homanga

I just found our belatedly this morning, while lazily surfing through links of other people, that Honoel Ibardaloza won the 2003 Palanca Award for Short Story for Children - first prize. This is his second Palanca Award, winning third prize in the same category a few years ago.

The neat thing about this is that I finally get to meet and thank him personally for his contribution to Ab Ovo, that little comic book anthology we put out last year. He illustrated a story Jason wrote but we never got to meet. He's from Negros (not Cebu as I thought earlier - sorry Hai!) and will be flying in for the awards next week.

His work can seen in the current issue of Hainaku (illustrating Marco's Game Girl), and is one of the creators of the upcoming Cherry Blossom High anthology (with pencils for Marco again). This is looking to be quite an interesting release: it has Vin's best comic work (The Clockwork Kingdom, illustrated by Joel Chua) and an enjoyable story by El.

I wish though that Honoel would given the opportunity to write - his art is great but of course my bias is towards the written work. Writing stories of any length for children is no mean feat, and I look forward to reading what he has created.