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Siglo: Passion (hopefully released in the first quarter of 2005) will be my last involvement with comics for a while. After a dalliance begun with the foundation of my own comics publishing company, Kestrel Studios, it's time to devote time and effort to my other creative interests.
It's not really goodbye goodbye, since I will always love comics and will continue to buy them and interact with the Filipino creatives. I've come to accept the powers and fatal flaws of comic book publishing - hell, I've lived it, from self-publishing The Lost to receiving a National Book Award for Siglo: Freedom. I'm just fatigued with the entire thing. For now.
I'd rather focus on prose.
And, as is seemingly the practice with my friends this time of year, there is already a project in the making. Something to do with Filipino writers and Speculative Fiction.
Our "tradition" of Speculative Fiction is so thin it is almost invisible. I don't see why it has to be so. I don't see why Philippine Literature has to be written in the social-realist mode, with farming boys riding carabaos in ricefields aching with unrealized epiphanies. I don't see why imagination has to goosestep to the drums of misplaced nationalism. I don't see why the fantastic, the miraculous, the impossible, the past and the future cannot be part of our literary diet. I don't see why it should be in the ghettos - unless it is badly written (in which case, burn it).
I want literature of the fantastic. Key words: "literature" and fantastic.
It's funny because for the past several years I've been infected with the spirit of DIY. As in the case of Siglo: Freedom, it will be a struggle. But it is a struggle I'm more than happy to take on.
We'll see what next year brings.
It's not really goodbye goodbye, since I will always love comics and will continue to buy them and interact with the Filipino creatives. I've come to accept the powers and fatal flaws of comic book publishing - hell, I've lived it, from self-publishing The Lost to receiving a National Book Award for Siglo: Freedom. I'm just fatigued with the entire thing. For now.
I'd rather focus on prose.
And, as is seemingly the practice with my friends this time of year, there is already a project in the making. Something to do with Filipino writers and Speculative Fiction.
Our "tradition" of Speculative Fiction is so thin it is almost invisible. I don't see why it has to be so. I don't see why Philippine Literature has to be written in the social-realist mode, with farming boys riding carabaos in ricefields aching with unrealized epiphanies. I don't see why imagination has to goosestep to the drums of misplaced nationalism. I don't see why the fantastic, the miraculous, the impossible, the past and the future cannot be part of our literary diet. I don't see why it should be in the ghettos - unless it is badly written (in which case, burn it).
I want literature of the fantastic. Key words: "literature" and fantastic.
It's funny because for the past several years I've been infected with the spirit of DIY. As in the case of Siglo: Freedom, it will be a struggle. But it is a struggle I'm more than happy to take on.
We'll see what next year brings.
posted by Dean at
2:07 PM
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