Babbling Point

Last October, while I was in the UK, aside from getting to meet Alan Moore , I also got to meet Mike Carey, writer of THE UNWRITTEN , and Vertigo editor Pornsak Pichetshote. They were attending the British International Comics Show and they were in the audience of Yuko Shimizu 's talk, the cover artist of THE UNWRITTEN. After the talk, I tried to find the best opportunity to introduce myself to them. But a lot of other people were talking to them and I didn't want to be rude and just butt in their conversation. I finally saw my chance when they broke away from the crowd and went into the men's room. (No! I did not follow them in there!) I waited for them to come out and quickly blocked their way and blurted out: Hi!I'mBudjetteTanfromthePhilippines!AndIjustwantedtogiveYOUacopyofmycomicbookTRESE!ThankYOU! I gave them copies of TRESE and said thanks again. As soon as I walked away, other people came up to them greet them and talk to them. I looked back and saw tha...

Trese – dark mysteries on the streets of Manilla a review by Richard Bruton Trese is a supernatural series starring a female investigator who steps in to protect the streets of Manilla when the police can’t deal with the supernatural weirdness that appears. Produced by Budjette Tan and Kajo Baldisimo, this Filipino book does so much right it’s practically scandalous we haven’t heard more about it here in the UK. ...Trese is definitely from the same mold as Hellblazer, just as it’s writer Budjette Tan is channelling equal parts Jamie Delano and Warren Ellis and artist Kajo Baldisimo does some impressive black and white work somewhere on a scale of Frank Miller and Eduardo Risso. But there’s a lot of other influences in there as well – is it just my prejudices or can I see Alan Davis as well? But the most important thing is that it’s a very impressive take on the whole mysterious magical investigator. Its’ a very original take on an old genre idea. A hugely entertaining series of...

This isn’t really a formal review. It’s just a collection of raves and rants about the movie. Therefore, this is going to have spoilers galore. If you haven’t seen it, then don’t read this. And just to give you enough spoiler space, here's the theme song to the Iron Man cartoon just to give you enough time to go and watch the movie and come back. Ok… moving right along… What I liked about the movie… The fight scene at the race track! What a great entrance by Whiplash. Loved that effect where his overalls just burned up to reveal his make-shift exoskeleton underneath. The way he handled those whips made me wonder if he sidelined as a lion-tamer while he was in Russia. And did that armor really provide him enough protection from being rammed by a car—twice! The suitcase-armor! In the comic book, it was always funny that the briefcase only contained the helmet the gauntlets and the boots. So, it was great that they found a way to make that collapsing armor look believab...

I got this in the mail a couple of weeks ago. It still feels great to receive snail mail; to see a package on your desk with stamps from far away countries, to wonder what might be inside the envelope and hope it's not a bomb or an ancient curse passed on to you. KARAVAN is literary magazine published in Sweden. One of their writers thought of doing a shirt review about Trese and here it is: Many thanks to Anna Gustafsson Chen, who originally reviewed TRESE in her blog: http://baodaobooks.blogspot.com/2009/08/trese-gothic-horror-fast-fran.html KARAVAN http://www.karavan.se/ a literary magazine that travels between cultures

ANG MASKOT by Macoy 48-pages, black-and-white (P50.00) Available at Comic Odyssey and Sputnik Comics If I were to do the Hollywood-pitch for ANG MASKOT, I’d say : it’s WASTED meets ELMER which then crosses-over with CREST HUT BUTT SHOP ANG MASKOT tells the story of what happens when you put a very angry man in a very cute, chicken mascot suit -- someone’s going to get hurt. (Thankfully, nobody gets killed, which is what sets it apart from “Wasted” and “Elmer”.) The story starts with a guy wearing the chicken outfit and he’s seated on the sidewalk, outside of a McBird fast food store. The chicken’s head/helmet sits beside him, ogling at something in the distance. He’s smoking and realizes that his shift is about to begin and the first words out of his mouth is, “Siyet.” He gets called in and is introduced as Jholeebird and the kids mob him. He counts down his mandated 15 minutes, sweating and cursing while inside the chicken suit. At the end of his shift, he stands in the middle of the ...

Where Adam David writes about his Best Books of 2009 for the Philippine Free Press (January 10, 2009) TRESE By Budjette Tan and Kajo Baldisimo (Visprint) A series of slick done-in-one stories, exactly like CSI, only it’s steeped in traditional Pinoy monsters and mythologies and the main protagonist is a goth chick with guns and emo hair. It’s a working off of the more common vein of action horror comic books and once you really read into it there is certainly a formula to the construction of the stories themselves. But Trese manages to rise above it all above it all by simply resorting to the most obvious thing: it spins us a good yarn page in page out. Tan and Baldisimo show us what can be done with formula, why formula work, how formula can work for you, all the while not making it seem like formula. Komikero all over should not only read this for the words and art but also study it for its craft as there is certainly craft at work here. There are currently two books out, both utterl...

EJ, Alex, John have already produced and uploaded 12 episodes of their comic book review show. Really great that the guy decided to review TRESE in this episode. Many thanks! Download the show at: http://treskomikeros.wordpress.com/2008/12/05/tres-komikeros-14/

THE ISLAND OF DR. ELLIS I was in FULLY BOOKED last week and wasn’t really planning to buy anything (yeah … right!) when I picked up Warren Ellis’ STRANGE KILLINGS: NECROMANCER. Even though I’ve been a big Ellis fan ever since his Stormwatch run, I haven’t really bought every single thing he’s written. So, I flipped to the back of the book and read the blurb: Finally, all six issues of the zombie epic Necromancer collected into one volume! Warren Ellis’ cult hit STRANGE KILLINGS is back with “combat magician” William Gravel’s most gut-wrenching mission yet! Deployed to a steaming Philippine island, Gravel’s assignment is to assassinate an investigative reporter about to expose a chemical weapon lab sanctioned by the British government. A Warren Ellis character in the Philippines? Well, I just had to read how he portrayed our “steaming islands”. As mentioned in the blurb, William Gravel is a “combat magician”. Gravel is what you get when you combine the Punisher and John Cons...

YOU KILLED MY MASTAH! NOW I KILL YOU! Well, that line isn’t really said in THE IMMORTAL IRON FIST: THE LAST IRON FIST STORY, but Danny Rand does say, “I know kung-fu! Hi-yaa!!!” TIIF:TLIFS (aka the really kick-ass Iron Fist story) written by Ed Brubaker and Matt Fraction with art by David Aja (and whole lot of other artists who do the flashback scenes) was something I finally got to read it over the weekend thanks to Ian “I’ve got Neil Gaiman’s home address and you don’t” Sta. Maria. I first got interested with this title when I heard Matt Fraction and John Siuntres talk about over at Word Balloon . Then I read rave reviews about it at the now-defunct Major Spoilers site. I was never really a fan of Iron Fist, but I do remember buying the last POWER MAN & IRON FIST comic book where Iron Fist died (and like all Marvel characters, they just won’t stay dead. Hey! Is that Captain America I see crawling out of his grave?) Well, that doesn’t matter. Readers who don’t know a thing abou...

Harry Potter + Sliders + Peter Pan + 1960s X-Men + Green Lantern Corps = INTERWORLD Well, it’s not as bad as it sounds. It was a fun read for the most part. Well, maybe it was because I identified with the character so much. Joey Harker is a boy who’s “directionally challenge”. He got lost in his own house. (Same way I got lost in my own neighborhood. And I still get lost every time I go in Glorietta. I never know which corridor will bring me to Filbars and which one will bring me to G4.) Anyway, so Joey Harker gets lost in his own town and ends up in an alternate reality and ends up meeting other J/o/e/y Harkers from other realities. He gets recruited to they’re mission, which is to protect the rest of the multiverse from the forces of magic and science. The other more interesting story is how this story ended up becoming a novel. Neil Gaiman talked about it in his blog ; how INTERWORLD was originally supposed to be pitched as an animated movie (and they tried to pitch it to Dreamwor...

RIDERS OF THE STORM I bought the very first STORMWATCH because I was Jim Lee fanboy. It had an interesting premise of a team of super-powered soldiers sanctioned by the United Nations. Of course, I was disappointed when I found out Jim Lee only did the cover and the inside art was nowhere near as good as Lee’s art style. The stories also felt like I was reading the rejected scripts of “Street Fighter the Movie”, where we just see costumed wrestlers fighting in different parts of the world. The next time I picked up STORMWATCH was their 37th issue , when Warren Ellis and Tom Raney took over the series and I was not disappointed with that run. Ellis made the team for ruthless and made them battle deadlier threats with delusions of bringing about a better world and inject a conspiracy angle that made you not trust Weatherman One, the commander of Stormwatch. Ellis eventually pushed the title towards the direction of the wide-screen, action-packed stories of THE AUTHORITY. The Stormwatch n...

. Signal No.1 How do you introduce a new superteam? Start your issue with a burning building full of people that need rescuing or have a group of terrorists hold a building hostage. This allows the new superteam to flex their super-powered muscles and show-off how great they are without getting injured or getting their asses kicked by the main villain. The new LEGION recently did this schtick. The JUSTICE LEAGUE during the 80s did the hostage thing. THE YOUNG AVENGERS did the burning building and hostage situation all in one issue. And almost every Alamat book in the late 90s that featured a superteam did the whole hostage situation thing. (God bless us all!) Anyway, this is all a segue to “What is a good example of a first issue of a new super team?” Well, I’m glad you asked. Below is an article I wrote about Warren Ellis’ “Stormwatch”. In 40-pages, Ellis was able to set-up the world of Stormwatch, introduce the new characters, tell you what they’re all about, and well… he did put in ...