The geek and the patriot

There’s so much we can do with our comic books. Think about it. The Philippines – an archipelago of angry volcanoes and infinitesimal rice fields, a suffocating metropolis, a young country raised on Catholic virtues and steeped on American vices, owned by a people too new for democracy– can be a great setting for exciting comic book stories. But sadly, as with the other arts involved with fiction, the stories that have explored these possibilities have come few and far between in history.

Thanks to Hollywood, there are about a hundred genres floating in the air right now, but Philippine fiction barely touched on several that could offer limitless storytelling possibilities if these stories be based in our very land: Manila noir, political thriller, historical thriller, whodunit, steampunk, cyberpunk, dystopian, utopian, slasher, gore, monster…the list goes on. Hell, where’s our King Kong? Our Sherlock Holmes? Our Oz? As fictionists, we’ve been trapped in the notion that our stories should be heart-rending melodrama set in the slums. How does that plot go again? Jun-Jun has to work like a horse to buy his ailing mother some medicine, but he must overcome himself and society first to reach his goals. People, we’ve been telling the same story for decades now. Let’s move on. How did Neil Gaiman put it? "There’s too much realism in Philippine fiction. I want to see some unrealism."

Thankfully, a ray of hope comes in the form of Siglo:Passion, an anthology of comic book shorts edited by Palanca Award Winner Dean Francis Alfar and Comic Quest owner Vincent Simbulan. An ambitious project, this hefty full-color tome guarantees the reader two things: all stories are set in the Philippines, and are nothing of the unimaginative.

The stable of writers and artists Alfar and Simbulan assembled is impressive. Not limiting themselves to the stalwarts of the local comic book community, the two gathered the imaginations of playwrights, children’s book writers, graphic designers, painters and filmmakers. The marquee has mega-watt names like Lan Medina, Gerry Alanguilan, Elbert Or, and Cyan-Abad Jugo, albeit some of which are only first-timers when it comes to graphic novels.

Despite its heavy-handedness, its art that’s of a rushed quality, and some stories that are near-misses ("Manila 1913" and "San Pablo 1978") Siglo:Passion is a romp of a read.

If you can wade past some pages that are ridiculously dark ("Palawan 1944") or too anime for its own betterment ("Banahaw 1952") then all is worth the deforestation. Gems like rock journalist Luis Katigbak’s "Manila 2019", which tells of a barkada masquerading as their avatars in an amped up Ragnarok-like virtual world, are achingly smart and bring promise to Philippine futuristic fiction. Filmmaker-screenwriter Quark Henares’ "Malacañang 1968", about an orphaned telepath who falls in love with a dictator’s daughter, may perhaps be the ripest apple in the basket story-wise, if it does not suffer from its slipshod psychedelic artwork. Hence, the enfant terrible of the bunch may rightly be Alfar’s "Philippines 2222", a tale about an android in search of love, elegantly brought to page by clean retro-futuristic pencils, a neatness rarely found in this volume. Read it and howl.

Though this antholgy’s intentions are pure and its possibilities exciting, Siglo:Passion could have done better if its didn’t run on passion alone, but also on patience.

Patriotism is a mind-numbingly lofty concept, one that loses more and more of its real meaning when it keeps on getting shoved down our throats.

See, I am of the belief that patriotism is a concept that’s best not sung out loud. There are a lot of bands right now, who write songs about how great the Filipino is, their errant vocalists veining out as they scream how proud they are of our brown skins. There’s nothing wrong with that, really. But honestly, has it helped us?

Patriotism, for me, isn’t mere sloganeering. In fact, it should be the opposite: honest and informed. For me, Yano’s mid-90s political mudslinging had done more wonders for our nation than Bamboo’s "Noypi" ever did, much in the same vein that Johnny Rotten’s lambasting of the Queen had done wonders for England.

Patriotism isn’t a pop song, isn’t a t-shirt, isn’t a comic book. It’s just a humble feeling in the pit of your stomach that says, "Hey, it’s a shitty nation, and I love every bit of it."

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