Pounding The Keyboard

"Komiks? Meron pa ba niyan?" --Ruben R. Marcelino, former Komiks Writer Last Friday, 18th of December, me, KC Cordero , Randy Valiente and Ronald Tabuzo met in Quezon City. Randy, finally, was able to hand me the complimentary copy of his Pinoy Komiks Rebyu. If you love local comics, (especially the ones created by GASI and Atlas eons ago) and its artists, you’re going to love Pinoy Komiks Rebyu. It is very informative and very entertaining. Interesting interviews with writers Ofelia Concepcion and Ruben Marcelino can be read in its first issue. Randy publishes it with Fermin Salvador, another former komiks writer back when GASI and Atlas still rule the local comics world. Its roster of contributing writers includes me, KC, Arman Francisco and Jose Mari Lee . You can find copies of the magazine at the following outlets: branches of Comics Odyssey, Popular Bookstore in Tomas Morato, QC. Nameless Shop and Monkeyman, both in Recto, Manila (near Sogo Hotel, Randy’s favor

Last Sunday, December 6, my brother, a brother-in-law and a cousin, for want of better things to do, dragged me to Carmona, Cavite, the home of San Lazaro Leisure Club, the foremost racetrack in the Philippines today. The racetrack had been there for many years now but it was only our third time to the place. We arrived at around one thirty in the afternoon and quickly found out that the food there remained priced exorbitantly. The club was packed with not only the racing program-wielding kareristas but also with their families (their wives and their small children). It was the day of Presidential Gold Cup, the biggest and most prestigious event in Philippine horseracing—the prize money for the winner was a whopping two and a half millions pesos, and one of the horses running in that event was owned by the boss of my brother-in-law. The Presidential Gold Cup ran at around five in the afternoon and was won by a superhorse named Don Enrico, the favorite horse in the race, beating

Last week, an LBC delivery man knocked on our door, bringing me a magazine and a comic book. Since LBC men are famous (or infamous) for their spelling wizardry (they even made a TV commercial showcasing this skill), I put the delivery man to test. “Spell hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia ,” I challenged him. He smiled condescendingly, “It’s easy, it’s spelled L-B-C,” and off he flew on his motorcycle. The magazine he brought me was ASAP! a magazine solely, I think, distributed in England. I wrote a few articles in its first few issues while the comic book was KC Cordero’s Comicspotting, which contained fours stories, three of them illustrated and one in prose. All four stories are very good but my favorite is Kriminal! , a story of a delinquent who after being mishandled by a petty thief cunningly provoked two crooked cops into avenging him—cruelly and unintentionally. It is one of those stories I wish I had written myself.