Sa simula ng taong 2009 ay maililimbag na rin ang comix na BUBOG, isang kalipunan ng mga kwentong horror na isinulat ko at dinibuho ng ilan sa pinaka-magagaling na comix artist sa Pilipinas tulad nina Noel Flores, Lan Medina, Rey Villegas at, sige na nga...ng aking kapatid na si Mannie Abeleda. Sa apat na kwento sa BUBOG, dalawa rito ay hango sa kwento na nauna nang nailimbag bilang ashcan comix noong 1999, ang SHIVER. (Huwag na ninyong subukang humanap ng kopya dahil iilan lang ang ginawa namin noon.)
Tulad noon, nais ko pa ring lumikha ng mahusay comix pero 'di tulad dati, ayaw ko nang gumamit ng salitang Ingles para sa pag-uusap ng mga karakter ko na mga Pilipino at pawang mga nasa Pilipinas.
Binasa kong muli ang editoryal ko, at bagama't niluma na ng panahon ang ilang detalye dito, sa kabuuan ay nasasaloob pa rin nito ang layunin ko para sa proyekto kong comix.
(Ang dibuho sa itaas ay buhat sa kwentong "A Frightful Dream" ni Noel Flores, isang propesor sa sining at punong tagapag-disenyo rin ng GMA Channel 7 sa mga palabas nitong fantaserye tulad ng Mulawin, Atlantika at Encantadia.)
Narito ang editoryal:
May you live in interesting times.
In trying to put together this horror anthology/comix, the first question I asked myself was: “what scares you?”.
The answer, frighteningly enough, was: “not much”. A product of the Television-Motion Picture-Video Game Age, I assumed I have seen, one way or another, all imaginable types of human evil and depravity – all imaginable horrors – that nothing could scare me anymore. I had been “desensitized”: repeated exposures to violent shows had made me inured and apathetic to most forms of violence and horrific circumstance.
So I thought. Then I remembered something I saw on the six o’clock news: a man has beaten his wife to death.
In the ensuing investigation, it turns out that the victim is also the man’s sister. The man ran away from home as a child and returned decades later. He met a sister who wasn’t even born when he went away; one thing led to another and he got her pregnant. They lived as man and wife (while beating her from time to time) until that fatal day when he killed her.
Even the children – one of whom suffers from a birth defect – were not spared by the man’s cruel hands. And when the reporter pressed the eldest son for comment on the possible fate of his father, he indignantly remarks that he wants him to be put to the death penalty.
As the camera moves in for a close-up shot, the child adds, unflinching and unremorseful, that at that moment, if he were a grown-up and had a gun, he would shoot his own father!
Those bitter words left me horror-stricken; and at the same time, furious. I was furious at the wife-beater turned killer. I was also angry at the tv station for blatantly re-formatting their newscast to make it more “entertaining” – complete with dramatic re-enactments of events and a flurry of insensitive personal questions thrown by reporters at the victims in their crass attempt to provoke an emotional outburst for the waiting camera. And finally, I was aghast that such a despicable inhuman incident was experienced by a child.
“May you live in interesting times,” a Chinese saying goes: both a curse and a blessing. Allow me to put my own twist on it and say: “May the interesting times you live in disturb you.”
I guess that sums up to me what SHIVER is about.
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Fortunately for you, dear readers, what SHIVER is to me won’t be what SHIVER will always be.
I was lucky enough to hook up with a lot of talented folks (thanks in part to Gilbert Monsanto) willing to contribute their own sequential stories in this book. (I’m keeping the names under wraps until I get the finished work, OK?)
And eventually I hope (yes, a big hope) that SHIVER could be a venue for good sequential storytelling whether they be of horror, fantasy or science fiction – though I draw the line at superhero fantasy (if you want superhero yarns then you can get them from Alamat and other local comic publishers.)
Succeeding issues of SHIVER will contain reviews of current and classic comics. A preview of upcoming projects(including one with Roy Martinez!). And more of these rambling comments and mindless drivel from yours truly (ulp!). But don’t let THAT scare you.
SHIVER should be one heck of a ride--- OK, hell!
- Arnel Abeleda
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