Monday, October 23, 2006
mood: undefined
music: Planetarium- Plastic Tree
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I already went through the comics I got on Saturday... I didn't get much though, since I lent P100 to Dinxy and I spent the money I saved up on Bino Realuyo's "The Umbrella Country"... Maybe that wasn't such a great choice since not very many people in Rob Novaliches's NBS seem to show much interest in the Philippine Literature section... This was proven by the fact that the last copy of the book I wanted was still untouched on the very top shelf, where I put it weeks before...
Anyway, (I use this word a lot, don't I..?) I've rambled into unrelated territory so here's what I think about my purchases at the Komikon...
Beerlenium (Lyndon Gregorio)- My only non-indie purchase of the day, obviously also the most expensive at 95 bucks... As expected, thoroughly enjoyable... I am pleased... Sometimes it goes into the league of predictable and incoherent punchlines, but mostly keeps with the range of amusing, familiar college humor... Beerkada has yet to fail me...
Pagina (Clovr Studio)- It was a compulsive buy, mainly since it was a one-shot and only cost ten pesos, so being a woman, I couldn't resist a bargain... The plot was mainly gathered from forwarded email messages, so the direction of the story was easily predictable... No shocks, that's for sure... The art was in a cute anime/manga style, nice to look at, but still a tad unsteady... Being an undercover romantic, the story got to me, but the problem was, I've seen it all before... One big cliche thrown in my face... I could practically forcast what would come next in the story... The staff of Clovr studio appears to be a bunch of high school students though, so there's a lot of room for improvement...
I am Lost in Salasco (Monkey vs Squirrel comics- Josel Nicolas)- The dude MJ flirted with..! Haha... Now, MJ was looking at the comics at his stand (or at least I think it was the comics she was checkig out) so I decided to flip through his work... Now Mr. Nicolas was caught up in this huge promotional speech with big words and pretty phrasing... He was mentioning metaphors and socio-political commentaries... I wish I had paid more attention to him since it sounded like he really prepared that promo speech... I wonder how many people actually listened to him... So, I was just turning pages, when he suddenly mentioned something about killing Cueshe in one of the issues... I came to my senses at that, feeling like an idiot at jumping at the mention of the pogi-rock band's name... He went on about other stuff after that, so I decided that if he had that much to say, (stuff that actually made sense, no less) then his comics might be interesting... I was right... The issue that went to me (MJ got the other one) was quite amusing indeed... Truthfully, I had to strain a bit to actually read it, the letters were rather compressed at times... The art style, was not pretty, but I don't mean that in a bad way... It was a distinct style, if not slightly reminiscent of Beavis and Butthead... The humor is of the darker kind, often of social relevance, as Kuya was saying... It's almost anti-racist, seeing as all the characters are portrayed in some ass-ed way... A slight problem is that it gets overly wordy at times, a problem that I myself sometimes have with my writing... It seems out of place in a comic, but adds to the quirkiness of it... I was amused... I look forward to future issues which I hope I can check out... After all, MJ landed a spot as Salasco's distributor... XD
Talikala (Mirida)-
"Kung may isang nilalang na kayang maging ulan
Na nag-uugnay sa langit at lupang
Habang panhon ay hindi magsasama,
Kaya rin ba niyang pag-ugnayin
Ang dalawang pusong
Hindi nararapat sa isa't isa..?"
Ang interesting prospect brought up by Talikala... Honestly, the cover attracted me to buy it... It's lovely... As for the actual content, it was intriguing... The wording style was very poetic and elegant... Perhaps the most literary out of the four comics I bought that day... The art was rather reliant on digital effects which was well done in some instances, but out of place in others... I had a problem with how the people were drawn in some panels, which is probably why so many somputerized effects were added in... It does have its visually stunning mometns, though... But I didn't really get the story... I guess what I can say is that it was presented well, but the execution didn't bear the same quality... But if there are any future works by this team, I wouldn't be opposed to looking into them...
The FU gang has considered the possiblity of producing our own indie comic, but I really don't think we'll be able to follow through... Even though we've had offers of help, our contrasting schedules, time constraints, absence of storyboard ideas and lack of artistic staff will probably keep us from actually doing anything... It's a nice goal, though, and just maybe, FU will breakthrough in the indie comic scene one day... Maybe...
