GERRY ALANGUILAN CONTRIBUTING TO IMAGE COMICS' LIQUID CITY ANTHO. The book, edited by Sonny Liew, will feature mostly South-East Asian comics creators, and I'm very excited to see what Gerry comes up with for this (especially now that he's firing on all cylinders with his Elmer work.) It'll be a good opportunity to show the US market just how awesome he is.

I've been loving Image's anthology releases for the past couple of years, from 24/7 to Flight to Popgun, and this one looks to be just as awesome as its predecessors. See HERE for details and HERE for an impressive partial list of contributors. It's slated for Fall this year.


CARLO VERGARA PREVIEWING ZSA ZSA SEQUEL ONLINE. I know that this book's been in the works for quite some time, and this preview will no doubt only whet my appetite for more. One of the most successful Pinoy graphic novels, Zsa Zsa Zaturnnah took a homage to Mars Ravelo's Darna and turned it on its side, capturing the imaginations of Filipinos everywhere with its outrageous story, lovable characters and beautiful art. This upcoming sequel, Zsa Zsa Zaturnah, Sa Kalakhang Maynila, sounds like it'll be even better.

See HERE for details. The preview will be up on May 26.


BUDJETTE TAN and KA-JO BALDISMO'S TRESE: Probably the best comicbook take on Pinoy horror ever, Trese follows a mysterious female detective as she delves deeper into Filipino aswang folklore (and more!) than anyone's ever gone. While the concept may sound tedious and hackneyed due to the unwavering popularity of the horror genre locally, what really makes this comic is Budj's exemplar storytelling, chronicling concise one-issue stories that ratchet up the horror in unexpected ways, all wrapped up in Ka-Jo's moody and captivating art. The first trade collects issues 1-4, including my favorite story of the series, "Our Secret Constellation."

It's out NOW, so pick it up while you can! Details (and comics!) HERE. :D

MEET THE MAGIC CAREGIVER. Check out the latest Kare-Kare Komik--it's my retro-insane piece from the Project:Hero anthology I edited with Elbert Or a few years ago--"Yaya Kadabra"--tweaked and colored for your viewing pleasure. More new stuff coming up; I'm just prepping to explode. Click on the big pic or go
HERE to read it.



I'M NOT DEAD. Yeah, I've been AWOL from the Web for almost 2 months now, but I haven't been on vacation. Crazy times, I tell you. I've done over 40 pages of comics since I last posted here, a prose story, illustrations, various plates and work-work shit. Most of this stuff's gonna come up for air in a few weeks, so let's just say that I'm back. Busy busy, but the hard labor's almost done and a few days of lazy relaxation are imminent.

Book status, since everyone's asking: I cut out another story to make room for some more stuff, and I'm working on my gajillionth cover study. The whole thing's basically done, actually--I've just been OC about the whole package, tweaking things here and there. It works as it is right now--a comprehensive whole--but I had a weird idea last week to further improve the thematic effect of the whole book, so I'm finishing that up right now. Should be passing it in for proofing and printing next week, god willing. It's gonna be a great package.

RAN-TASTIC. I realize I haven't blogged about RAN ONLINE in a long time, and it's because it's become a kind of weekly staple in my brainset that I keep forgetting to mention it. If you've been getting The Philippine Star you'll know that we're knee-deep in Season 3 right now, plugging along at the usual pace. I'm still amazed at how strange and challenging this format is--I'm approaching my 100th Sunday strip and I've still barely scratched the surface of this chaotic online world.

Right now, I'm juggling my plans for the series with corporate client demands--I've integrated this neat little in-game add-on called "RAN Pets" to the story and I'm working on the promo tie-up between E-games and Yoshinoya (Japan's No.1 Beef Bowl!) It's stressful but it's fun--like doing improv-jazz comics--I'm constantly integrating new melodies into the rhythm and it really is an awesome learning experience, well worth the time and effort. Check out the latest strip this Sunday @ The Philippine Star.



That's it for now--back to work. I love you, Internet. :p

You're invited. I'll be there too. :D

HERE! I finally have my new computer up and running (and the DSL, which has been bugging me for the last couple of days since I set the new system up.) Thank God! I'll be able to reply to emails, visit my favorite blogs, keep abreast on my favorite stripe of news and download lots of stuff. I bought a whole CPU last Tuesday and it's taken me the rest of the week to organize my files and get everything back up to speed.

I am now poor, though. I'll probably be staying home for the next couple of Saturdays. Unexpected expense (sigh). Fortunately, the whole thing cost just a little less than I projected it to. Here are the specs, for anyone who's interested:

Processor: INTEL CORE 2 DUO E4500 2.20GHZ 2MB CACHE
Motherboard: ASUS P5L-VM MOTHERBOARD
Memory: KINGSTON 2GB PC667 DDR2 MEMORY
Hard disk: SAMSUNG 160 GB SATA 7200 RPM (times two!)
Video card: INNO3D 7300GT 512 MB 128BIT DDR2 VIDEO CARD
...etcetera, etcetera...

Thanks to my awesome twin bro, Tony, for helping me assemble this! I learned a lot about putting together a CPU over the course of the day that we shopped and built this system. It'll be easier to upgrade now that I know what's inside the black casing. :D

BUT! My work schedule's been set back about a week, so I need to catch up. Really catch up. Hence me still being awake at 5am this morning. I'm currently working on the next couple of RAN strips while simultaneously working on the last batch of pages I'll need to complete the book. Also got some projects waiting in the pipeline that I'll need to set aside time for, if only to give them a good long brainstorm before I jump into them. Emails are piling up; I'm getting to them slowly. And it looks like this weekend up to next week will all be about recovering lost time.

I'm happy though. The new system is, like, 4 times more awesome than my last one, and Photoshop's never been faster. So I'm hoping that it'll cut down my coloring time by a couple of hours. Lots of coloring to do. I'll be Photoshopping a lot up til Wednesday.

OH OH! I wanted to mention that I met with (rockstar writer) Kit Kwe at the University of the Philippines last Monday (had to pick up some of my old pages from her) and we ended up having a very pleasant, inspiring conversation. We talked about ongoing projects, editing, the creative process, Mac and various other things. I'm SO in awe of her because she's only 24 and she already has some fantastic stories under her belt, she's editing two magazines, and on top of all that, she's a teacher! She's awesome. Talking with her got me really jazzed for when I jump back into prose (which commences as soon as the book is done.)

Lastly, the astonishing Angelo Suarez (another rockstar) recently invited me to submit "concrete poetry" for this magazine he's currently working on (and honestly, I was kind of intimidated by the whole thing; poetry's not exactly my strong suit). Worked on it on-and-off for a couple of days, crossed my fingers and sent it in. I'm happy to report that my submission got accepted (!!!) and you guys should be hearing about it soon enough. I'm excited. Poetry!!!

There's no greater blessing to a creative than to be surrounded by amazing creative people. I swear, just knowing them pushes you to up your game and to (hopefully) up the stakes. :p

EMERGENCY: Two weeks ago, I started to have problems accessing the internet, uploading files, downloading stuff, etcetera. Last week, Photoshop began acting up; lag-times, hanging, various !danger!-we-are-about-to-crash symptoms. Last Sunday, boo and I opened up my CPU and discovered some corrosion in the motherboard.

My computer system has thus been given a 3-month life expectancy before it's unavoidable explosion. Even my email's been kinda screwy lately, with the OS hanging and all that. Yay. I've been trying to resist doing this for the past few weeks, hoping that the problem would go away, but I can't avoid it anymore. This is terrible because I'm in critical stages with various projects, but I can't risk file corruption or losses either.

So tomorrow, I'm going off with my twin brother Tony to Gilmore (that computersky place) and I'm gonna buy myself a new computer. The expense, of course, is staggering, but this is kind of my livelihood, and I can't really scrimp on it. I'm chalking it up to "rainy day expenses" and hoping for a new system that will last (and outperform this older one, dapat lang!) I'll try to salvage what I can from my old system, but there are more than a few compatibility issues (like, I'm still using dinosaur SD RAM, etcetera) and I'm expecting the worst (in terms of price.)

Apologies to everyone for the lack of updates, but I've been in dire straits for a while now. At the moment, my work schedule is frozen because I can't even use Photoshop anymore and it's the time when I need it the most. Anyway, the problem will be rectified tomorrow and, by Wednesday, I'll have a brand new CPU to get me back up to speed.

Expect normalcy to resume around Thursday, when I've reinstalled all the programs and migrated all the files, etcetera. I owe E-games a couple of things and The Chemistry Set as well, so that'll need doing.

And, of course, the book. (Almost done! Really!) :D

PUSIT LOVE: My latest Kare-Kare Komik, "The Dog, the Cat and the Giant Squid", seems to have been recieved very well. Publishers Weekly's comics blog, PWBeat, covered it last week, I got a (yippee!) comment from Scott McCloud, and I've just been inducted as a Knight Defender of the Hydrostat by C.A.D.U.C.E.U.S. (The Campaign Against Demonization of Underwater Cephalopods for the Education of an Understanding Society.) Awesome awesome. We love squid.

SHIVER ME FINGERS: I've powered through 7 pages of tight pencils and inks on this 10-pager comic that I need to finish, and now my right hand feels like it's gonna fall off. I'm not even done yet. Arrrgh. I hope nothing bad happens to it; I've been really pushing things these past few weeks, and I'll still need it at optimum quality for the rest of the month.

What I hate the most is when I'm getting tired, my hand starts to get arthritis-like shaky. And I need a steady hand; the squiggly lines worked for Charles Schultz (he suffered from arthritis or something in his later years, w/c is why later Peanuts strips had this shaky quality to it), but the stuff I'm doing now requires tight draftsmanship, which throws my schedule to hell when my hand acts up.

Plus, I'll be spending most of next week doing colors on the computer, so unless I get a super-serum of some sort for my hand, it's a quick left turn to carpal-tunnel madness. Brrr.

STUFF TO GET OUT OF THE WAY: Two more exams later today, a VISA interview tomorrow morning, readings for LitCrit, Isle updates, a visit to the hospital, 2x2 ID pics, some plates to finish on Sunday and maybe some sleep. I badly need to free up my sched to work on my book, since I'm putting it all together soon (as in, very soon, like, soon-soon) and there's the upcoming Big Stress Period as I get de-virginized on my first solo book project. Announcements will happen soon (I mean, soon-ish, like, not-immediately-soon, but soon) as the book nears publication. My brain's already melting, but it's all shaping up nicely, if slowly...

...thus do I end this post like a fade-out song...

ASO, PUSA AT PUSIT: My non-sequitur webcomic, Kare-Kare Komiks is just rolling along, and I implore you to check this one out! Click on the big pic or go read it HERE.



Finished this piece in 2 days, and I'm very excited about it. It started as a joke among my circle of friends (referring to the tropes of stories like WE3 and Homeward Bound) and in my mind, it was just begging to be executed. It's a tale that I wanted to tell in comics form about 3 years ago, but I forgot about it for some reason.

And then, last Monday, Dean, Vin and I were just hanging out, working on our respective deadlines, when we suddenly remembered the joke. BOOM. I just had to do it.

Thanks to both of them for reminding me of my plan, and for helping me with the details. It's as much their story as it is mine. :)

STUFF STUFF--Check out the teaser trailer to Neil Gaiman's Coraline:



--
ALSO, I'm normally not very jazzed about manga (with the exception of Bryan O'Malley's most excellent Scott Pilgrim,) mostly because my preference leans more towards sequential density, but OMG you've GOT to READ THIS. (!!!AWESOME!!!) Brilliantly surreal short manga story. I'm WOW-ed by the deceptive simplicity of this. Click on the link to read the whole thing. :p

--
FINALLY, on the prose front--this one's a somewhat long read, but it's SO WORTH IT. The level of excellence in this piece--not just in content, but in its lyricism, command of language and overall discourse--it's stunning. My favorite short story (novelette?) of the week; possibly of the entire month. Here's a short excerpt from it (one of my favorite passages):

Akbar lived, because his aunt wanted him to. And in Kandahar he was taught about survival, about fighting and killing and hunting, and he learned much else without being taught, such as how to look out for himself and watch his tongue and not say the wrong thing, the thing that might get him killed. About the dignity of the lost, about losing, and how it cleansed the soul to accept defeat, and about letting go, avoiding the trap of holding on too tightly to what you wanted, and about abandonment in general, and in particular fatherlessness, the lessness of fathers, the lessness of the fatherless, and the best defenses of those who are less against those who are more: inwardness, forethought, cunning, humility, and good peripheral vision. The many lessons of lessness. The lessening from which growing could begin.

*swoons over beautiful prose* Read Salman Rushdie's "The Shelter of the World".

SOMETHING I FORGOT TO BLOG ABOUT -- My short story, "Peekli", (a fairy-tale-ish story that was anthologized in Philippine Speculative Fiction III), is now online at Bewildering Stories, and has also made the Editor's Choice list of last year's Quarterly Review . I'm so proud of this little story, not only because it has done so much, but also because I feel it's my best prose work in the last year.

Read "Peekli" here.

Thanks to Don Webb and the Bewildering Stories crew for the warm welcome, and to Dean for reminding me. ;)

WARREN ELLIS DOES WEBCOMICS, which is a good enough reason to check this out. Support!

More reasons to check this out: (1) I'm curious as to how he will tackle ongoing webcomics, which is a format/publishing model that has yet to be housebroken by the mainstream comics industry, while simultaneously proving just as popular, if not more, than most current comics (2) the art is oddly mesmerizing in a Euro-manga kind of way; a flavor of beautiful I've rarely seen; (3) it's online, serialized weekly, and it's absolutely free.

More (thoughts, art, etc.) at this link. Freakangels debuts February 15, 12noon UK time (which should be in a couple of hours) so go to the site today and check it out. :D

KARE-KARE KOSMIK: I mean, "komik". Happy Valentines Day!

Here's my love letter to Kirby "Cosmique" Sci-fi, done in kiddie-book style! Click on the big pic or go here to read it.


Got stuff percolating under the radar for now. Sorry for the blog-lite. I've been buried under work and exams for the past few weeks, so I'm looking forward to spending some quality time with boo later. Have a Wholesome Heart's Day, people! :D

MORE KARE-KARE KOMIKS! You'll like this one. It features a verrry familiar character and it starts pulling various threads together, while still serving as a stand-alone story. Click on the big pic or go to this link to read it.

SHARD BEARERS. Did some illustrations for an RPG campaign:


It's a wonderful, complex and exciting game run by Dean that's kind of a bitch to explain, so I'll let Alex do it. Suffice to say, when I'm not busy strangling myself over my workload, this is the world I like to play in.

Speaking of workload, I've got tons of STUFF waiting in the wings right now, so watch out for announcements. :)

SIGH: This week hasn't been so good--work-toxic and school-heavy, plus all sorts of horrible things have been happening to people I love (...theft, cancer, death...the usual stuff...) So I'm very affected and sad about a handful of things. Add that to the fact that I've been so sleeplessly fatigued lately, it's all whirling together into a big black hole of depression. Which must be avoided at all costs. Because I don't have the free time to wallow in despondence or segue into tearful contemplation. It's unbecoming and it's counter-productive.

Gah. So chin up. Put on a brave face. Soldier on.

TONIGHT: I have to say WOW. Just...WOW. You don't realize how badly lit your drawing table is until you put a lamp over it. All this time...I must've been killing my eyes!!! Taken from the house, handed down by mom, it's a nice, sturdy office lamp with a power light for working late; perfect for me.

I'm working through the wee hours, on various things that I should've been working on for the past week, except school's been on me like a bad conceit since I got back from the holidays. Comics, comics, comics. And prose. We lurve stories. The next Kare-Kare Komik is on my desk  right now, waiting to be completed. It's running 12 pages long, which is killer, but it's gonna be important. Just gotta find time to finish drawing it, add all the sparkly color effectzys, and hopefully have it ready for posting on The Chemistry Set next Wednesday. Hoping to make it.

SPEAKING OF WHICH, (and this is a couple of days old,) fellow Chemsetters Andrew Foley and Nick Johnson have just launched their new webcomic, Holiday Men. It's pure, unadulterated insanity. Go check it out.

ALSO: Check out Vito Delsante and Rachel Friere's FCHS webcomic. It's done in a charming, old-school manner and it's gonna be a regular feature on the site for 2008. Archie comics in senior year, looking friendly while struggling with hormones; the S-undercurrent waiting to strike. Looks promising. (Oh, and Vito's got an excellent interview up at The Comics Reporter. It's worth reading.)

Anyway, back to work. Pray for the good people of the world. Back up soon.

MAKING THE STREETS SAFE FOR EVERYONE! (I really have to sleep and stop trawling the 'net.) Look both ways:


(via ben templesmith)

SATURDAY NIGHT, JANUARY 5, '08: After barely making it to my grandparent's cozy 51st wedding anniversary, my Kuya Lecky asked me to accompany him to watch his singer friends' performance, as they'd apparently made it big-time and were now part of the Ryan Cayabyab Singers group. I acquiesced, and what I assumed would be one of Kuya's usual affairs (a choral thingee at the PCC or some intimate performance among an elite broadway crowd) turned out to be a hilarious brush with the world of local showbiz that we've both been gleefully ignorant of.

This is how it started: Having spent the last couple of years in the US, Kuya Lecky had no driver's license (and neither do I, and so far, I've managed to avoid getting one), so while there were cars available that night, it turned out that we had to commute. And given that we'd been warned of the heavy traffic around our destination (Araneta Coliseum), we decided not to take a taxi and instead use the Metro-Rail Transit train. Shit-on-burgers! The station was jam-packed with late-night commuters and we had to squeeze into a train that was (no exaggeration) packed like sardines.

Thankfully, the ride didn't last long, so we got off at Araneta Center and walked through the mall towards the Coliseum. There were crowds hanging around the entrances and I found myself wondering just how popular the Ryan Cayabyab Singers were. We got to the South Gate and received our free tickets (procured by one of Kuya's performing friends, with the help of Mister C himself.) Then, while waiting for the show to start, we killed some time at Gloria Jean's (horrible coffee, I tell you.) When the time came for us to enter, we handed in our tickets and happily joked about this new experience, it being our first time watching a show in the Araneta Center.

Inside the Coliseum: Oh. My. god. The attending crowds were insane, waving banners and screaming their heads off. We got our seats next to a particularly fussy woman who harassed a poor Pizza Hut guy (about delivering food to a gay guy about ten yards away from us,) and kept telling us to "vote for Gabby" when we whipped out our cellphones. It got kinda crazy when I saw the huge projector screen which announced that it was "The Big Night: Pinoy Big Brother Celebrity Edition 2". I, having only a passing familiarity to this local TV phenomenon, couldn't explain much to Kuya Lecky about it. So we just laughed at the wildness of the audience and the low-brow antics of the people onstage, content to enjoy the show until the people we'd come to watch performed.
My big surprise of the night, though, was seeing Vic Basa walk onstage. He'd apparently been one of the contestants in the PBB show, and I have to say, I'm so proud of how far Vic's gone in the time that I've known him. I met him during my first year at UP, when I used to hang out at Fox Square in Sikatuna with Jenna, Mia, Kristine and the rest of that crowd, smoking and drinking outside Urbandub's first Luzon performance. Good times, lotsa parties, a shared love for alternative music and I even remember Vic was taking up tap-dancing then. Vic hadn't even jumped into modeling back then, and look where he is now. Anyway, it was a big laugh to see the crowd go wild when he got onstage, and a nice reminder of the old days.

(Incidentally, Mich Dulce was one of the contestants of the 1st PBB Celebrity Edition, but I never really worked up much interest to watch the show, given that we were only really acquaintances and I was more friends with her co-band-member Laurie from the *R.I.P.* Death by Tampon band. Regardless: Go Mich!)

Anyway, Kuya Lecky and I had a good time, amused by the crowd and the show (and puzzling over the celebrities onstage, most of which we only half-knew or didn't know at all) until...

One hour later: Our brains began to melt out of our ears. Seriously: low-brow showbiz yayness is fun for the novelty (and for the first 30minutes) but after a while, it starts to really wear you down. We struggled with boredom (Kuya fiddling with his phone, me whipping out my iPod) and half-watched the show (which had entered a season-recap phase punctured by gruelingly-long comedian performances, Tuesday Vargas' spiel being the only respite) and after a while, we resigned ourselves to the fact that we simply weren't the target audience of this thing. I began to hate my seatmate, who repeatedly urged me to "vote for Gabby" when I didn't have the slightest clue on how to do that. At one point while I was shaking my legs, in an irritating invasion of personal space, she even grabbed my thigh, smiled at me and said "shakey-shakey." (WTF?! You don't even know me, bitch!)

Much to our relief, the Ryan Cayabyab Singers finally appeared with a wonderful choral performance, led by a woman named Yeng, who had an excellent power voice. And amusement returned, as some kids from Pinoy Dream Academy launched themselves onto the stage and began to awkwardly dance hip-hoppy to the dramatic, emotional Pinoy ballad (a really funny scene to watch, I tell you.) Ryan Cayabyab played the piano instrumental and, for a moment, the coliseum was filled with a harmonious gestalt of beautiful voices. It was a great reward for our hour-long suffering and, having watched what we came to watch, Kuya Lecky and I happily exited the Coliseum and met up with the Vincent, Anesca and the rest of the singers outside. Then we joyfully made our way home.

No, I didn't stay for the rest of the show, and no, I don't know who actually won the latest Pinoy Big Brother, but waaah it was overall a fun night, and a great experience. Weary but enlightened, I happily exited the PBB universe to enjoy my preferred brand of low-brow entertainment with my friends: Karaoke! :p

MY FIRST TRULY GLEEFUL INTERNET DISCOVERY OF 2008: Referenced multiple times in Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol, and containing a story, "The New Mother", which was an inspiration for Neil Gaiman's Coraline--Lucy Lane Clifford (aka Mrs W K Clifford)'s children's story collection, Anyhow Stories, Moral and Otherwise, is now completely available online.

Bless the kind soul who put this collection up for public viewing. I've been searching for these stories since I first read "Wooden Tony" in Jack Zipes' excellent anthology, Victorian Fairy Tales (which I happily photocopied from the U.P. Library.) Anyhow Stories has been out of print for ages (first published in 1882) and it's been one of my sought-out curiosities for almost 4 years now. These stories take the standard structure of Victorian moralistic fairy tales, but somehow twist it into something that is by turns terrifying and haunting.

I've read "The New Mother", "Wooden Tony" and "The Imitation Fish" so far, and I can't wait to dive into the rest of Mrs Clifford's collection. If you're interested in children's fiction that can truly give you nightmares, look no further than this collection.*

--
*Oh and Clive Barker's The Thief of Always, but it's more YA than anything. :p

Come in,  make yourself at home, we've prepared food, so dig in! Stay as long as you like and don't worry, we'll show you around, see the sights, introduce you to people; it'll be awesome. Happy New Year, everyone! :D

AS I WRITE THIS, fireworks are going off outside my window, bathing the Ortigas skyline in amazing explosions of light. Apologies for the blog-liteness of the last week; like everyone, I've been busy with event after event--Christmas shopping, celebrations, family gatherings, departures, arrivals, parties, talks, rumination--the whole gamut of season madness. And through all of that, kept thinking about the past year--all the blessings that came my way, happy accidents and wonderful accomplishments. It's been amazing.

And to think that I spent the first 6 months of the year a nervous wreck--depressed, lonely, overstressed and feeling almost directionless. Then things started to come around--boo and I got back together (first real happiness of the year!) then Kare-Kare Komiks happened, then the Inquirer article, then the Neil Gaiman contest win--all that I'd worked for in the past year was finally paying off, and they all happened so quickly I began to feel like I was somehow asleep, dreaming of what I was hoping to accomplish. I still can't believe it.

I cannot stress enough how much all of the Lit critters have kept me together through all this, encouraging me, challenging me, pushing me to do better. I came out of the year with a handful of short story publications in places that I'm very proud and honored to come out in--Philippine Speculative Fiction, Bewildering Stories, The Digest of Philippine Genre Stories, Ladlad and The Philippines Free Press. All of that, I owe to Litcrit. Writing and making stories have been my catharsis through the hardships of 2007, and let me tell you, there were a lot. Fights, break-ups, tons of work, school, family craziness, high emotions and accidents. Fiction made sense when reality refused to.

(As a happy aside, I recently sent in my 75th Sunday strip for RAN ONLINE--and I couldn't be happier with it. I'm aiming for 100 before I even think of moving on from what has been my most exciting, challenging and educational project to date. I'm learning to make comics and improving my craft on a national stage, weekly at The Philippine Star, and it's already been 2 years. I couldn't be more thankful for all the support and encouragement I've had from a mainstream corporation like E-games. It's unbelievable.)


And Christmas! Oh my gosh, Christmas was nothing short of awesome. What started as a small family gathering ballooned into a full-blown clan celebration by midnight, and it was wonderfully comforting to be surrounded by the loving faces of my brothers and sisters, my brilliant mother, my cousins, grandparents, aunts and uncles. After all the stress last-minute Christmas shopping with my twin bro, we got to give out good presents to more than 2 dozen relatives, and I made off with a surprisingly big haul--new shirts, Havaianas, books galore, a 20GB iPod Classic, and a brand-new Acer Extensa laptop (a tool which I've been wanting for the past 6 years.) I'm still reeling from all the joy, and the season's been so busy that I haven't had time to really ogle my new presents, but I will very soon.

So there: 2007. It's been AWESOME. There really isn't a better word to describe it. Ups, downs, madness and wonder. Love, hate, boredom and excitement. It had everything. I'm deeply, deeply thankful to everyone for it. Family, friends, lovers, and the Big Guy up there, watching over us all. I'm doubly excited about 2008. It's still a bit early, but I know that there's so much more to come.

I'll be attending a funeral tomorrow, for a dearly departed relative. Will be going to Church a bit after that, then maybe a family gathering of some sort. New Year's celebration in a couple of days. Getting back together with friends after the holiday madness. Making plans and double-checking works-in-progress. And then it's back to the daily grind, as 2008 moves up and up.

I can't wait. The new year's gonna be brilliant. And if it isn't, we'll make it so. :)

THE LAST KARE-KARE KOMIK OF THE YEAR is a remix of the first Kare-Kare Komik I ever made (The Legend of Caraboy). I had lots of fun doing this one, and if you like him, I've got BIG plans for Caraboy in the coming year. He's one of my oldest properties and one of my personal favorites, so naturally, his story's far from done. To check it out, click the pic up top or read it HERE.

Busy busy the next few days, with events and thingees to go to, so I may be blog-lite. Still, there won't be a shortage of things to do. Have a good vacation, everyone! Happy Holidays! :)