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Feb

4

Talks in February

Filed Under My Comics | 3 Comments

The Comics Talk I had at the St. Peter’s Seminary here in San Pablo last Saturday turned out very well. I didn’t really prepare anything to say. I brought along two folders of artwork, one folder had my art, and the other folder had artwork by the masters. I showed the artwork to them and gave brief background info on each until I finished. I then asked them to ask me any questions about comics they were curious about.

The questions were really fun to answer. They asked me things like how to get started as artists, how long have I been doing comics, where do I get my ideas from, and the question that was rather unexpected… will I make a comics about the life story of my dad?

My father is an instructor at the Seminary, and apparently quite loved by the students. I gave an answer that my dad probably didn’t even expect, who was at that moment, listening to my talk. A lot of my work is inspired by him. And a lot of my experience with him as his son came out in my comics. The ultimate example of this would be Elmer #1.

Without really meaning to, Elmer #1 turned out to be a story of a father and a son. The feelings that I’ve managed to express in that story came from memories and feelings I have about my own father. I was looking at him once in a while during this time, and he was kind of speechless.

He then stood up and told a story that even I didn’t fully know until that time. Of the work I did, a particular story that seems to have resonated a lot with him was my story “San Dig, 1944″ from Siglo Freedom. San Dig, 1944 tells the fictional story of a relative of mine who was a “Makapili” during the time of the Japanese Occupation. “Makapili” basically means a traitor who turns in rebels to the Japanese. My relative also had to contend with a “family curse” that kept our family in poverty for seven generations. By turning on the invaders in the end and sacrificing his life, he felt that it was due restitution for what he had done, and a way to escape the family curse.

The “family curse” as far as my dad has told it ever since we were young, is true. Once upon a time, our family, whose original name was San Gabriel, were cursed to live a life of poverty for seven generations. In the hopes of escaping the curse, our family changed the name to Alanguilan. Nevertheless, our family has lived in poverty for seven generations. It wasn’t until my dad, who was of the 8th generation, who studied and worked hard and dreamed for a better life, did our family extricate ourselves from generations of poverty.

But now my dad was telling me, and his group of students, that we indeed had a relative who was a makapili. That was news to me, and something of a coincidence. I didn’t realize how much that story had meant to him personally. He was particularly proud of the fact that San Dig, 1944 was translated into Croatian in a magazine called “Q Strip” last year.

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I will be having another talk at the end of February at the University of the Philippines-Visayas at Miagao, Iloilo on February 22, 2008.

I’ll talk more about this later this week.

Comments

3 Responses to “Talks in February”

  1. Jaime on February 5th, 2008 2:50 am

    I remember you telling me that story about the ‘family curse’.
    You mentioned something about your original family name being the same as that of our old street address.

    Our old folks sure has interesting stories to tell. Reminds me of that story our uncles and aunties use to say ’bout our ancestor befriending a ‘mananggal’, crazy and weird!

  2. Michael on February 5th, 2008 3:43 pm

    sir gerry is it true na you’re back in inking leinil’s in secret invasion?

  3. Gerry Alanguilan on February 5th, 2008 4:15 pm

    Michael, Leinil did ask me to ink something for him, maybe this was it. But no, someone else is inking him now, I believe. Maybe Mark Morales.