoned and eventually executed by authorities, resistance (in

Pacific

the Philippine Islands contextual overview by jon b. cooke

the guise of the Katipunan, a secret revolutionary society composed of workers and peasants) continued to grow.

In 1896, the Philippine Insurrection (under the leadership of General Emilio Aguinaldo) began, driving most Spaniards from the country. Though a temporary truce was called with the weakened occupiers by 1898, Aguinaldo used the growing hostilities between the United States and Spain (over the sinking of the battleship Maine in Havana Harbor) and requested the aid of the U.S. Navy. Thus, with the onslaught of the Spanish-American War, U.S. Naval Commodore George Dewey sailed for the islands and, once there, successfully sank the Spanish fleet on Manila Bay. In an apparent betrayal of Aguinaldo and the rebels, the U.S.”bought” the Philippines for $20 million, as part of the Spanish-American peace treaty, and thus, with the loss of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines, the age of the Spanish Empire was past and the new era of American colonialism had only just begun.

Cheated by the Yanks, the general appealed for a popular uprising against these new imperialists though the revolution was downgraded to guerrilla warfare in short order. By 1901, the rebellion was crushed and Aguinaldo arrested, and in the next year the islands were officially declared a territory of the United States of America. The call for independence was

ing year, the islands were declared liberated. The Republic of the Philippines was announced on July 4, 1946, and the U.S. soon negotiated a 99-year lease for military bases. Independence — albeit a neocolonialist sort — had arrived.

The communist-led Huks, rejecting U.S. control, again took up arms and nearly seized power but the rebel group was destroyed by government forces — aided by the C.I.A. — in the early 1950s.

In 1965, Ferdinand Marcos, the most highly decorated Filipino soldier during World War Two, was elected president of the Philippines (aided by his influential wife, Imelda Romualdez). During this volatile time for the region, as the U.S. was fighting a war in Vietnam (a country maybe 700 miles west of Manila), the nation was beset by its own renewed insurgency — in this instance the Maoist New People’s Army — and Marcos declared martial law in 1972. Dissolving the Congress, imprisoning the opposition, and basically announcing he would remain as president by whim, Marcos became virtual dictator, ruling the country by corruption and cronyism.

In 1981, Marcos lifted martial law and won reelection, but would be dogged by financial recession, growing political opposition, and — yet again — internal strife fomented by leftist guerrillas. The 1983 assassination of his leading opponent, populist Benigno Aquino, Jr. — a crime widely suspected

never entirely quelled, though the country’s trade grew dependent on the U.S., as virtually all their exports sailed stateward and the Philippines became an important market for American merchants. By the mid-’30s, the archipelago was deemed a commonwealth, their first president — Manuel Quezon — elected, and independence from the U.S. was slated for 1946.

Importantly, U.S. General Douglas MacArthur arrived in 1935 and soon became field marshal of the Commonwealth army.

The day after the attack on Pearl Harbor — December 8, 1941 — imperial Japanese forces invaded the Philippines, and the conquest was complete early the following year, with American forces defeated — 36,000 starving men, three-quarters of them Filipino — on the Bataan peninsula in April. The previous month, MacArthur had been ordered by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt to abandon the island, though the general memorably vowed to the Filipinos — and warned the Japanese — “I shall return.” The new conquerors suffered harassment during their brutal occupation from native guerrilla warriors (trained by the U.S. Army and Filipino officers), including the Hukbalahaps (or Huks), who used terrorism against the enemy.

Forces under the returning MacArthur landed in the heart of the islands on Oct. 20, 1944, surprising the Japanese, and by July of the follow-

to have had the approval of Marcos — led to widespread dissatisfaction of the president by many Filipinos. Marcos, in a move orchestrated to prove his strength, called for a presidential election and found himself opposed by Corazon Aquino — Benigno’s charismatic widow — leader of the growing anti-Marcos”People Power” movement. Three weeks after declaring himself a victor (through rampant voter fraud and intimidation), Marcos was overthrown by a revolt of army officers. As the deposed leader was flown to exile in Hawaii (where he would die three years later), “Cory” Aquino was sworn in as the Philippines' first woman president.

Cory’s presidency was plagued by problems as she never managed to bring the powerful feudal families or the military under her control. She survived seven coup attempts and made little headway in improving life for the majority of Filipinos who were — and still are — living in poverty.

The country’s economy picked up after President Fidel Ramos took office in 1992, but huge problems remained, including crippling foreign debt, crime and poverty. Ramos was succeeded in ’98 by former vice-president Joseph Estrada, a former movie actor. Elected to the Presidency on a propoor platform, he has promised food security, jobs, mass housing, education and health for all. Whether these promises can be kept remains to be seen.

fin

ABOVE: Jesse Santos, one of the great Filipino comic book artists (sadly neglected in this issue of CBA but extensively interviewed in CBA V.1, #22) shared this ’60s photo of Filipino komiks artists posing with the notorious President Ferdinand Marcos and his (shoe-lovin’) wife, Imelda (both in circle). Jesse is at far left.

59 CBA V.2 #4

Philippine Comic Book The Filipino

©2004 the Estate of Alfredo Alacala.

60 CBA V.2 #4

There is a wonderful word, much beloved of comic-book pros, to describe obsessive line-work and cross-hatching: noodling. The undoubted kings of noodling were the Filipino artists who first entered the U.S. culture in 1971, led by Tony DeZuñiga. As has been the case with other influxes of artists — such as the South American, Spanish and British invasions — U.S. fans have long seemed unsure what to make of them. Were they merely cheap labor, or a safeguard against a possibly militant artist guild?

Alternatively, were they rather a supremely talented — and quick — band of artists who would bring something new to an increasingly diverse comics scene? I would prefer to believe the latter option, but there is every possibility that all three could be true.

The pioneering Tony DeZuñiga, the first Filipino to break into the American market, must have been extraordinarily visionary to travel to a foreign country, with a culture entirely alien to his own, to present his work to DC Comics. Luckily for him — and us — DC boss Carmine Infantino and editor Joe Orlando were perceptive enough to see the possibilities in his work. His first assignment, inking Ric Estrada on a romance story for Girls’ Love Stories #153, duly appeared in the summer of 1970. Within a year, DeZuñiga had branched out into other titles and genres, such as House of Mystery, All-Star Western, and The Phantom Stranger, and his new assistant, Ernie (Chua) Chan, was also beginning to get romance assignments.

When Infantino and Orlando traveled to the Philippines in 1971 and discovered Nestor Redondo, the floodgates opened. Through DeZuñiga and Redondo, we first saw strips by Alex Niño in July 1972, soon followed by Gerry Talaoc, Vic Catan, Alfredo Alcala, Fred Carrillo, and many more. What the Filipinos shared was a good, solid and usually (Niño excepted) conven-

tional approach to storytelling, exceptional draftsmanship, and exuberant, florid brushwork which harked back to the golden years of magazine illustration in the first few decades of the 20th Century. Interestingly, DC were quite selective in who they used, ignoring excellent Redondo-esque artists such as Federico Javinal and Rading Sabater in favor of quirkier, more individualistic artists like Niño, Alcala and Ruben Yandoc.

Once they saw how the Filipinos had transformed DC’s mystery titles, other companies came calling — principally Pendulum Books, which used Nestor Redondo to recruit artists for their new Classics line (1973-79), and Marvel Comics. Marvel needed illustrators for their black-&-white mags, and picked up DeZuñiga and his stable of artists. Some of these, such as Rudy Nebres and Ernie Chan (then using the name Chua), soon moved on to their color books. By the end of the decade, Warren Publishing also began to recruit a large number of Filipinos, resulting in a talent drain from the big two which precipitated a second wave of immigrants, including Romeo Tanghal, Adrian Gonzalez, and Danny Bulanadi. However, 1982 proved to be something of a watershed for the movement, when both Warren and DC cancelled their horror lines.

Mainstream editors had always seemed reluctant to try out the Filipinos on their super-hero books, relegating them to the commercial margins on horror, Western and sword-&-sorcery titles, but as the ’80s progressed and those genres were snuffed out one by one, the foreign artists either had to adapt to the mainstream or move elsewhere. One result was a mass exodus to Hollywood and the animation factories, where they at least had the comfort of higher pay. Those who stayed behind, including Tanghal and Bulanadi, enjoyed steady work as inkers but there seemed little

TOP: A fascinating — and gorgeous — one-shot we heartily recommend folks to seek out is Magic Carpet #1, published by Bud Plant in 1977, which features spectacular artwork by the legendary Alfredo Alcala. Voltar was a sword-&-sorcery character Alfredo originally created in the Philippines, which also appeared in The Rook #2-9.

Artists in U.S. Comics phile

by david a. roach

call for the graphic exuberance that so typified the movement at its most thrilling. With a very few exceptions, the Filipino invasion of comics is now over, and their ’70s heyday is either ignored by collectors or misunderstood.

In recent years, a third wave of creators has entered the U.S., but I suspect that few readers are aware that the likes of Whilce Portacio, Leinil Francis Yu, Jay Anacleto, Lan Medina and Gerry Alanguilan are indeed Filipino.

Their art reflects the U.S. comics mainstream of the past decade rather than their own visual heritage, and they clearly work in a different artistic tradition, with little in common with their predecessors. That is probably good for them commercially, but it means that the traditional Filipino style is all but dead. So, for the purposes of this article I shall deal only with the first two waves of Filipino artists.

In the ’70s and ’80s, almost 100 Filipino artists drew and inked strips for U.S. publishers — a staggering figure — and the following “primer” is as complete a listing as I have been able to assemble as a guide to who did what. With a few exceptions, the artists seem to fall into three camps: followers of Nestor Redondo, who favored a smooth, feathered inking style; the circle around Tony DeZuñiga, who went for a muscular, dynamic drawing style, much like that of John Buscema (who so many of them went on to ink at one time or another); and a grittier, more gestural inking style typified by Rico Rival and, later, Romeo Tanghal.

So, let’s bring on the artists!

— D.A.R.

JUAQUIN ALBISTUR Not positively identified as a Filipino, but contributed a couple of edgy, angular horror strips to Dark Mansion (#10) and House of Secrets (#124).

ALFREDO P. ALCALA One of the few Filipinos to build a genuine following in the U.S., almost from the moment his first strip in Unexpected #138 (Aug. 1972) hit the stands.

Alcala had honed his talent in the Philippines for decades and was already a star there, even lending his name to a comic: Alcala Komiks. While he shared his fellow Filipinos’ love of muscular, heroic figures and excessive rendering, he took it to new heights with intricate, etched linework, inspired by turn-of-the-century artists such as Franklin Booth (predating Bernie Wrightson’s interest), J.C.Leyendecker, and Frank Brangwyn.

In the U.S., Alcala became a mainstay of DC’s mystery books for several highly productive years, also popping up in Plop! and Weird Western Tales (on “El Diablo”), and going on to draw 113 strips for them in total.

When Marvel set up their black-&-white line, he was one of the first artists poached from DC, and his elaborate inking and delicate wash tones graced most of their titles, including Tales of the Zombie and Planet of the Apes (adapting the Beneath… and Conquest… movies). But it was his inks over John Buscema on the newly created Savage Sword of Conan which caused a sensation, particularly “Black Colossus” in #2 and “Iron Shadows in the

61 ABOVE: Undoubtedly one of the most consistently beautiful strips drawn by a Filipino artist in American comics was Rima, The Jungle Girl (#1-7, May ’74-May ’75), edited

by Joe Kubert, written by Bob Kanigher, and drawn by Nestor Redondo (based on the character in W.H. Hudson’s tragic novel, Green Mansions). This splash double-page spread is from #1, a breathtaking image that just might be the most beautiful introduction of a comic book character ever. Courtesy of Manuel Auad. ©2004 DC Comics.

CBA V.2 #4

From 1928

The First 75 Years of

If Philippine comic art is considered at all outside the archipelago, it is in the context of the emigrés, those cartoonists who left the islands to work for United States comic book publishers in the 1970s and 1980s. Yet, Filipino cartoons and comics are much more than that, having a rich tradition that reaches back over a century, a huge readership, and a pervasive impact on various aspects of their society, especially cinema and national development campaigns.

As in many instances, the comic book (komik) was a result of an evolutionary process in the Philippines, growing from, first, humor magazines and political cartoons, and then, comic strips.

Although Dr. José Rizal, the nationalist later proclaimed national hero, is often called the first cartoonist in the Philippines, cartoons probably appeared before he drew the fable, “The Monkey and the Tortoise,” in 1885.

While visiting fellow Philippine physicians Trinidad and Felix Pardo de Tavera in Paris, Rizal was given an album with some blank pages by the sister of the Tavera brothers and asked to draw something. Rizal obliged, recounting in 34 panels, the story of a cheating monkey and a clever tortoise dividing a banana tree.

74 CBA V.2 #4

ABOVE: Alfredo Alcala cover art (featuring his sword-&-sorcery ala. lfredo Alc character Voltar) for Alcala Komix #3 (Aug. 6, 1963). Courtesy of Manuel Auad.

state of A

eE ©2004 th

Before and at the time of Rizal’s drawing, magazines, such as La Semana Elegante (1884), La Puya (1885), and Manila Alegre (1885), all published in Manila, probably carried cartoons. Others of a satirical nature, such as Te Con Leche, El Tio Verdades, Biro-Biro, and Miau, appeared between 1898-1901 mainly to lampoon both Spaniards and Americans. The weekly Miau, named after a worldly cat which knew everything, consisted of 50% cartoons.

During the early American occupation, other magazines, some satirical containing two-toned cartoons and caricatures, were published in Manila.

Four dominated — Lipang Kalabaw, Philippine Free Press, Telembang, and The Independent. Lipang Kalabaw premiered July 27, 1907, as the weekly voice for independence radicals affiliated with the Nationalist Party; it delighted in satirizing American do-goodism and Filipino parrotism, both in cartoons and text. Closed because of political pressures after 33 issues, Lipang Kalabaw reappeared a month after its demise to become the only genuine Filipino satirical periodical. Lipang Kalabaw, named after a poison ivy-like plant that leaves a severe rash, was critical enough to suffer closure again in 1909. Under different names, it was revived in July 1922 for two years, and in 1949 for less than a year.

Three political cartoonists — Jorge Pineda (1879-1946), Fernando Amorsolo (1892-1922), and José Pereira (1901-’54) — stood out on The Independent and Philippine Free Press in the early 20th Century; Pineda was the first cartoonist to depict “Juan de la Cruz,” a simple young man in slippers, as the national symbol. On the other hand, we know cartoonists of Lipang Kalabaw only by pen names such as “Taga Isorog,” “Makahiya,” “Taga Kadlagan,” “Kolakog,” “Agmaton,” “Torogtorog,” “Sirom,” etc.

Other illustrated weeklies — Liwayway, Monday Mail, and Graphic — came onto the scene by the 1930s, providing a growing body of cartoonists with outlets for their works. Liwayway and Graphic were launched in 1923 and ’27, respectively, by Ramon Roces, who played very significant roles in the development of vernacular-language magazines, comic strips, and the komiks.

In fact, the first Philippine comic strip, Kenkoy, created by Tony Velasquez in December 1928, was at the encouragement of Roces.

Roces and Velasquez teamed on a number of projects to elevate the comics medium during the course of more than six decades of working together.

Sixteen-year-old Velasquez had been working with Banaag Press a year when Roces purchased the photoengraving department and workers. Finding himself on the staff of Liwayway, Velasquez fell into the task of drawing the country’s first strip. A translator in the magazine’s advertising department, Romualdo Ramos, had a vision of bringing out illustrated funnies as a supplement to the magazine. The artwork for a strip was assigned to senior artist Procopio Borromeo, but because of his congested work schedule, nothing happened. In my interview with him (September 26, 1988), Velasquez said that when the artist “for so many weeks, was not able to do it, Don Ramon told me, ‘Tony, can you do it?’ I told him I’d try.” Ramos supplied jokes and storyline and Velasquez drew the strip, which debuted as four panels in the January 11, 1929 Liwayway. Mga Kabalbalan ni Kenkoy, as the strip was called, expanded to six panels 10 issues later and to a full-page in color within a year. When Ramos died in 1932, Velasquez did the strip alone.

to 1993

Philippine Komiks

Kenkoy was enthusiastically received by a large readership, as it eventually was translated into four other vernacular languages (besides Tagalog) for use in Roces’ magazines Bannawag, Bisaya, Hiligaynon, and Bikolnon and was made the subject of a song, “Ay, Naku, Kenkoy!” composed by Nicando Abelardo, a poem “Pagpapakilala, Ay Introdius yu Mister Kenkoy,” by Huseng Batute, movies, and komiks. Velasquez said a plan to take Kenkoy into animation failed, recalling, “There was a producer way back in 1946 who came to me. He worked with Walt Disney. He said he knew all the tricks to the trade and told me to make a full-length script of Kenkoy. I did and he paid me. I waited for weeks and weeks. He returned the script to me and said it was too expensive to do. I said, ‘I’m not going to return the P5,000 you paid me.’ My idea was to have Kenkoy in animation, but unfortunately, it failed.”

In some ways, Kenkoy was a satire on the 1920s’ trend to rapidly Americanize the Philippines. Carrying a ukelele, sporting a Valentino hairdo and bell bottoms, and mouthing English slang like “okedokey,” or “wait a minute” with a Filipino twist, Kenkoy was, in the words of noted komiks creator Nonoy Marcelo, “a ludicrous portrait of the Filipino… pathetically trying but barely succeeding in keeping up with his American mentors.”

To Velasquez’s way of thinking, however, the character was Filipino, conceived in the Philippines without outside influences. When I relayed one writer’s feeling that Mickey Mouse was the inspiration for Kenkoy because of some similarities in appearances, Velasquez reacted strongly: “It’s not patterned after anyone. In fact, I had not seen his [Walt Disney’s] Mickey Mouse when I created my Kenkoy. He was in the United States; I was in the Philippines. I beat him [Disney]; he went abroad [died], I’m still alive.”

Roces was quick to add another strip to Liwayway and Velasquez’s workload, Ponyang Halobaybay. Ponyang’s stylish clothing set fashion trends in the Philippines, much as some comic strips of the 1920s were said to have done in the U.S. By the 1930s, Velasquez was an extremely busy man. In 1935, he was made chief advertising artist for Roces’ six magazines, pioneering in the use of cartoons in advertising with a slew of characters — Isko for Esco shoes, Nars Cafi for Cafiaspirina, Castor for Botica Castoria, Charity for Philippine Charity Sweepstakes, etc. He also introduced new characters to Kenkoy, which became separate strips, such as Kenkoy’s parents, Mang Teroy and Aling Matsay, his girlfriend Rosing, his archrival Tirso, the neighborhood dimwit Nanong Pandak, his children, and the adopted Tsikiting Gubat, a clever, non-verbal child who never wore pants.

Others were Tinyente Dikyam, Dr. Wakwak, Saring Bulilit (published in Liwayway Extra), and Detektib Bembo in Hiwaga magazine.

by john. a lent

Strips proliferated in the 1930s, most published in magazines and some modeling themselves after prominent American funnies. For example, Francisco Reyes’ Kulafu, created in 1933 as an adventure strip in Liwayway, owed much to Tarzan, and Procopio Borromeo’s Goyo at Kikay was said to imitate Bringing Up Father. In the mid-1930s, Jose Zabala Santos introduced four characters to Sampaguita magazine – Titina, the Popeye-like Lukas Malakas, Sianong Sano, and Popoy, and two years later, 15-year-old Francisco V. Coching created Bing Bigotilyo in Silahis magazine. J. M. Perez contributed two popular strips to Liwayway in the early 1930s: Abilitat sa Akong, about a Chinese corner store proprietor, and Si Pamboy at si Osang, featuring a henpecked husband and his nagging wife. Abilitat sa Akong was unique in that it carried one panel twice as big as the others and independent of the main story in the episode.

Kenkoy alone among the funnies survived throughout the Japanese

ABOVE: 1970 Nestor Redondo cover painting for one of his CRAF Publications komiks.

Courtesy of Manuel Auad. ©2004 the Estate of Nestor Redondo.

75 CBA V.2 #4

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occupation, continuing to appear in Liwayway, but published by the Japan Information Bureau. Velasquez told me that the Japanese used the character in its health campaign, claiming, “Kenkoy did not get involved in politics or war; just sanitation.” The Japanese also commissioned Velasquez to do a daily strip for the newspaper Tribune. Called The Kalibapi Family, it showed life of Filipinos under the new Japanese social order. Velasquez said there was no public reaction after the war concerning Kenkoy working for the Japanese.

Some of these strips continued after World War Two, either as parts of the general interest magazines (e.g. Velasquez continued doing Kenkoy and Ponyang Halobaybay for Liwayway on a freelance basis) or the newly-born komiks. Also, most pre-war strip cartoonists, such as Velasquez, Reyes, Coching, Borromeo, and Jose Zabala Santos, in addition to a host of newcomers, lent their services to the birthing of komiks.

American comic books brought in by U.S. soldiers during World War Two were the impetus for the development of komiks, the first of which was Halakhak (word that sounds like and denotes laughter). Universal Bookstore owner Attorney Jaime Lucas started Halakhak at the urging of Isaac Tolentino, who became editor. An editorial cartoonist before the war, and guerrilla propagandist during the conflict, Tolentino was working for the U.S. government. Besides humor, love, and mystery stories, the 42-page komik carried an adventure series, “Bernardo Carpio,” about a mythical hero in Philippine folklore. Financial difficulties forced the closing of Halakhak after 10 issues. Velasquez said the komik died for lack of facilities, telling me, “It had no press, only a bookstore owner and publisher, and no finances.”

Enter Ramon Roces and Tony Velasquez again. On May 27, 1947, the duo started Ace Publications with the sole intent to publish komiks.

Velasquez was appointed editor of Ace’s first magazine, Pilipino Komiks, a fortnightly. The initial issue with a print run of 10,000 and a 25-centavo price came out June 14, and featured old strips by Velasquez (“Nanong Pandak”) and Jose Zabala Santos (“Lukas Malakas”), as well as new series such as “DI-13” by Damian Velasquez (brother of Tony) and Jesse Santos, “Ang

Kalabog” by Larry Alcala, “Prinsesa Urduha” by Vicente Manansala, “Kolokoy” by Tony Roullo, “Lagim” by Caguintuan, “Tibong at Tibang” by E. D. Ramos, “Daluyong” by Fred Carrillo, “Makisig” by A. Y. Manalad, and “Ang Buhay ni Aldabes” by Hugo Yonzon.

Velasquez said Roces asked him if he would start a new business, the komiks. “I was flattered,” Velasquez told me, elaborating,”Don Ramon said he’d give me a month to do it. Then, artists were not very busy so I could meet his deadline. Don Ramon told me, ‘I don’t think this [komik] will last; just do what you can about it.’ I kept insisting, ‘This will last, Don Ramon.’ I had already a plan to do my own comics magazine when Don Ramon called.”

For the first two years, Velasquez handled Pilipino Komiks alone, but the staff grew, as did the komik’s popularity, and Ace started other books — Tagalog Klasiks in 1949, Hiwaga Komiks (1950), Espesyal Komiks (1952), and pocket-sized Kenkoy Komiks (1952).

By 1950, others entered the komiks field as publishers. Extra Komiks was brought out by Extra Komiks Publications and manage-edited by Eriberto A. Tablan, who also published Aksiyon Komiks; Silangan Komiks was issued by Ben Cabailo, Jr., and Bituin Komiks by Felix J. Quiogue.

Additionally by 1950, comics supplements appeared in at least Liwayway, Bulaklak, Ilang-ilang, Tiktik, and Sinagtala. Some publishers also issued U.S. comic books. In a September 29, 1964 interview, Chronicle Publishing Company publisher Oscar Lopez told me his company quit publishing American comics with the proliferation of Tagalog komiks. Also, he said, “ so many of the U.S. books we reproduced were brought in by U.S. servicemen anyway.”

The 1950s was described as the golden era of Filipino komiks, turning out increasing numbers of quality works in various genres and nurturing some of the great names of cartooning. One of them, Larry Alcala, who started his career in 1946, with the help of Tony Velasquez, attributed the successes during that time to cartoonists “doing their best work.” In a 1988 interview, he told me, “Cartoonists had love for their work. It was not as commercialized then as now.” The good times unraveled, according to Alcala, when a strike (of the printing industry in 1963) closed Ace: “When that happened, a lot of contributors [to Ace komiks] put up their own books.

With the proliferation of books, quality went down.”

One should not be too hasty to downplay the impact of the 1960s, for, after all, it was the decade of the revitalization of the komiks — a time when new types and genres, including bomba and developmental komiks, appeared, when komiks apparently became a prime vehicle to promote the Pilipino language, when the careers of some of the Philippines’ most famous cartoonists took off, and when the industry reorganized with new companies and titles that survived until contemporary times.

Although types/genres of komiks are discussed later in this article, two are singled out here as products of the 1960s — bomba and developmental.

Existing side-by-side with bomba films, pornographic bomba komiks grew out of the more permissive atmosphere of the decade. They were published

TOP: Dr. José Rizal, Philippine national hero, is often cited the first Filipino cartoonist in the Philippines after he drew “The Monkey and the Tortoise,” in 1885.

ABOVE: The first regular Philippine comic strip, Kenkoy, created by Tony Velasquez in December, 1928. Both courtesy of John A. Lent.