Freedom from Vanity: Independent Comics in the Philippines
Emil Flores

What is an independent comic?

Currently, in the United States the term refers to a comic book (graphic novel or whatever form it takes) published by a company or person not affiliated to the so-called “Big Two” namely DC and Marvel comics. Both companies take the majority of the market share of comics in the US.

Thus, companies like Dark Horse, Image, IDW and Dynamite are still considered “independent” even if these companies are considerably bigger that the “small press” or the self-publishers. There were also the defunct companies such First and Pacific.

A friend of mine currently is working within the Hollywood movie industry and is soliciting my comic book stories. She plans to shop them around to see if any movie producers are interested in optioning them for TV and movie production.

I suggested that we include works from other creators aside from my own and she was open to the idea.

If you are okay with your comic book works being turned into a TV series or a movie, I encourage you to submit.

In anticipation of numerous submissions, I have prepared a submissions guideline to make the process as easy and as streamlined as possible.

Founded by Howard Stark, Stark Industries is currently in the hands of his son Tony, industrialist playboy and genius engineer who also created and developed the Iron Man armor and related technology.

The company is currently accepting applicants. Simply fill out the form found here.

Good luck!

Hazel will be launching the new compilation and doing a book signing at the upcoming Summer KOMIKON this April 17, 2010 Saturday at the UP Bahay ng Alumni in UP Diliman.

Copies of the first book will also be available at the event.

Now it’s the Dark Knight Detective’s turn…and he actually one ups Superman!

According to Heritage Auction Galleries, a rare copy of Detective Comics no. 27 from 1939 where Batman makes his debut has sold at auction in Dallas for more than US$1 million. The comic book sale broke the record for the highest amount paid for a comic set by Action Comics no. 1 just days ago (click here for the article).

Detective Comics no. 27 which featured the first appearance of Batman reportedly went for a cool US$ 1,075,500.00.

The buyer remains anonymous.

Assuming that no mission order suddenly comes up, Ambush will be coming to this year’s Summer KOMIKON, KOMIKON de Avance being held at the UP Bahay ng Alumni in UP Diliman.

Stay tuned for more details!

The reason for all the hoopla of course is that Action Comics was the first comic book that introduced the much beloved superhero icon, Superman and was published in June 1938. Superman was created by American writer Jerry Siegel and Canadian-born artist Joe Shuster in 1932 and was sold to DC Comics in 1938.

Superman has since gone on to “help create the superhero genre and establish its primacy” within the American comic book industry as other similarly garbed heroes (and villains for that matter) with strange new powers followed suit.

According to Yahoo News “only around 100 in existence and that a scant two or three are in a similar unrestored, high-grade condition”.

The buyer of the Action Comics in question remained anonymous.

The page in question is of course from LOLA: A Ghost Story. I also wrote another article about how LOLA is produced with very detailed descriptions of the various steps in the production process.

Click here to read it. Anyway, back to the subject at hand…

Most inkers are thought of as tracers by people not intimately familiar with how a comic book is produced. As a result, we’re frequently thought of as less than the pencillers because all we do is supposedly follow the lines that they’ve already laid down, which is not always the case.

While admittedly there are pencillers who draw in a very tight and clean style leaving little interpretation by the inker, the comic book drawing process is more often than not a collaborative one where both penciller and inker draw upon each other’s strengths in order to produce artwork that tells a story.

The sequence is as follows: 1) Pencils by Elbert Or, 2) inks by Jonas Diego, and 3) cleanup and compositing by Neil Amiel Cervantes.

Click on the thumbnail for the bigger image.

The Pencils

I knew, even from seeing it for the first time, that the page had a lot of potential.

I had Elbert draw a few more people because there was a gaping empty space at the bottom left hand of the page. I just composited the added pencilled people, printed the whole thing in nice stock paper in no-repro red, and pencilled in a few more stuff that I felt that the page needed.

I did some inks here and there for the book and my studio Robo Monkey Pixel Fighters (RMPF) did some of the grayscale (some of Elbert’s students took some of the pages in an effort to meet the deadline). It was certainly an interesting project and a delight to help illuminate J. Torres’s story, especially one such as this that highlight Philippine culture and belief systems and spins it into one entertaining yarn.

I hope that we see more of these kinds of stories in the future.

There have been a lot of kind words online on the book and the illustration. In behalf of RMPF, especially Neil Amiel Cervantes and Katrina Mae Hao who did the grayscaling, we’d like to say thank you by giving you guys out there a sneak peek into how a LOLA page gets produced.

Let’s begin!

It’s bound to be a very interesting discussion and I hope you guys tune in.

I’ll also be talking about the upcoming KOMIKSTRIP: The First UPLB Comic Convention.

If you haven’t done so already, you can also sign up at our official Facebook event page. Click here.

We’d really appreciate it if you can help spread the word but we’d appreciate it even more if you guys can come on over and join us for a day of comic festivities…UPLB style!

The KOMIKSTRIP is presented by the UP BUGKOS and JONASDIEGO.COM in cooperation with the Graphic Literature Guild.

It’s happening on February 13, 2009 Saturday at the New CAS Annex 2 in UPLB, Laguna.

Special guests include Gerry Alanguilan, Manix Abrera, Carlo Vergara, and a whole lot more!

Needless to say, it will be awesome!

Take a trip to the KOMIKSTRIP!