komiks, manga, organizing, translating and ZOMG the deadline’s today!

I'm currently abusing the benefits of friendship again by trying to do a short term paper for Kom1 in my very good friend Gene Paul's house. "Trying" since I can't seem to put all the things I've read into a coherent and organized piece of crap. I just stare at the screen and the blinking thingy thinking of how to write what I'm thinking. Usually I'd think of a sentence, I'd follow the thought given by that sentence and end up at a dead-end; like, bam! there's nothing more to say. So… I'd rather not think about how sucky my writing process is and I just surf the net (They have blessed DSL!) for more research sources and some more stuff. I hit another problem there since all the sources I see interest me a lot and I only just see that I wouldn't need much of them 'til after I've read them.

I'm doing a term paper on komiks by the way, and I am SO loving it that I can't get it on paper right.

 Anyway, just pardon me as I just ramble on about the subject in order to make sense of everything. (Oh God, we've just downloaded a torrent of Rachael Yamagata's Happenstance and I am lurving it. Hear me? LURVING it!)

Komiks is basically the english word, comics, spelled in Filipino. Okay that's a very crappy and senseless definition and of course there are better ones. The word, Komiks, carries something deeper than that. We can say that Komiks is Filipino Comics and we can pretty much accept Mr. Melvin Calingo's (aka Taga-ilog, writer and artist of Culture Crash's Pasig) definition of it. According to sir Ilog, "Filipino Comics are comics created primarily for Filipino consumption." A very utilitarian definition, he admits, but with the state of komiks nowadays, it sums everything up.

The Komiks industry right now is in the process of revitalization, it's diverse (like the current Magic: The Gathering meta-game. God curse the days of the Affinity Dictatorship.), it's exploring and experimenting on how it will be revived. There is no one art style that would define today's komiks style and the komiks themselves seem to pop-up from nowhere and vanish just as fast. This is pretty much different from the golden days of komiks where the art styles were pretty much very similar that the americans were calling it "The Traditional Filipino Style" and the publishing houses churned komiks out like a machine. So just how different are the Then and Now? A visit to Gerry Alanguilan's Online Museum would give you an idea of the glory of Komiks back then, and a query for indie komiks at a Comic Quest near you(They're usually the small black-and-white ones that are displayed together with the ZsaZsa Zaturnnah, Andong Agimat, and Siglo graphic novels) or better yet, a visit to this year's Komikon (November 17, 2007. UP Bahay ng Alumni) would give you an idea of today's indie komiks movement.

The thing with the current indie movement is that a whopping majority of today's komiks are using the manga-style of art. Now the widespread use of this style in the komiks world has been a subject of controversy. It all boils down to the question: Is the manga style good or bad for the komiks industry?

An old issue about this is the claim that the manga style is totally un-Filipino, it's clearly Japanese. Manga has that quality that separates it from all other styles. There are different styles of manga, Hajime Ueda's (FLCL, Q.Ko-Chan) style is different from Yuu Watase's (Fushigi Yuugi, Absolute Boyfriend); but even if they have differences, their style can still be distinctly labeled as manga. This distinct quality of being "Japanese" is what has the older artists reacting badly towards it.  They fear that today's Komiks will be promoting a culture that is not their own.

 Those who use manga would counter that being Filipino goes beyond the art form used. The manga style is just that, a style. What makes Komiks Filipino is that it has, for a lack of a better term for it (I don't know what else to say), the Filipino Feel to it. The content , the use of the language, the humor, those things are the ones that make something Filipino.

Regarding the Filipino-ness of the art style I think an excerpt from Mr. Calingo's web post would be perfect:

I had a chat with my fiancée once about Filipino comic book artists. I named a couple of artists and asked her if she thinks their works look “Filipino” or not. I started off with Arnold Arre (After Eden, The Mythology Class) - she said No… Carlo Vergara (ZsaZsa Zaturnnah)? Yes… Elmer Damaso (Cat's Trail)? No… Wilson Tortosa (Battle of the Planets)? maybe a little… Me? No… Gerry Alanguilan (Wasted, Lastikman, Superman: Birthright)? Yes… Michael David (Kubori Kikiam)? Yes… She clearly had an idea in her mind what Filipino comic art looks like and yet, when I asked her what it was, she can’t pinpoint what IT exactly is.

I then began to analyze the artworks of the artists. It would seem that the more identifiable the nationality of the characters are in the comic book, the more Filipino it becomes. All of the artists that she said “yes” to, all drew comic characters with highly detailed faces whose features can be easily recognized as Filipinos. (I feel like Adrian Monk, haha!)

It actually makes sense because if you drew a Filipino character in manga style, say Darna, she loses all the identifiable marks that would make her look Filipino. Heck, she’d probably lose all identifiable marks that would link her to a homo sapien. She’d have a clean tapered jaw line, unusually wide eyes instead of small rounded eyes, small lips, and a small pointed nose instead of a flatter one. The over simplification of the manga style (yes, yes, I know, not all manga style art is oversimplified) makes the nationality of a character very difficult to judge… if not next to impossible.

Manga has been so intertwined with the Japanese culture and it was only recently that it made its presence felt globally. This is probably one of the reasons why we automatically assume a comic book character’s nationality, if drawn in the manga style, is Japanese… even if it looks nowhere near a Japanese. I guess it’s even harder still to accept that a “Japanese” looking comic character talks Tagalog, or he wears a salakot and an itak, huh?

With that aside (I think), We come to another issue, that of Filipino Art always follows the trend, never setting it and that this tendency limits one's individuality. From Gerry Alanguilan's  online article on the subject:

In the case of Filipinos, what we create is strongly influenced by what we appreciate, be they American, Japanese, or European forms of art. Because once upon a time Jim Lee was popular, we drew like Jim Lee. Because today manga is popular, manga is what we draw.

 Mr. Alanguilan's concern is that, with the manga fad, a lot of the newcomers get signed during the stage where they are still heavily influenced and haven't found their own style yet. What's important is growth and that it is currently being ignored. A few of the Filipino manga artists have developed their own style that clearly marks it as their own, but most stick to their heavily influenced art styles and that they are limiting their talent by doing so.

He is also concerned about how the old maestros are virtually unknown to the new blood. It would be a waste not to feel their influence and experiment with their style, or at least get to know them. The Comics world isn't all about manga after all.

 So what the hell am I actually saying? Where's my thesis statement? What's the effin' main idea?

From the above and all other stuff I read: it's okay to use manga but it's not the be-all and end-all style of the komikero and komiks.

God I am so going to have trouble with Kom1. I have to take what thoughts I've managed to organize and then translate them to Filipino. Wish me luck!

PS. Anybody want to join the komikon contests? There's the Make the Page contest, the Comic Creation contest, and a Talecraft Story-Creation contest. Hmmm… interesting

references used:

Komikero.com

Tagailog.deviantart.com

http://www.comicbookresources.com/columns/index.cgi?column=oym&article=1768 

http://www.comicbookresources.com/columns/index.cgi?column=oym&article=1777 

http://www.comicbookresources.com/columns/index.cgi?column=oym&article=1777