Who wants to make a Superhero?

COMIC BOOK ARTISTS TAKE TIME OFF FROM THEIR DRAWING BOARDS 
TO TELL US HOW IT’S LIKE TO BRING LIFE TO HEROES
Interview by Ronan Callueng
Photos by Vincent Coscolluela 

GERRY ALANGUILAN

HIS WORKS include inking jobs on Whilce Portacio’s Wetworks and Stone, Marvels, Fantastic Four, Wolverine, and X-Men, and Superman. He has written and drawn the seminal Wasted, along with Humanis Rex, and the ongoing Elmer. Gerry Alanguilan is one of the forerunners in the recent wave of Filipino talents who have entered American Comics.
 Gerry has lovingly put together an online museum on his own website, www.komikero.com with a section crammed with biographies and archived works of landmark Filipino artists, such as Tony de Zuniga, Nestor Redondo, Alfredo Alcala, Alex Niño, among many others, who went stateside and practically took over the mystery, horror, western and war genre of DC comics, including the best selling titles Tarzan, Swamp Thing, Korak and Jonah Hex (which de Zuniga co-created).

Why do you think are we fascinated by people who are able, through their strength, idealism, and passion, rise from the ordinary. Most of us are compromised people with compromised ideals, and heroes, for the most part, don’t believe in compromise. They achieve what they want simply by standing firm with their ideals.

What makes our local superheroes unique?
What make them distinctly Filipino would be the stories and how the characters are characterized. The series are written to appeal to uniquely Filipino sensibilities, with a penchant for melodrama, and an underdog syndrome – formerly weak individuals become very powerful.

With the improvement of technology, did the process of creating comics change?
I started working comics in 1992 here in the Philippines. For those too young to remember, we did have computers back then, but they were hardly used at all in graphics, least of all in comics.
 Fifteen years later, technology today has pretty much transformed the process of creating comics. I still keep a small book where I write my ideas by hand. I would then write the script on the computer. I still draw and ink on paper, and occasionally still letter by hand, but for some projects I use the computer to letter pages with handwritten fonts. I color pages completely on the computer now using Photoshop.

Your own comic creations are quite impressive, although most deal with non-superhero themes. Why so?
I do think my inclinations tend to go in the direction of non-superhero stuff. I’ve really nothing against heroes, but I would like to explore heroism in other, less obvious ways. My upcoming project probably deals with the most overt kind of superheroism. The Marvelous Adventures of the Amazing Dr. Rizal is an alternate look at our national hero, speculating what he would have done had his life gone a different direction.

Would Gerry Alanguilan make a good superhero?
No. Ha! Ha! Power will corrupt me absolutely.

*Visit www.komikero.com