Whilce Myth
By Bert B. Sulat, Jr.

In just out first issue of the international comic book Stone, one can find such words as Agimats and Monay, as well as images of dwendes, tikbalangs…and the SM Megamall striking rink. They’re all part of a familiar-peculiar world conceived by Wilhelm “Whilce” (pronounced Wills) Portacio, a Filipino-born, US-raised comic book penciller.
As any fan has scored issues of the punisher, Alpha Flight and the Uncanny X-men will tell you, Portacio is a highly regarded comics illustrator. In the US alone hundreds of comics convention attendees – such as those in Chicago and San Diego recently where Stone was launched – don’t mind lining up all day) just to get his autograph. DITTO  on September 4 at the Robinsons Galleria, where he and Stone inker Gerry Alanguilan spent four hours signing hundreds of Stones. (Portacio claims to be a fast signer, which he proved anew on September 18 at Robinsons Place in Ermita.)
 While most of us in Manila Media rave like mad whenever a Pinoy makes it elsewhere (such as Jocelyn Enriquez, who sings with two other divas on the soundtrack of the new Miramax movie 54), there has been less attention toward our comics-doing countrymen, whose work continues to be read and collected by illustration dazzled readers everywhere. And what makes their stuff doubly interesting is that Portacio and peers frequently insert a host of Pinoy tidbits and get away with it.
 “I would sneak stuff in,” the 35-year old Portacio relates during our talk, which stretched to four hours. “In one issue of the X-Men, the character named Colossus wore a leather jacket, on the back of which was the Philippine flag..” Alanguilan adds that other comic books had graffiti using “a girlfriend’s name, ‘RiverMaya,’ etc. “Portacio relates of another X-Men edition with a cameo by a time. Vilma! was on TV and Regine Velasquez was a guest. The sight of Regine inspired me to draw a reporter who looked like her.”
 Upon learning that comic-book fans reacted strongly to such Where’s-Waldo-ish curiosities, Portacio got inspired to create a bit characters and villains with a Filipino trait or other (some looking like Whilce himself). This led to Bishop, a latter-day member of the X-Men who was unmistakably Asian, and later on to a Wetworks hero named Grail. “Grail is a character from Pampanga who uses the arnis. In Wetworks’ Issue No.3, we had him exclaim, ‘Susmaryosep!’ It was a test for international audiences, on whether they would accept an explicitly Filipino character.” Test results? ”American kids wanted to learn Tagalog after reading that.”
 Portacio, the son of a Navy man, was a kid – age two – when his family moved from a US naval base here to Midway Island in the States. A turning point came when he was 11 years old. “A next door neighbor,” Portacio remembers, “gave me a big surprise. She showed her husband’s comic books from the 60’s and 70’s, and wanted me to have all of them.”
 From then on Protacio got hooked on comics “for the art of it,” took up art classes starting from sixth grade and was drawing and drawing.” By his first year in high school in Hawaii, where Whilce msde up his nickname “for anonymity,” he was already in senior art class. He spent weekends at college art seminars that when time came for him to be a tertiary student he already knew what would be thought. He studied college at the Philippine Women’s University, after his dad got reassigned here.
 At age 21, “I was back in the States and I went to San Diego to attend the largest annual comic-book convention, after a cousin pushed me to. “Little did Portacoi realized that he would land a job instantly. “I brought a thick stack of sample artwork and Carl Potts, an editor at Marvel Comics [the company behind The Amazing Spider-Man, et al.], saw it and offered me a job on the spot.” But instead of penciling, Portacio was assigned to ink for tha now-defunct Alpha Flight. “I worked fast that I found time to draw the Punisher and [ the X-Men’s] Wolverine on the back of my inking jobs,” “This subtle approach worked, landing him penciling gigs for the X-Men and its spinoff “X books,” plus Iron Man and several others.
 Soon enough, Portacio found himself among Marvel’s “golden boys,” which included artist Jim Lee, with whom he coestablished a new outfit, Image Comics. “We noticed that there was a big difference between what [Marvel] was earning,” with the earning,” with X-Men sales peaking at eight million copies, “and what we were earning, so we thought we’d earning, so we thought we’d establish our own company. That January day when we announced our departure, Marvel dropped 16 percent at the stock market. “He adds that “other comics have broken away before then did something totally different, like romance novels. We in the Image group were the first to break away and keep doing what the fans knew we’d do.”
 After a few years with Image working on Wetworks and other new titles, Portacio split again, this time on his own. He explains, “After 12 rollercoaster years, I’d gotten the fame and fortune that I wanted so I thought I’d come back here and do other things.” That desire resulted in The Studio, a hangout on Quezon City’s Balete Drive for desktop Publishers, models, dancers, rappers, photographers and artists. “It was my showbiz’ phase,” proprietor Portacio enthuses, alluding to having Francis Magalona and the Eraserheads around to use his PlayStation as well as the Studio’s work on the inlay sheet to RiverMaya’s Atomic Bomb Album.
 But more crucial were the now closed Studio’s artists, who thought Portacio was their ticket to the global comic-book industry. “The clincher,” as he puts it, came when he got in touch with writer and Image cohort Brian Haberlin. “He was creating a comic book on a genie called Jinn but wanted something else,” recalls Portacio, who had been toying with comics again, creating a 20-page sampler called Agimat for a potential local distributor. Haberlin , an Irishman based in Los Angeles, got a copy and got inquisitive. Says Portacio, “Brian would ask, ‘What’s this creature thing?’ referring to the tikbalang. ‘What’s this vampire thing?’ pointing to the manananggal. So I told him the story behind all these different characters.”
 What was originally meant for the local market grew bigger in scope and became the catalyst for Portacio and Haberlin’s newest outfit, Avalon Studios. In oreder for readers in other countries to relate,” including those in Australia, Europe and the USA,” we had to change certain aspects.” That incidentally included the title as ‘Agimat’ was already copyrighted. Nevertheless, Stone (whose agimat-wearing TV actor-turned-real hero protagonist may remind you of Malcolm McDowell’s fake vampire killer in Fright Night) is considerably Pinoy. Not only does it have creatures of of Filipino folklore, there will also be much local color, such as our habit of “seeking permission [to some unseen entity] by saying ‘Ta-bi po.’”
 The question is, What got Whilce, billed as Stone’s creator and penciller to Haberlin’s writer, to take on his Agimat business? Were now’senator Ramon Revilla’s anting-anting movies any inspiration? Portacio (who, early enough resembles Ramon “Bong” Revilla, Jr.) explains that “Fantasy, such as this, works better than superhero stuff, which is too all-Americna. I also wanted to create something new but not totally new. And I wanted to use my skills to create visuals that Pinoys have grown up while channeling the same feelings to a foreign audience.” He also thinks that Stone meets a basic criterion for comics – “Does it look cool?” – and also feels confident that its world-here’s-the-Philippines stance will work because in the end, “Everybody has this fear of mumus, of ghosts. If you can tap into that fear, it can be powerful.”
 Stone also finds Portacio and all else in Internet. Not only do they have a web site (www.whilce.com; whilce@evoserve.com for e-mail), Avalon will be digtalizing its art. Cyberspace also helps in the logistics. Says Whilce, ”Production and writing are in LA, the editing is in San Diego, the publisher’s in Malibu, the printings in Canada, while the artists stay here in the Philippines.”
 Those artists include 30-year-old Gerry Alanguilan, an ex-architect heretofore known as the writer and penciller of Wasted, a bloodier, one-issue book by Alamat Comics. “I met Whilce sa isang signing convention nu’ng 1992,” he recalls the comics-reading resident of San Pablo, Laguna, who stopped drafting blueprints after discovering that a lot of US-based comics artist he looked up to, including Portacio, were in fact Filipinos. “I spent four months mastering the crowquill after being used to the tech pen,” Alanguilan muses of his latest tool. Portacio claims that “Gerry experiments, knows deadlines and is willing to grow in the market.” Such is the penciler’s belief in the inker that he named Stone’s TV star-titular character “Gerry Alan.” As if to play up Portacio and Alanguilan’s mentorward scenario, Gerry Alan is guided by a hot-tempered director named Marco, who’s got Portacio’s features down to a mustache.
 It remains to be seen how local readers, as well as others around the world, will react to Stone, the second issue of which should be out soon. For Portacio, who also offers comics creation courses at the Learn Center in Megamall, at least one thing is, well, etched in Stone. He says he will be staying in the country because “the people are friendly” and notices that even local beggars (“puh-loo-bee,”as he says with his West Coast Twang) seem to enjoy what little they have. Those in the US even hassle you.”
 Besides, he’d be busy supervising his local crew’s work on two other Avalon comics, Hellcop and Aria, and keep Stone rolling. “I’m not really superstitious, but [before Stone was made] I showed a feng shui expert various  drawings that I’d been doing. Somehow she picked the one’s that I did really fast, which were the Stone characters, and told me that these creatures were watching me as I was drawing them.” Makes you wonder who’ll be watching you read the darn thing.