Like I always say, “New Year, Old Demons.”

So, lately, I was thinking about my comics.

I already have stories whizzing around my head. I don’t know if I totally gave up on filmmaking given the fact that comics is a more appropriate medium for my narratives. I mean, with comics, it is generally a lonely pursuit and I love working alone with ghosts trying to disturb me. With filmmaking, you have several egos to deal with plus play around with the purses of other people.

I don’t like to deal with such irritants just yet.

So, comics.

I grew up with them. they are my first love. Make fun and look down on comics all you want but even the stately New York Times wrote back in 2003 that comics will supplant the novel just like the way the novel supplanted poetry at the onset of the Industrial Age. Since we are in the Age of the Internet, it is all about the visuals and comics will just add to a more dialectic experience in the arts.

I was just thinking of my mortality and I have not even begun to write down the stories inside my head. I claim to be busy, which I am, but it is not sufficient reason to ignore my “babies,” right?

So, right now, I have all these sketches…and they’re not on paper but in my head, which is infuriating. Shall I wait for the hubbub of my life to settle down or just get on with it? I think I’ll just start.

If you ask my friends, I don’t use a pencil anymore, I draw directly on paper in ink. It’s not because I am confident but because I am always in such a hurry to finish things. And technology is making it worse.

I now draw directly to the computer using a stylus and some cool and nifty softwares. I am giving myself options to do “paperless art.”

I did this cartoon for a newspaper’s blind item about a socialite who claims she is 38; thing is she was twice-married in the 70s! Perhaps she is a “Promil kid” and was advanced for her age? A child bride?

Anyway, for rush illustration jobs like comic strips, I use the computer. The other night, I was doing my strips and was bored out of my wits. Trying to be humorous is such a hard job. So, I did not want to watch the TV, didn’t feel like reading. So, I took my stylus and drew Addie being scruffy and hard at work.

And this was just a quick sketch.

I think I have not learned to slow down still. Maybe because of rapid successions of finisihing illustrations, I am afraid to start my life projects because I might be in speed mode. So, compartmentalize and slow down are the stop-gap measures for this predicament.

I am tired of sketches, I want to see my work out there already.

“Already!?!”  *sigh* got to learn to have more patience…..

(insert:  Oh my goodness, you HAVE to read the comments of this blog entry!  What a doozy!) 

Hello, people, just dropping a quick one here. Too much stuff going on. Anyway, I just checked my blog for any messages and I had a slightly increased traffic from this blog entry who castigated my recent comic strip.

This is the comic strip in question:

He wrote:

I never thought I’d see this kind of foul language in the Philippine Star. Kids read this stuff, for crying out loud, and you have the gall to publish this garbage? The joke is off-color to begin with, and then you have to use foul language to tell it?

I know the media is never about responsibility, but I didn’t know they’d be THIS irresponsible.

I just left him a message:

hey, thanks for the mention.

“to each his own” is all I could come up with, I guess. It’s the good old adage of one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. One man’s humor is another man’s affront to decency.

No. I am not angry. Please. there are worse things in this world to be indignant about. Like corruption, vote fraudulence, inept and corrupt government officials.

In fact, when I read it, I thought, “Hey, I have readers?!” Seriously.

I was bemused by this. Foul language? this person has not heard me stub my toe.

I have been accused of this before and was raised the “kids read this” card. It’s a broadsheet. It has comic strips, yes, and, more importantly, the kids can just flip a couple of pages and voila….stories of rape, scandals like concubinage, plunder, mass murder, and other despicable criminal acts and news bits.

It is just that insulting thing to posit that comic strips are for kids. which is a disservice to both comic strips as just infantile and to kids’ level of intelligence. So, what are you trying to say? Comics must be an escape? No tackling of gritty reality allowed? Read Garfield. It may not have foul language, but it tells the kids to enjoy Garfield hitting Odie and abusing Jon Arbuckle for kicks. And Garfield is soooooo popular with kids.

My goodness. I have been called “unfunny” and “useless.” So, I’m pretty much used to the mudslinging. But what I don’t get as I scour the blog of the person who riled against me, this guy is a Christian. What did Christ say about judging others?

Anyway, I find it ironic that one of my best friends in the world is an ultra religious Born-Again Christian and IS a fan of the strip. So, HUMOR IS RELATIVE.

Foul language? Hey, kids are encouraged to read the Bible, right? I remember reading it when I was younger. The part that disturbed me when I was seven was when Lot’s wife turned into a pillar of salt and then Lot slept with his own daughters. And there are more. The Bible IS an interesting book, I sleep next to it to read my favorite book of Ecclesiastes to comfort me, and occasionally read some disturbing bits as well.

In a related note, one of my favorite cartoonists Johnny Hart recently passed. He was the creator of the comic strip B.C. and I remember reading a case against him, click the links to get to the “offensive” strip:

When Johnny Hart of Creators Syndicate did one of the episodes of his popular B.C. comic strip in the spring of 1993, he certainly did not think that his innocent joke would send two Indian editors to a Saudi Arabian prison. Balaram Menon, who worked in Jeddah for the Arab News for the past 11 years, on March 7, 1993, allowed a “B.C.” cartoon to be published that Saudi officials felt questioned God’s existence.

Check out witty world for a cache of stupid but oh so true accounts of comic strip censorships. Hey, I’m the Filipino desk editor there ehem ehem.

Anyway, I’m just a cartoonist, I don’t have delusions of being the funniest person ever nor have I an inkling for fame nor infamy. I just beat deadlines and get paid a pittance over something I really like to do. I don’t yearn to have a fanbase and a gigantic merchandising machinery. I seek and hope for substantial discussion and thought provocation in the strips that I do. I respect that guy’s self-righteousness, so please respect my graphic depiction of reality.

To close, I’d like to quote another friend of mine who is infinitely wiser than I could ever yearn to be, “One man’s concept of morality may very well be a whole world’s shackles… self-righteousness beats foul words any day. I’d rather have a filthy mouth than be called a narrow-minded bigot.”

Amen.

—-|||||—-

I just read this.

Kurt Vonnegut is dead.  He is one of my favorite authors.  He wrote black comedy and satire with such prodigious aplomb that the people who belong to the self-titled “normal machinery” as offensive and obscene.  He was a graphic artist and cartoonist, too, by the way.

He wrote and didn’t care what people thought and if people thought he was trying too hard.  He did what he did and now is immortal.

Amen.

I got this message from a friend:

Please patronize pirated DVDs so that the Filipino movie industry will die and we will no longer have actors, actresses nor their spouses running for public office. Please pass.”

But I don’t buy pirated DVDs of Filipino films. Oh Lordy, the elections issue once again. I’m tired of this frankly.

Hey, it’s a democracy, ANYONE can run.  Well, except for those deemed as nuisance candidates….like that moron who wants the country to be annexed back to the United States of America to solve our economic crisis.  D-UH!!!!

If you don’t want these actors and actresses in the political arena, you don’t kill the Filipino film industry (How can you kill a zombie, anyway?). How about the singers who want to be in office? You ask your fellow voters to ask these actors candidates their issues and platform in the government.

Ideally, our elections should be an equilibrium between issues and personality. Evidently, much of the Filipino elections revolve around the latter. Which is truly frustrating.

Now if they answer like this, which by the way is a true account:

Then if this guy gets voted, might as well weep silently in one corner.