Exactamente ! No doubt, the Golden Age was the 50s-late 60s. During those times there were few publishing houses and fewer titles. Frequency was forthnightly. What’s the implication to quality ? Simple. The talent pool was puro,undiluted, 101% pure unadulterated masterworks that was done with tender loving care, othwerwise, why would I lose interest to local komiks when the Masters went their separate ways and shifted my loyalty to Jim Warren ?

Ginoong Samonte, I think may consensus talaga na ito nga ang maaari nating tawaging GOLDEN AGE. Ito ang panahon na napakagaganda ng artwork sa komiks at walang madalian. Even the komiks themselves were published EVERY TWO WEEKS (as against TWICE A WEEK in the 70s)

The stories are interesting, especially the contemporary creations of Coching, Ravelo, Gomez, and let’s not forget Clodualdo del Mundo as well.

Even if most of what they have written were plot driven, and a little bit on the melodrama side, they still reflected the millieu and the predicament of the country and its people’s sentiment, and therefore meaningful and quite insightful.

That’s why the en mass joining of the women writers in the 70s is one of the HIGHLIGHTS in komiks that we cannot ignore. They revolutionized the writing by tackling new themes, and thus, even Mars Ravelo took a detour in the 70s to be more daring to tackle other subjects that he never touched in the 50s and 60s.

If the drawings and printing of the komiks in the 70s were maintained like that of the 50s and 60s, the golden age would have extended longer. However, despite the good radical changes that took place in the 70s, many schlock writers and illustrators had the chutzpa to arrogantly display crappy work that gave our komiks a black-eye.

Unfortunately, some of those guilty guys are still practicing their profession TODAY of copying things per se (the only different is the title), and sad to say, the unsuspecting readers are being duped, hoodwinked, disrespected.

Fermin, even our National Hero Rizal once said: Filipinos possess an air of insolence.

He-he. We are a nation of arrogant people then. Ouch! Hey, but at least we really have talents to show off to the world.

Basketball? We’ve always shown our talent for that. In fact, during the 1936 Olympics in Germany, Filipinos defeated the highly touted powerhouse Italy 32-14, and romped past Uruguay 33-23. Curiously, the Philippine delegation never made it to the Medal round (due to a controversial ruling) although it had not lost to any team except to the United States with the score of 56-23.

This was very controversial, because the P{hilippiones would have garnered at least SILVER. BTW, due to my air of insolence that Rizal was talking about, I must declare the fact that one of those Olympic players was my uncle Charlie Borck (Spanish/German from Bicol), who was 19 years old in 1936. He’s now retired in Las Vegas, Nev.

I like that idea of using the komiks to sort of bring honor to RP once again, not this sort of thingy about being one of the most corrupt nations in world.

Ouch. This one really hurts and it kinda take some of my air of insolence that our hero was talking about. :)

And maybe it is also worth mentioning that in the early 70s, Australia had no comics at all. It took ROBERT C. BORNAY, a journalist who worked as Editor in Atlas under Mars Ravelo’s term, and brother of Tony Tenorio – TED TENORIO (author of BOOMERANG KID: Pilipino komiks serial, Illustrated by Abe Ocampo), to move to Australia to start comics there. Australia has comics now because two Filipinos dared to start them there.

It is so amazing that the Philippines have always been up there when it comes to “newer things” developing in the world.

In the 20s to 40s, our very own invention, the MANILA PAPER was used worldwide. The ROPE made from abaca also became a standard tool internationally. Even our lowly toy YOYO became a smash hit toy allover the world.

When Hollywood had silent movies, we also had our own. In fact, we had our first kissing scene in the movies when Filipino Film actress Elizabeth Cooper did her first lips-to-lips kissing scene in 1898.

We were ahead on so many things, yet we lagged and lagged for some unbelieveable reasons. That’s why the new generation is our hope to showcase the world our reborn masterful work in komiks, something akin to the 50s and 60s in terms of art and craftmanship, BUT, with great innovations in terms of writing to complete the package. And we can do it. Filipinos are one of the most creative people on earth, and it’s just too bad for me because I am only 12.5% Filipino,
and therefore – only 12.5% creative. :(

Ayan, Inkong KC, kabaligtaran ito ng Hyper, ha? This is more LETHARGIC now. He-he.

From the point of view of majority of komiks readers, komiks is just one of their popular entertainments. They are not arts nor literary connoisseurs who determine the greatness of a komiks nor the “golden age-ness” of a komiks era on the basis of the quality of its stories or visuals. From the point of view of the world, no great Filipino komiks creation has so far made a niche in global psyche. In the US they might be more impressed decades back with the fact that the Philippines has a well-established komiks industry with millions of readers. [Considering that until the 60s perhaps only Japan and Phil had local komiks industry in Asia. China, Korea, Vietnam (and the entire Indo-China), India, and Pakistan were all war-torn. Malaysia and Singapore, on the other hand, were chaotic and on a dilemma whether to merge as one sovereign nation. The Middle East "oil boom" was yet to happen in the 70s.] Knowing how US businesses work, recruiting competent komiks artists from other countries (as they recruited illustrators from the Phil, one of the very few countries where they could actually recruit at that time) is just SOP and depending on the need. Not different from hiring nurses or, as Terry Hatcher said, doctors with diploma from the Phil. While komikeros might have different personal standards for labeling an era as a “golden”, “silver”, “bronze” or even “iron age” it may not be a bad idea to consider other determinants and predictors.