a few updates on some new things coming

Been a bit busy, thus not too many new things in the blog. I'm prepping stuff for a new column sort of thing for Vibal Publishing's mediahub the Philippine Online Chronicles. Hopefully I can do it regular enough for it to be a weekly thing. My proposals for the essays, to get a few things started, will be a set of maybe six essays aimed towards komix kritisism, shuffled with essays on what will ultimately be a book on the Eraserheads' Stickerhappy album, where I'll try to situate and analyse the state of Pinoy Pop Music when it took quite a few turns here and there, where it was back then, and where it is today. So lofty!


The first of the essays on komix kritisism will be on Vibal Publishing's very own albumised El Indio by Francisco V Coching, which I'm presently longhanding in bed. This book is a curious artifact, and an important one academic-wise and aesthetic-wise, ie, history-wise, and I'm efforting to show exactly why it's a curious artifact, and why exactly it's important in the historical sense. Here are the first few sentences:

"I always find it strange to be constantly continuously reminding people that komix is art, that komix is lit, as being from a generation and lineage that grew up around komix, it being art and lit was already a done deal - moot and academic - even before I was born, but perhaps people always need reminding lest we forget, and so we get books like Francisco V Coching's El Indio (Vibal Publishing, 2009) quite possibly the one book of this millennium's first decade that will be universally loved and praised by komikeros and critics alike, although for what reasons, exactly? Is it one of those books that we automatically love and praise because it's a classic, an artifact from what is generally considered by most fans and practitioners as the Golden Age of Pinoy Komix, drawn in that distinctly classic/al "Pinoy" way? Do we love it and praise it because it's komix that is quite obviously unabashedly art and lit? Do we love it and praise it because of its inherent historical value? And it definitely has historical value, as most komikeros will see this book once again as impetus for a sermon on how much contemporary komix are without a relevant sense of artistic history, and unfortunately for most contemporary komix, the sermons will be right, and right on the money."

And so it will go for the most part as we effort to inject intelligence and the requisite amount of skepticism into the conversation of art appreciation. We do what we can! Be seeing you. See you around. See you soon.