OUT OF THE GUTTER (5) DAKILA: Siyudad Issue 3

OUT OF THE GUTTER (5)

DAKILA: Siyudad Issue 3
David Hontiveros / Pyotr Mutuc

and

KADASIG: Walanghanggan Issue 2
David Hontiveros / Romnick Magbanua

Note:

This post is, by its very nature, spoiler-y.

Hopefully you've already ordered and read these new releases and are here to check out this OotG post for some additional insight into these issues.

If you haven't read these issues yet... you have been warned.

 

I’ve mentioned this elsewhere: the fact that the 3 separate stories that were worked on by their respective artists during lockdown in TFNY 2020 (the DAKILA “Siyudad” story arc, the KADASIG “Walanghanggan” story arc, and the one-shot “That Kind of Hunger” for TRESE: BLOODLINES Volume 1) were all about greed, was one of those random intersections of circumstance.

 

What wasn’t random though, was the work that went into the “Siyudad” and “Walanghanggan” scripts.

The “Walanghanggan” scripts came first, and it was, in fact, during the writing of them, that I realized I could very well launch into another title, one that would be decidedly more spandex superhero-ey than KADASIG was.

That title, of course, became DAKILA.

 

And as I started to write scripts for DAKILA, the idea for the “Siyudad” arc came.

Among other things, “Siyudad” serves to encapsulate some of the conflicted feelings I have towards Makati being a center of commerce.

Because sadly, where commerce is, greed isn’t too far behind…

 

Clearly, there was the narrative connective tissue between the two arcs, since the DAKILA and KADASIG backstories bleed into each other (as we see in the “Walanghanggan” arc).

But, there was also clearly some serious thematic connective tissue, with greed being central to both arcs.

So a number of conscious creative decisions were made in the course of writing “Siyudad” that would serve to mirror certain aspects of both arcs, in turn reinforcing each of the narratives taking place in those arcs.

 

For example:

Certain creative demands resulted in both arcs featuring an analogue/stand-in for Masakim/Greed, instead of the Real McCoy.

And since the frog is the animal associated with Greed, in “Siyudad,” we have the thus far unnamed frog thing that rose from the diabul swamp in issue 2, and of course, in “Walanghanggan” issue 2, we have the giant yellow frog (one of the “myriad forms” of Masakim disciple, Lester Arkadio).

 

Now, when it became clear that “frog” was going to be a central element in “Walanghanggan,” and the narrative had organically moved towards the plot point that Kadasig would be forced to transform himself into the fictional Filipino superhero he once played onscreen, I could not escape the undeniable fact that the key elements “Filipino superhero” and “frog” were in such close proximity to each other.

It would not take very much to add “battles” and “giant” to those elements, so I could honor the venerable “Filipino superhero battles giant frog” convention.

It was an opportunity I could not afford to let pass.

Which is why we end up with a giant yellow frog in “Walanghanggan.”

 

There was also, as I mentioned above, the conscious decision to mirror certain aspects in both arcs.

Thus, we have the hero actually held captive inside the Masakim analogue, calling back to the visual of Greed as a hollow thing.

In “Walanghanggan,” the hero is tortured* for an indeterminate amount of time, but in “Siyudad,” the “Greed is forever hollow, no matter how much stuff you throw into it” idea is taken a step further, as the analogue actually uses the hero’s own life force to power itself.

All we see is what appears to be a hollow rib cage, without any internal organs.

In a fundamental sense, the hero--trapped in its rib cage; get it? Rib cage?--becomes the analogue’s internal organs, their own strength, power, and life force forced to flow throughout the analogue’s body.

The hero himself becomes the analogue’s beating heart.

But still, the analogue desires more…

But then again, that’s Greed, right? Always wanting more…

I could go on, but maybe let's leave it there for now...

In the meantime, if you haven't gotten your copies of these new releases and still read this spoiler-y post, then please click on down to the Indies section of the Avenida website so you can do just that, and then see what it is I'm blathering on about here...

 

That should be all for now, all you mighty fine folk out there…

 

Stay safe.

Stay sane.

 

you can’t drink just six,

 

Dave

* Subjecting the hero's super-hearing to a super-noise barrage of giant frog borborygmus was my own spin on PSYOP warfare sound torture...

The new ‘Verse releases DAKILA: Siyudad 3 (art by the mighty fine Pyotr Mutuc) and KADASIG: Walanghanggan 2 (art by the mighty fine Romnick Magbanua), as well as an assortment of previously released DAKILA and KADASIG issues, are all available to order online at the Indies section of the Avenida website.

Click on down there to support self-published local comics.

OUT OF THE GUTTER (4) “Iunctura”

OUT OF THE GUTTER (4)

“Iunctura”

David Hontiveros / Marvin del Mundo

[Contained in TRESE: BLOODLINES Volume 1]

This piece originally appeared in the DEVIATIONS issue 1 “Iunctura” floppy release.

It appears here at the Iguana for any readers who will be reading the story in BLOODLINES Volume 1 for the first time.

 

When Budjette asked me if I was interested in writing Fr. Matt, I very quickly landed on having my first script be a team-up between Fr. Matt and Dakila.

There are a number of reasons for that, and these are two of them.

One:

The only established foundation for the character of Fr. Matt was the “Linda Blasco” story; I was given free rein in terms of not just his personal backstory, but also the finer details of the type of demons he faces as well as the further specifics of the organization he’s a part of.

 

And while the relatively open slate I was presented with eased away some of the pressure on one end (there wasn’t much I could possibly contradict, given the single issue worth of story that was my, ahem, Bible for Fr. Matt), it also compounded the pressure on the other (because in the final analysis, this was going to be all me).

 

So I felt I needed to ease into the character of Fr. Matt, and having another character there, someone I’ve been actively thinking about and writing for a whole slew of scripts and issues and years, was sort of my security blanket.

If I knew exactly what Dakila would say and how he’d react to any given situation, that would free me up to focus on Fr. Matt, so I could discover who he is as a person and an individual, and I would then, in turn, eventually know what Fr. Matt would say and how he’d react to any given situation.

I wasn’t just discovering Fr. Matt from my viewpoint as the writer; I was also discovering Fr. Matt through Dakila’s eyes, and that helped the process tremendously.

Two:

The thought of chronicling how a priest would react to meeting a superhero who happens to be “the champion of God”...

That was a no-brainer and too, heh, tempting an opportunity to pass up.

So I opted to have IUNCTURA be the first Fr. Matt script I wrote.

 

And yes, for those of you who super-parsed that sentence, there are more Fr. Matt scripts that have already been written, some focusing more on Fr. Matt (and which lean more towards the horror end of the spectrum) and some featuring the further adventures of the Divinely Dynamic Duo, Dakila and Fr. Matt, both types of stories working in tandem to help build out the world of the Mercy Seat and the Malevari.

 

So we all hope you enjoy this first step that takes us deeper into the world of Fr. Matt, where demons buzz and shriek with the voices of the once-possessed, and where priests can be trusted to kick Evil’s ass for the Lord...

--dave (Space Monkey)

October 2019

And with that dispatch from the Long Ago sent out into the wilds of the Interwebz, let me leave you with:

 

Stay safe.

Stay sane.

 

you can’t drink just six,

 

Dave

TRESE: BLOODLINES Volume 1 contains both

“Iunctura” (AKA DEVIATIONS Issue 1; art by the mighty fine Marvin del Mundo), and

“That Kind of Hunger” (art by the mighty fine Brian Balondo).

TRESE: BLOODLINES Volume 1 is now available for preorder at the Avenida website.

There's still time to preorder (20% off cover price), so long as payment is made by December 17, 2020, which is tomorrow, so chop chop!

Shipping starts on December 21, 2020, Monday next week.

And while you're down Avenida way to preorder, it would be greatly appreciated if you also check out the Indies section, where you'll find more Dakila in these 'Verse goodies...

OUT OF THE GUTTER (3) “That Kind of Hunger”

OUT OF THE GUTTER (3)

“That Kind of Hunger”

David Hontiveros / Brian Balondo

[Contained in TRESE: BLOODLINES Volume 1]

For the record: while “That Kind of Hunger” may be the first Solo Fr. Matt story penned by me that you’ll be reading, this isn’t the first Solo Fr. Matt (SFM, as opposed to a DEVIATIONS X-Over/team up) script that I wrote.

When DEVIATIONS launched at last year’s NovKon (in the Far, Far Away Time of the Long Ago), I had already completed first drafts of “Congrego” (aka DEVIATIONS issue 2) and “A Higher Decision of Instinct,” my first crack at a SFM tale, and a closer look at the ways in which the Mercy Seat operates.

But shortly after the Secret HQ event (thanx so much to all you mighty fine folk who dropped by for that), Budjette asked if we could launch the FATHER TRESE title with a more Fr. Matt-focused story.

I had a number of other SFM story ideas bubbling under the surface, and the one that rose to the top was “That Kind of Hunger.” (Or, as I referred to it in the script, the one with Fr. Matt, a couple of demons, and a bunch of rich A-holes.)

Under the “more Fr. Matt-focused” directive from On High, the rest of his Trinity are mentioned, but are firmly kept off-panel.

So, for those of you who may want to see more of Frs. Bronze and Alloy, as well as some other fresh Hilasterion faces, you’ll need to wait for whenever the originally-issue 1-but-now-going-to-be-issue 2 SFM script gets drawn and scheduled for release.

And any dangling plot threads visible at the end of “That Kind of Hunger” will likewise need to wait to resurface sometime in the hopefully foreseeable future...

(Thus are the wages of one of the other directives from On High, the “each issue needs to be a one-and-done.”)

And while the main bulk of the pages were drawn during lockdown by the mighty fine Brian Balondo, the “Hunger” script was indeed written back in the Long Ago, before all this tragic insanity descended upon us…

In a related aside, a first draft of DEVIATIONS issue 3 (“Liberatio”) is also already in Budjette’s Inbox, and DEVIATIONS issues 4 (“Deviatus”) and 5 (the double-length “Pestis”) are very nearly at the “first draft good to go” stage.

Meanwhile, on the SFM front, a particularly angry script, the bulk of which was written during the depths of lockdown (working title: “No Such Thing”), is also nearly at “first draft good to go,” and a script that picks up where “That Kind of Hunger” leaves off (working title: “Beyond the Rivers of Cush”), where we see the fallout of that bloody night at Olazo Elementary School, is gradually formulating at the back of my mind…

All these scripts of course, subject to scheduling based on the release plans from On High…

(Pssssttt… if you want to see these sooner rather than later, then bug Budjette on that newfangled thing called… “social media”? Did I get that right?)

I should also probably mention that the current working title for the SFM book is SANCTUS, and though it’s technically the “Solo Fr. Matt” book, it’s also meant to be a guided tour of the much wider stage upon which the Mercy Seat and the Malevari wage their ongoing war, so we also get to meet a whole lot of other Mercy Seaters in SANCTUS, as well as a host of other characters who color Fr. Matt’s life.

Okay.

I should be posting another OotG text piece soon (what was originally meant to be included along with “That Kind of Hunger”, if its initial release had been in floppy form).

In the meantime though, I’d like to acknowledge the following, for soundtracking the lettering process of “That Kind of Hunger”:

BAUMUSIK

808 State, Best Coast, Depeche Mode, Electric Owls, Propaganda, Rammstein, Ben Salisbury & Geoff Barrow, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Visage, and Xmal Deutschland

And with that said:

Stay safe.

Stay sane.

you can’t drink just six,

Dave

TRESE: BLOODLINES Volume 1 contains both

“That Kind of Hunger” (art by the mighty fine Brian Balondo) and

“Iunctura” (AKA DEVIATIONS Issue 1; art by the mighty fine Marvin del Mundo).

TRESE: BLOODLINES Volume 1 is now available for preorder at the Avenida website.

And while you're down Avenida way to preorder, it would be greatly appreciated if you also check out the Indies section, where you'll find more Dakila in these 'Verse goodies...

OUT OF THE GUTTER (2) DAKILA: Siyudad Issue 2

OUT OF THE GUTTER (2)

DAKILA: Siyudad Issue 2
David Hontiveros / Pyotr Mutuc

In the process of character creation, one of the key steps is getting to the core of the character.

I tend to think of this step as something similar to the Inside-Out actor’s approach to building up their character (as opposed to the Outside-In approach, which essentially utilizes the external, the character’s physical appearance, wardrobe, etc., to establish the character).

Getting to the internal core of the character will tell you who that individual is, and will serve as the foundation for the active inner life that characters need in order to hopefully achieve a well-rounded believability.

But when you’re talking about entities like the Seven Deadly Sins, getting to the core of, say, Greed, can afford a host of interesting possibilities you wouldn’t normally have access to if the character you were creating was a normal human being.

 

For the purposes of The Septet, I imagined Greed to be this bottomless hollow, just a pit that you could keep on filling with stuff, but would never actually get filled.

Its personality would possess it to compulsively acquire and hoard, and yet never be satisfied with what it already had, instead wanting still more, and more, and more.

(Which actually sounds like some “normal” human beings out there, but, hey, that’s a whole other conversation entirely.)

 

This bottomless hollow imagery will get a closer inspection in issue 3, as well as in KADASIG: Walanghanggan issue 2.

Both of these new releases should be available to order online sometime early next year.

At that point, we’ll return to this train of thought.

 

In the meantime, you’ve hopefully already picked up Siyudad issue 2, so you know what the plotz I’m talking about.

And if you haven’t, then please click on down to the Indies section of the Avenida website.

 

That should be all for now, all you mighty fine folk out there…

 

Stay safe.

Stay sane.

 

you can’t drink just six,

 

Dave

 

The new ‘Verse releases DAKILA: Siyudad 2 (art by the mighty fine Pyotr Mutuc) and KADASIG: Walanghanggan 1 (art by the mighty fine Romnick Magbanua), as well as 5 other previously released issues, are all available to order online at the Indies section of the Avenida website.

Click on down there to support self-published local comics.

OUT OF THE GUTTER (1) KADASIG: Walanghanggan Issue 1

OUT OF THE GUTTER (1)

KADASIG: Walanghanggan Issue 1
David Hontiveros / Romnick Magbanua

For the record:

In the Far, Far Away Time of the Long Ago, when Ian replied to my question of who was the bad guy he wanted Kadasig to face with "the Seven Deadly Sins", I had to give that a bit of a think.

Because I'd already previously done a version of the Sins in AVATAR.

 

During that period of consideration and deep dive research, the idea of leaning into elements like color and animal associations with the Deadly Sins seemed the way to go (since the approach I took in AVATAR was to anthropomorphize them).

In the end, I said "Okay," and The Septet came into being.

 

So while Magalit (Anger) is the Red Bear, Masakim (Greed) is the Yellow Frog.

(The full rundown of the Septet’s animal and color associations--as well as the reason why their names all begin with “Ma”--can be found in one of the in-between-chapters text pieces in the TATSULOK: A Vision of Dust compilation, art by the mighty fine Xerx Javier.)

 

Meanwhile.

 

When the idea of a demonic, sentient horror movie first came into focus, I immediately knew it would be an opportunity to nod towards a few of the subgenres that I feel a deep horrorhead affection for.

Thus, in issue 1, you have spotlights shined on giallo and the slasher films subsequently influenced by giallo, as well as the “disembodied killer hand” subgenre, as typified by Oliver Stone’s The Hand (an adaptation of Marc Brandel’s The Lizard’s Tail), Alfredo Zacarias’ Macabra (AKA Demonoid), Rodman Flender’s Idle Hands, and of course, Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead II.

(And though it’s a short fiction piece, it would be an insulting oversight if I neglected to mention Clive Barker’s “The Body Politic,” from Books of Blood. I haven’t had the chance to watch Mick Garris’ Quicksilver Highway, in which “The Body Politic” is adapted, so I have no idea if it does justice to the short story.)

 

But let’s step back and take a closer look at giallo, shall we?

When they hear the term, horrorheads will immediately think Argento, Bava, Fulci… but the term giallo originated from the world of literature.

And the meaning of the word giallo?

Yellow.

The term was used as a label for these pulpy mysteries and thrillers because the backgrounds of the book covers were uniformly yellow.

 

So, yes, I loved the serendipity of Walanghanggan also being about Greed (as per the long-standing Art Vs Commerce argument that has shadowed cinema since its inception), so that the story arc that featured giallo prominently within its narrative, would also happen to have yellow covers, like an old school giallo paperback…

 

Serendipity.

Mwah!

 

The next OotG post should be about DAKILA: Siyudad issue 2, and will probably go live at some point in the indeterminate future…

For now though, I should take this opportunity to note that one of the characters introduced in Siyudad 2 speaks with a font designed by none other than the mighty fine Edgar Tadeo, who drew the sh!t out of KADILIMAN: In Their Silent Shadow Carnival. (Hey, Ed! Howzit?)

 

Guess that’s all for now.

 

Stay safe.

Stay sane.

 

you can’t drink just six,

 

Dave

 

The new ‘Verse releases KADASIG: Walanghanggan 1 (art by the mighty fine Romnick Magbanua) and DAKILA: Siyudad 2 (art by the mighty fine Pyotr Mutuc), as well as 5 other previously released issues, are all available to order online at the Indies section of the Avenida website.