If you wish to contact me for any particular reason, please click here.

Sep

23

Saturday in Manila, Caparas Komiks

Filed Under Philippine Comics | 3 Comments

Waking up at 4 in the morning so I can leave for Manila at 5 am can be a serious pain. I’ve never liked leaving the house that early. I guess it just feels strange. To get to school at 8:00 at least, which would give me enough time to settle down and prepare, I would have to start traveling at 5:00am. That’s 2 hours estimated trip to Manila, plus an hour contingency. Yes, I always have to have an hour contingency. It allows for delays in traffic and such. Every day some idiot is going to wake up and will cause some accident out on the highway, I’m sure of it. I had a schedule mixup at school. My time slot was originally 1-4, but for some reason, I’m suddenly at 9-12, which horrified me initially, because I knew exactly what that would entail.

So for the 2nd week in a row, I’m at school at 7 in the morning, twiddling my thumbs waiting for people to arrive. I entertained thoughts of leaving home much later, like say 30 minutes later at 5:30am. Last Wednesday I left at that time for a talk I had at UST. Such a difference 30 minutes makes! If I had gone to school that day I would have arrived at 9am. I arrived at UST at around 9:15. How can that even be possible? If I leave at 5:00, I arrive at 7 in the morning. If I leave at 5:30, I arrive at 9. I mean… WHAT THE HELL??

But at my second week at Benilde, waking up so early hasn’t been such a hassle because I’ve kind of grown to like the schedule, and I’ve kind of grown to like teaching, so waking up on Saturdays, I wake up just raring to go. It also allowed me to keep my Saturday afternoons open which is good as I’ll also be having a talk at the Lopez Museum on October 13.

Yesterday’s lesson was “The History of Philippine Komiks” from Jose Rizal to Sterling Publishing. Speaking of Sterling, when I arrived at Buendia from San Pablo, I was glad to see a whole bunch of Caparas Komiks on the newsstands, which weren’t there earlier in the week. I think it’s also good that they decided to delay releasing the 2nd batch by a week, to allow people to see and read the first batch. In spite of the massive publicity, I think a lot of people were still caught by surprise by the arrival of komiks, and I think it’s good to give them time to get used to the idea again before continuing the release. I didn’t want to see the preview of the 2nd batch at Azrael’s blog, because I want to see the komiks for the first time on the stands. And when I buy, I don’t just one buy one copy of each title. I buy multiple copies.

I’m thinking of making at least one Sterling title, along with other komiks by other publishers (Like Sacred Mountain, Nautilus, Rising Star, etc), required reading at my class, so we can have a discussion on it.

I’m also extremely glad that one of my expectations about all this is coming true. Because of the large buzz in komiks now, specially the entry of Sterling into publishing, it seemed to have inspired more publishers to invest in publishing komiks. I really can’t talk about it now, as I’ll just let them announce themselves eventually. But I think this is all great.

Comments

3 Responses to “Saturday in Manila, Caparas Komiks”

  1. Nerp on September 24th, 2007 11:40 am

    this is nice, gerry! so how does teaching in benilde feels like? kuwento ka naman.

  2. Gerry Alanguilan on September 24th, 2007 12:46 pm

    Siguro susulat ako about it pag medyo matagal tagal na ako doon. Pero sa totoo lang natutuwa ako. :D

  3. Nerp on September 25th, 2007 10:57 am

    kool, antayin ko yan. ha ha ha