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Peep this two-part article by Budjette Tan on “The Filipino Contribution to the Comic Book Medium.” Part 1 covers the 1970s to the 1980s, part 2 covers the 1990s to the present.

[via Alanguilan.com]

Just saw Daredevil on DVD. Man, that was one baaad costume. Marvel’s on a roll. What’s next? Well, there’s The Punisher and The Fantastic Four. Other upcoming comic flicks are DC’s Watchmen and Dark Horse’s Hellboy.

Superhero comics have been adapted to film for decades. But what about other types of comics, specifically underground comix? The first of its kind, as far as I’m concerned, is Dan Clowes’s Ghost World which came out in 2000. Its director, Terry Zwigoff, released a 1994 documentary, Crumb, about underground comic artist Robert Crumb’s strange life and dysfunctional family (once, I saw his brother Maxon panhandling on Market St. in San Francisco). This time, one of Crumb’s comic books, American Splendor, gets adapted to the screen and will be shown in theaters on August 15.

Now what I want to know is will Gerry Alanguilan’s Wasted the Movie ever be finished?

Update: upon further reading, I discover that Crumb did not exclusively illustrate American Splendor. The book written by Harvey Pekar has been illustrated by other artists such as Frank Stack, Joe Sacco and Colin Warneford. Also, The Wily Filipino blogged about this movie way back in January.

Over the years in Hollywood, competing studios have managed to release movies dealing with the same subject matter simultaneously. For example, in 1985 we saw Weird Science, Real Genius and My Science Project - movies about teenage nerd scientists - come out around the same time. Then when The Abyss was shown in theaters, The Leviathan was released shortly afterwards. Another example is the Bug’s Life/Antz fuss where Pixar CEO Steve Jobs, no stranger to being copied, accused former Disney executive Katzenberg of stealing his idea and bringing it to his new studio.

Well, Steve Jobs may be learning a thing or two from idea nabbers with his very own The Incredibles set to be released in late 2004. The movie’s trailer, which was first shown on opening day of Finding Nemo, hilariously depicts a retired superhero desperately trying to get his belt around his now portly belly. To me this was something I vaguely remember seeing before. Captain Sturdy, a cartoon revolving around an aging superhero and his obese sidekick, has been airing on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim for quite some time now. In addition, Ren and Stimpy creator John Kricfalusi’s The Ripping Friends, another cartoon about wacky superheroes, is drawn in a similar fashion (big torsos, tiny legs) and has been out for a couple years now.

Oh well, this may well all be a coincidence. I could chalk it up to some sort of “collective consciousness” that produces similar ideas for several people at a given time, but somehow I also have this nagging feeling that some people will always copy others (whether from inspiration or for outright lack of originality) and manage to be dangerously close to being slapped with a copyright lawsuit.

Update: How could I forget? The cartoon Spongebob Squarepants also features aging superheroes: Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy. Mermaid Man is a pink-slippered Aquaman look-alike. Barnacle Boy is his cranky sidekick in a sailor outfit.

I was delighted to correspond with Ariel Atienza, creator of the comic strip West Side appearing weekly in the Philippine News. You can check out his blog here. Thanks for the mention, bro. Thanks also to Ganns for Ariel’s blog link.

Perusing the comic strip section of the Philippine News, I was surprised to find that Mr. Pol Galvez got out of retirement to revive his Sanoy strip. Hoy Dennis, will you follow suit?

The father of my best buddy Dennis gets a write-up in the Philippine News. Pol Galvez drew political cartoons and the comic strip, Sanoy, for the Bulletin Today.