When I started Geek Tragedies, many years ago in the early to mid-Noughties, there wasn't much sci-fi and fantasy being published in the mainstream literary publications locally. It's because of this that I believe this collection would never become a book. I thought I would eventually be selling it as an indie thing in some form or other, but I never thought a major publisher would pay it any mind. But on the urging of three writers and teachers that I admire, Jing Hidalgo, Butch Dalisay, and Jimmy Abad, I submitted the book to the UP Press.

When I got word of its approval, and my mind is a little hazy now which came first, but I remember that Adam and I either had worked on or were planning to work on Kobayashi Maru of Love together. My head's a bit messed up with the timelines, but I knew that Adam was the best guy to design the book. And when he told me that Josel Nicolas was onboard for it, I knew that it would be something. I had sort of worked with Josel before, in a project where Adam asked writers for text and he matched it up with artists' works, and he matched up Josel's komix and my writing. Also, Josel had done the art for the six-word stories I wrote, and I was fully confident that these guys would deliver something awesome.

What I wasn't expecting, and what I got, was the perfect design and art for Geek Tragedies. I didn't come up with the ideas here. Sure I threw some thoughts around, the idea of comics, of it really looking different from everything you see on bookstore racks, of a really comic book/pop sense to it. But when I saw the final designs I was just blown away.

My writing is largely homage-based. I take stuff I love, throw it in a blender in my brain, and come out with something that's kind of broken down and mixed all those things up, but I hope is still pretty yummy and satisfying. The art reflects that, taking my stories, my sensibilities, and mixing them with something that all three of us, Adam, Josel, and I, love.

I love Marvel comics. I love DC comics too. But when I was a kid, while all you smarty-artsy readers were reading Sandman and Watchmen and become enculturated by Alan Moore and Grant Morrison, dude I was hanging back admiring Jim Lee's X-Men (ok, granted now that we read it it's kind of, well, bleh, but as a kid it was massive fun) and learning about Spider-Man and the Avengers and all that. I wasn't too keen on the "smart" comic books, I wanted action and superheroes. And so when it was classic Marvel that Adam and Josel drew from, they had read my mind. But also, they took those classic covers, and they tried to add levels of realism and narrative by imposing a new kind of story and movement which did not exist there before. And that's the similar work I attempt to do in my stories.

All of this really is to say that Adam and Josel hit this one right out of the ballpark. There wasn't any question that they would come up with something outstanding, but they were not only outstanding in an aesthetic sense, but also a conceptual sense. And wow man, you can't ask for anything more than that when someone is interpreting your work.

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Here's me (Adam David) talking about it.

As Carljoe Javier's debut short story collection GEEK TRAGEDIES nears its print release - supposedly around the first week of July 2011 - I would like to write more than a few words about the book, only not about the book itself per se - I already did that in my intro for the book (yes, I wrote the intro for the book) - but about how Carl, Josel Nicolas, and I went about designing the book.

I've been friends with Carl for a little more than half a decade when he decided to compile what pretty much turned into GEEK TRAGEDIES. I worked on the book back-to-back with his second book THE KOBAYASHI MARU OF LOVE, a book of essays about getting over heartbreak. KOBAYASHI was more or less drafted, drawn, and done in a little less than a month, more because besides being the main designer, I was also the artist, and the artistic workload for KOBAYASHI wasn't as intense as GEEK's - I will write about designing KOBAYASHI somewhen in the future, but in short: I planned and drew everything inside of a week, half a dozen plates, and finetuned them as I was working on the initial draft of the layout.

Compare KOBAYASHI's half-dozen plates to GEEK's fifteen major plates, pencilled and drawn by the ever-professional ever-good Josel Nicolas, fresh out of college and looking for a job, and ways to fill his portfolio, GEEK being one of them (haha), plus the half-dozen bits and pieces like the profile art stuff and the paragraph breakers and endmarkers, etc etc, and I had to not only colour all these things but also design and lay them out and sometimes even letter them - it is not too much of an exaggeration to call GEEK TRAGEDIES as one of my most intense - and most fulfilling - design jobs ever.

The easiest (and quickest) part of designing GEEK was the initial planning: my book design impetus has always been to let the book's contents dictate the design, from the first few zines I did with UP UGAT up to asking my mom to stitch-up a house for Chingbee Cruz's ELSEWHERE HELD AND LINGERED cover reprint. I'd been privy to Carl's fiction for about as long as I'd known him, most especially his more recent stuff, when he ultimately ditched his Ultra Pinoy Realist Mode (in the Dalisay sense) and embraced his Ultra Geek Fantasist Mode (in the BIG BANG THEORY sense), so I was familiar with nearly all of the pieces compiled in GEEK, so deciding what to do with GEEK's book design was quick and easy - from coins to stamps to baseball cards to cartoons to comic books to video games, pop culture geekdom has always been majorly defined by nostalgia for ephemerical mainly American esoterica, and this is truest and purest and loudest and proudest in comic book geekdom, and so: GEEK will employ the distinct visual idiom of American comic books.

I thought the perfect American comic book company to homage would be early Marvel Comics, as compared to early DC Comics, early Marvel Comics portrayed the alienation, isolation, the pure unadulterated j'accuse misunderstanding that geeks feel they receive from society at large, ie, geek tragedies. Once this was settled, pairing what comic book covers to which story was very very very easy, as like most comic book readers, I more or less possess a photographic memory when it comes to early Marvel Comics covers (and to be honest, the covers we used for GEEK's design aren't too obscure, in fact are the more iconic/famous covers rendered by the more better-known artists in Marvel's history).


And so I went through a couple of internet comic book databases and found the covers I was looking for. As I collected the covers, I was also thinking about the possibility of tying all of them up into one coherent narrative, a narrative other than their pairings with the stories, a narrative all their own, to basically turn them into a continuing serialised story. And so I thought putting in recurring characters in the GEEK homages would be the (easy) way to inject a narrative, and so the three main characters were born.

The three characters were (obviously) based on famous Marvel characters, but also were based on what I thought were the three main geek archetypes Carl was portraying in his stories:

THE BOY WEAVER was based on Spider-Man, meant to portray the sensitive writer geek.

THE INDELIBLE DORK was based on the Hulk, meant to portray the bumbling, socially-inept geek.

THE IRON MAC was based on Iron Man, meant to portray the techie geek, with Mac being Carl's choice of tech.

Josel Nicolas has always been (and will always be) my first choice as artist in the book's interiors. Josel and I already share a pretty good, pretty streamlined working relationship based on quite a few projects we both shared, some of them seeing print as books, either as yet again the main designer (like in Fox Books's horror antho PALALIM NANG PALALIM, PADILIM NANG PADILIM, edited by Beverly Siy, the first book Josel and I worked on together) or as colourist (in DOC BRICK, Josel's cancelled serial in kiddie magazine KZONE), so, like in any worthwhile collab work, Josel and I both already developed a conversation shorthand when we talk about art and comic books, ie, when one is saying something, the other knows what it is about even when it is vaguely said.

And so I eMailed Josel some rather vague notes paired with the comic book covers I downloaded from the net and in two weeks' time, after a few suggestions from Carl and me, Josel had eMailed me the fourteen plates, all pencilled and inked (in fact, the GEEK plates are quite possibly one of his last few pencilled-and-inked drawings, as nowadays he almost exclusively draws everything in pentab), and it was my turn to work on them.




I coloured them first, first hewing closely to the original covers' colour scheme, see if they still work design-wise. Colour harmony is one of the trickiest things in design, and when you're colouring an image that easily has more than four loud colours in it, making them not clash - or more often in comic books, clash louder - intentionally is an art in and of itself. Again, as someone who grew up reading and loving comic books, I love obnoxious drawings with loudly flat pastel colours that clash starkly on the page (comic book colouring, even at its most garish, establishes a certain harmony that is undoubtedly unmistakably its own) so colouring Josel's drawings, even if/when very time-consuming, was one of the happiest things I've ever done in front of my computer (haha).


And normally, even when I had the main colours locked in, when I put in the GEEK TRAGEDIES title banner, I had to readjust more or less the entire image, and then readjust the title banner again, and then readjust the entire image again, etc etc, in a repeating cycle, up until I achieved what I felt was image harmony. And this tug-of-war doubled and tripled when the image called for things other than the title banner, like word balloons and captions and decals and whatnot, all of which need their own readjustment and recolouring in tandem with the title banner and the main image.


And the biggest joke about all this work designing and colouring and lettering everything is that aside from the front and back covers, none of the plates will be printed in colour, as GEEK's interior pages are in black-&-white. And so, yet again, further readjustments were employed to make them look good in black-&-white. Keep in mind that all this work was done in full knowledge of this fact - I felt that the entire long and winding process of everything was necessary to come up with exactly the kind of work we eventually came up with. At the very least, Josel and I are better artists because of it! At the very least, we have fourteen potential tshirt designs we can print and sell and earn money from. Also: local eBooks publisher Flipside will be releasing GEEK TRAGEDIES as an eBook for the iPad and Kindle and whatever Droid gadget you may have, with all of the art in their full-colour majesty! So all is not lost.

And this was how Carljoe Javier's GEEK TRAGEDIES' design was planned, drawn, coloured, and laid-out, and after nearly a year, the book will be out on the shelves care of the UP Press.

Here are the GEEK plates, with the original Marvel Comics covers, with some commentary.

Here is my original eMail to Josel, outlining the design plan.

All the homagey art pencilled and inked by Josel Nicolas and coloured and assembled by me.

The GEEK TRAGEDIES title banner, based on the FANTASTIC FOUR logo.

THE FANTASTIC FOUR #1, art by Jack Kirby

The cover for GEEK TRAGEDIES, based on the first issue of THE FANTASTIC FOUR, as drawn by Jack Kirby. I have flat out forgotten what the SBC in the monster's jersey stands for, but the monster is supposedly a caveman jock monster spin on Moleman's subterranean giant. The author's photo is a reference to the old EC Comics design aesthetic. I drew the UP Press logo at the bottom right. This underwent a lot of recolouring, the latest being just last week.  Narrative-wise, I love how utterly non-sequitor this cover is in relation to the book's interior, it's really just all about the geek angst.

THE AVENGERS #1, art by Jack Kirby

The plate for my intro to the book, appropriately an intro to the main characters of the drawings. Trying to play up the geek stereotype of not knowing how to please a girl, with Venus's word balloon and Iron Mac's somewhat depressed reading of MEN ARE FROM MARS WOMEN ARE FROM VENUS. Also confronting geeks with overt sexuality via the nakedness and the packet of condoms on the bedside table.

THE FANTASTIC FOUR #51, art by Jack Kirby

The first story in the collection is a clarion call to geek alienation, thus the appropriate cover to homage ought to be the Thing's solo melodrama obra "This Man, This Monster" only with Carl replacing Ben Grimm. I don't remember whose idea was it to have Carl be naked in the train station, but seeing it right now, it strikes me as something very appropriate, heightening the alienation and the loneliness and the general hard luck vibe of the story.

THE FANTASTIC FOUR #275, art by John Byrne

The plate for a cosplay story, narrated by a young woman dressed up as an LOTR elf. The hobbit is later revealed to be one of the main characters. For some reason, Josel drew the character to look a bit like Miles Strom from the TV series LOST. In keeping with the narrative thrust, the woman in blue is Venus, from the intro plate. This was fun to colour.

THE X-MEN #49, art by Jim Steranko

Based on one of the too few X-MEN covers by Steranko, a personal hero of mine. The story was about insomnia, so I thought it'd be nice to have one of the main characters reclined and having trouble sleeping, so we had this guy trying to sleep, with images of his exes troubling him. I thought Josel did a great job with rendering the face here, and I love the small detail of the garter belt along the Storm character's thigh. Again, subtle overt sexuality.

THE UNCANNY X-MEN #135, art by John Byrne

Riffing on the story title and the stereotype of the girl who doesn't understand geekdom and thus strives to eradicate it, as shown by the Dreamgirl holding up comic book pages that she had previously ripped apart, much to the dismay of the main characters. Josel tried giving the girl a cameltoe and some prominent nipples. It didn't work as well as it should have, as Josel still had no idea how to draw women back then. I thoroughly enjoyed putting the Kirby Krackle here and colouring the Hulk character weeping green tears.

THE FANTASTIC FOUR #49, art by Jack Kirby

The plate for a horror story, thus the evocation of cosmic horror in the giant cosmic god of death face floating in the sky. For the peeps who do not know, "Bloomsday" is a Joyce reference to the day when ULYSSES was set, June 16. Joycean scholars around the world celebrate the day every year with fora and conferences on Joyce, which they call "Bloomsday." JP Cuison also homaged this cover in the first issue of the komix vulgarity effort PUNNX KOMIKS. I really enjoyed colouring this one.

THE FANTASTIC FOUR #16, art by Jack Kirby

This was one of the least immediate cover ideas, but as soon as I saw the FF cover, I thought that it was perfect for this story. Josel outdid himself with the inking of the character's face, the anxious paranoid Ditko eyes, and the Kirby Krackle by the computer. "Gorram" is a FIREFLY reference.

IRON MAN #128, art by Bob Layton

One of the more obvious cover homages, this was by far for me the most pitch perfect in the homage:story ratio. I love the heartbreaking crestfallen pantsshitting loneliness apparent in Carl's face in the reflection. I love the play in absence-presence in this cover, the mild Narcissus reference. More artists ought to use reflections as a design conceit.

THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #129, art by Ross Andru

Yet again one of the most obvious homages. Josel gave this to me in parts, which I then assembled. For some reason, I'm really proud of the crosshairs that I did in Photoshop. The Spider-Man character is supposed to be a writer, so that's his Moleskine fluttering away from his arm's reach. I enjoyed colouring this.

THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #50, art by John Romita, Sr

Yet another no-brainer homage. The story is a bit of a downer, set on a street corner. The street corner portrayed here is the corner of Kamias-EDSA-Kamuning, with the character crossing EDSA from the Kamuning side, near where Carl lives. Notice the Moleskine jutting from behind his pants.

THE X-MEN #50, art by Jim Steranko

Based on the other Steranko X-MEN cover. This is also a not-too-subtle Suydam homage. I love the simplicity of the colouring of the original, which I tried to reflect here. I love the Iron Man character's pleading terrified look here. This remains as one of my favourite drawings by Josel.

TALES OF SUSPENSE #39, art by Don Heck

One of the few plates that don't really jive with the story they accompany, aside from the basic "he's off to an adventure" thing this image evokes. I had great fun with the (for some people) stealth reference to the 60s-era Iron Man cartoon. Here it is revealed that the hobbit cosplayer from before is actually the Iron Man character. And if it's still not obvious, the Iron Mac's costume - or at the very least the helmet - is made from the late 90s/early 00's Mac desktops.

THE X-MEN #138, art by John Byrne

Yet another completely relation-less plate, just Carl walking away from geekdom. For some reason, the red Livestrong rubber bracelet switched sides somewhere between the arcade image and this one. Favourite detail: how bummed out Super Mario is about Carl leaving.

GIANT-SIZE X-MEN #1, art by Gil Kane

What may be one of the most homaged cover ever if not THE most homaged cover ever. The exes return here, one with pregnancy, the other with Meralco bills, one more coming from a shopping spree. Having characters burst out from the book interior, through the cover and (theoretically) on to your face is one of the best most pro-active design conceits I've ever seen. More people should do this.

THE AVENGERS #4, art by Jack Kirby

The outro plate, a bookender, meant to be an epilogue of sorts for the images' narrative. The Spider-Man writer character is now in a beatnik get-up with three Palanca medals around his neck, the Iron Man character is now a flamboyant iPad, the Hulk character is now a mature sophisticated hooligan (basically Hulk's "Mr Fix-It" character, recoloured), and Carl - now having embraced his geekiness - is a superhero himself.

The author profile photo for Carljoe Javier.

The artist profile photo for Josel Nicolas. The bear giving up the ghost by his feet is Bear, Josel's surrogate in his autobio komix WINDMILLS.

The designer profile photo for me. By my feet are some holes and a Whackamole mole. This was when I still had long(ish) hair.

The Kirby Krackle, acting as copyright page in the book.

The paragraph breaks, as per Carl's suggestion. I also used this as a sort-of classification tool, a subtle announcement on what sort of story it is the reader is reading: a "writerly" story if the Spider-Man character, a "techie" story if the Iron Man character, and a "socially-inept" story if the Hulk character.

The story end indicator, an homage to the old Marvel Comics side banner faces which they did circa late 70s/the whole 80s/early 90s.

The back cover of the book. When read with the front cover, it is also a three-panel opening story. The UP Press has a design conceit where they cut the back cover in thirds, the top tier featuring a detail of whatever the front cover art is, the second tier holding the book's blurbs, the third tier being a generally blank space for maybe another blurb and the barcode. Being a smartass, I decided to play around with that conceit, sort of bending it a bit, claiming poetic license. Dean Alfar's blurb - the blurb I love the most - is inside the book, on the first page, acting like an intro, cradled in the hands of a cosmic god of death. Hopefully, they won't change a thing.

Ayan, Josel, ideas for the drawings. Kahit iba-iba yung style nung source images, oks sana kung yung gagawin mo ay Kirby-style lang talaga. Ignore all the text bits, and size the drawings to be proportioned to a 6x9 page.

The idea is to have the illustrations as splash pages for the stories, a la yung mga classic scifi fantasy paperback anthos, pero ito comics ang aesthetic imbis na woodcuts and art deco, etc. so dapat talagang, wow, explosive yung art, jumping off of the pages, etc etc.

Gusto ko sana magkaroon ng matinong main thoroughline yung buong libro with the art, so meron tayong recurring characters sana, kahit di naman sila recurring talaga sa stories. Yung punto kasi, archetypal yung geeks sa mga kuwento, at lahat sila merong superhero ambition, tas more often than not, yung superhero ambitions nay un ay pare-pareho, yung fantasies nila ay pare-pareho.

Sa buong thing, meron tayong basically THREE MAIN CHARACTERS na susundan sa buong libro:

SPIDER-MAN – The sensitive writer geek
INCREDIBLE HULK – The ill-tempered science nerd
IRON MAN – The snooty techie dork – dito lang ako me ideya: yung chest light hole thing niya, gawin mong logo ng Mac. Kung kaya mo, gawin mo yung buong hitsura niya ay mukhang designed ng Mac.

Naturally, knock-offs ang mga yan, just design them na suggestive enough na kapag me makakita na kahit sino, alam nila kung sino yung mga yun kunyari, pero naturally different enough na di naman magmumukhang ginaya mo lang sila. Tas sana mga maskulado talaga sila, mga elegante, mga bombastic, para WOW talaga.

Dun sa mga illustration, me mga bits diyan na me mga babae – sana irender mo sila na lagging seksi, lagging magaganda, malalaki boobs, etc, kunwari yung geek ideal ng babae, siguro ihawig mo ke Caprica 6 o Starbuck yung isa, o pareho sila, ikaw bahala, basta ganun.

At yun po! Gudlak sa paggawa. Me bayad naman ito, pero di ko alam kung kelan darating, kung mabilis ba, kasi gobyerno ito, e, so ewan ko talaga. Malalaman natin, I suppose. At any rate, magandang project pa rin naman ito.


Intro – AVENGERS ASSEMBLING
Replace THOR with the SPIDER-MAN character, maybe swinging a lasso made up of web-fluid. Yung gusto ko sana dito, BABAE ang gawin mong LOKI dito, pero sana huwag si LOKI. DI naman ganun kaimportante kung sino, sa totoo lang, kasi di naman kita ang mukha, pero basta gawin mong babaeng seksi na merong super-villain vibe … or maybe hubad na babae na lang? scale her in such a way na mas makikita na hubo siya? Ikaw bahala, basta ang punto ay TAKOT at GALIT ang male geeks sa babae.


Sexbomb – GIANT SIZE X-MEN
Dito, replace the XMEN with THE SEXBOMB DANCERS na SUPERHERO MUTANTS!!! Tas sa background, yung sina CYCLOPS, dapat yung TATLO NATING BIDA yun.


Dream girl – DARK PHOENIX
A giant crazy-eyed girl na either half-naked ang costume of tight-fitting to suggest nakedness, or both. Basta some towering Amazon-type na crazy woman, tas in her hands maybe she could be ripping-up some comic book pages? Tas yung mga tao sa paa niya, again, our trio.


Fragmaster – PUNISHER SPIDER-MAN
Gawa ka ng some typical gamer dork – mataba, hairy, me potato chips pa sa paanan niya – na nakacostume halfway-worn as MASTER CHIEF, tas me bitbit na high-tech armalite from HALO, tas yung binabaril niya sa sights niya ay yung SPIDER-MAN character natin.


Ears don’t fit – FANTASTIC FOUR SHE-HULK
Dito naman, yet another Amazonian woman replacing SHE-HULK, some sexy alluring et al girl, na nakacostume na Arwen or whatever from LORD OF THE RINGS, tas – at importante ito – dapat kita ang elven ears niya. Tas sa harap niya, replacing the hairy-looking guy na kamukha ni PUCK, ay yung IRON MAN character natin, only NOT WEARING HIS ARMOR, instead wearing a HOBBIT COSTUME!!!!!!!!! Tas yung magazine na pinapakita niya, FHM na merong centrefold nung SHE-HULK girl. Ayun po.


Dino’s awesome – IRON MAN WEARING SUIT
Dito naman, basically sequence nung IRON MAN character putting on his suit. Only detail na nagmamatter ay sana ilagay mo sa paanan niya yung HOBBIT costume, para mas malinaw lang na siya yun.


Street corner – SPIDER-MAN NO MORE
Yung SPIDER-MAN character natin out of costume tas yung superimposed na SPIDER-MAN is him in costume, so the same naman talaga. The only additional details ay sana sa foreground ay merong discarded moleskine notebook with torn and/or flapping pages in the wind, tas me ballpens na nakatapos rin lang sa tabi, putol or whatever, basta discarded. Tas sa right nung image, merong street sign, so asa STREET CORNER siya, asa CROSSROADS. Siguro yung street name gawin mong KAMUNING at JUDGE JIMENEZ? Ganun sana.


The sniffles – FANTASTIC FOUR DOCTOR DOOM
Yung HULK character natin replacing DOCTOR DOOM, tas mula sa ilong merong sticky snot na lumalabas, as in uhog galore sana, slimy slow kadiri talaga, tas sa kamay niya, even more of the slime … pero sana ang lahat ng ito ay suggestive of MASTURBATION. Siguro sa likod lagyan mo ng TV na merong porn na palabas, pero blurry sana, o siguro me mga poster ng mga half-naked girls – basta, things to suggest nab aka tamod pala yun at hindi uhog.


Flickerfadegone – IRON-MAN DEMON
Imbis na mirror, sana screen ng arcade game, tas sa screen, nakasulat na GAME OVER in pixelated letters – puwede nang ako gumawa nito – tas me reflection ng some guy na SANA AY BLATANTLY LOOKING LIKE CARLJOE JAVIER, AS IN KAMUKHA TALAGA NI CARLJOE JAVIER IF NOT SI CARLJOE JAVIER SIYA MISMO. Tas imbis na helmet ni IRON MAN, sana A BAG OF POTATO CHIPS!!!!!! Tas imbis na bote ng alak yung nasa tabi, sana 2-LITER NA BOTE NG COKE!!!!!!!!!!!!! Tas dapat yung mukha rin ni Carl sa reflection ay talagang crest-fallen rin na nagame-over siya.


Outro – AVENGERS BOUNCING
Dito, replace GIANT MAN with SPIDER-MAN, tas replace THOR with HULK, tas si IRON MAN si IRON MAN, tas ngayon me bago na silang kasama, na basically ay si CARLJOE JAVIER IN COSTUME!!!!!!!!!!!! Maybe a CAPTAIN AMERICA analogue, mix ng AMERICA at PINAS sana na iconography, kasi FIL-AM si CARL, e. So parang CAPTAIN FILIPINO-AMERICAN!!!!!!!! Yung ganun ba. Basta, make it iconic.


At ayun po! Sana me sense naman ang mga ito. Enjoy ka lang, naturally. At salamat talaga.


- Adam

Now that we're at the halfway point of 2011, AKA in my room "the tenth-year anniv of my writing thing," I thought it was a good time to re-upload some choice texts from the decade's production.


First are my solo books:

Instructions for the Inclined
a writing manual and an autobiography

The El Bimbo Variations
a Pinoy deployment and engagement of
Oulipian constraints turned into a writing manifesto

Texticles
a collection of dagli

The Long Weekend
a komix romance novel

Crows & Rages
a manifesto on plagiarism, a reconsideration
of contemporary Pinoy poetry

ITEM MITE EMIT TIME
an eons-spanning scifi nivola

we sing the wind's caress on our skin
a meditation on tourism and travel writing


Second are some of my collab stuff:

Crumbs!!!
the first ever Pinoy hypertext
I know of, circa 2001, in collab
with Indira Endaya

High Chair Special:
the Maguindanao Massacre
parts one, two, and three
problematised art's worth
in the face of inhumanity,
co-edited with Conchitina Cruz

The Kritika Kultura Anthology
of New Philippine Writing in English
problematised the new, and its
place in literary production
co-edited with Conchitina Cruz
and Mark Anthony Cayanan
(audio of the launch here)


Third are some miscellany:

The Free Press Nine
this is what happens when
you give me newspaper space

sais: six-word stories anthology
writers and artists tell stories
told in six words and a page of art

*snip*
a body horror torture porn hypertxt

Atsay Killer, Part One: Tender Bottom
a BDSM hypersext


So far, these are all that I have allowed as evidence that I didn't really waste the past ten years, that I could've been doing something else - I still have a few more things to do, and hopefully, by the end of 2011, I'll have them all compiled in a DVD-zine pop-lit explosion, to be sold wherever. Right now, though, I won't be saying any smart stuff about these texts here, at least not right now. Again, they're just here as evidence, hopefully speaking for themselves.