And one created by a Filipino komikero, at that. Gerry Alanguilan’s “Elmer” has been nominated for Best Graphic Album in the 2011 Will Eisner Comic Industry Award, widely considered as the “Oscars” of the comic book industry.

The Eisner Award, a celebration of the best of the comics art form established in 1987, is a much-awaited event at the Comic-Con International, the United States’ largest and oldest annual comics convention.

The nominees for this year’s prestigious awards were announced on the Comic-Con website on Friday. Cartoonist and “The Spirit” creator Will Eisner, in whose honor the award was named, was always present at the awarding ceremony. He would personally congratulate the winners from the first time it was conferred in 1988 until his death in 2005.

“A glance at any of the ballots from the last several years reveals a wide range of projects, subject matters, and levels, from such serious works as Art Spiegelman’s Maus and Joe Sacco’s Safe Area Gorazde to such lighter fare as Jeff Smith’s Bone and Sergio Aragonés’s Groo,” says Eisner Awards Administrator Jackie Estrada on their official website.

“The point is that reading comics can be a rewarding experience for people with a variety of tastes and of any age,” Estrada explained.

Superheroes are still easily the most memorable and popular characters in comics, but this year’s roster of nominees includes very few. Alanguilan’s “Elmer,” for one, is the story of a chicken living like a human.

As the official Elmer website described the series, “Elmer is a window into an alternate Earth where chickens have suddenly acquired the intelligence and consciousness of humans.”

Thinking and reasoning like humans, the chickens in the story have begun to see themselves as “a race no different from whites, browns or blacks,” and to push for their own “human rights.”

“Elmer” was originally released in four issues from June 2006 to November 2008. First published in 2009 as a trade paperback by Komikero Publishing, “Elmer” was picked up by SLG Publishing in North America last year.

The Eisner nomination comes as no surprise, as “Elmer” has been receiving plenty of praise from fans and artists alike.

Literary rockstar Neil Gaiman has called it wonderful. Gaiman, who created the Sandman character and series, has visited the Philippines several times.

“I remember the first time I saw that wonderful Elmer comic [by Gerry Alanguilan] it was more or less like that, it was one of those handed to me while I was just here in the Philippines and I thought this is great, this is wonderful, this is awesome, and it’s beautifully told, and it’s beautifully drawn, and it’s about a chicken and civil rights for chickens,” said Gaiman in an interview last year by Philippine Online Chronicles.

“And you’re reading something like that, and you’re going, it doesn’t matter where in the world this was published, it’s a great comic,” Gaiman added.

Unlike amateur artists discovered through Youtube and turned overnight into instant celebrities, Alanguilan—a licensed architect by profession—has been writing and drawing comics books since 1992.

Aside from Elmer, he is also the creator of Wasted, Timawa, Crest Hut Butt Shop, Johnny Balbona, Humanis Rex! and Where Bold Stars Go to Die. He also worked on Mars Ravelo’s Lastikman on one book in 2004, illustrated by Arnold Arre. He has likewise inked for DC, Marvel and Image comics including Wolverine, X-men, X-Force, Superman, Batman, and Fantastic Four among many others.

Alanguilan has also adapted and illustrated various short stories including Edgar Allan Poe’s “the Black Cat” and Bram Stoker’s “The Judge’s House.”

Last year, he was awarded the Gawad Pinakamaningning na Alagad ng Sining (for Visual Arts) and Outstanding San Pableño for Visual Arts.

“I’m very happy to be nominated [for the Eisner Award], but I’m happier knowing other Filipinos were also nominated for other categories. Filipinos have gotten nominations and even won Eisner awards numerous times in the past. I’m very honored to be included among them,” Alanguilan told GMA News Online.

Ronnie Del Carmen was the first Filipino to win an Eisner for Best Single Issue in 1995 for Batman Adventures Holiday Special. In 2002, Abel Laxamana won with the team the Best Humor Publication award for Radioactive Man.

In 2003, Lan Medina won the Eisner Award for Best Serialized Story for his work with Bill Willingham and Steve Leialoha on Vertigo Comics’ Fables #1-5: “Legends in Exile.” Before the Eisners, the Inkpot Awards were given out during the San Diego Comic-Con, which veteran Filipino artists Nestor Redondo and Alex Niño were recipients of.

“Elmer getting nominated in the Eisner’s is a big win for Gerry Alanguilan and for all Filipino comic book creators. Goes to show that if a writer/artist believes in his story, is passionate with his craft and works hard to promote his comic book, it will find itself in the hands of readers who will love it and appreciate it,” says Budjette Tan, “Trese” comic book writer.

The selection of nominees in 28 categories, done by a blue ribbon panel of judges, is representative of the colorful landscape of comics and graphic novels today. The nominees include autobiographical works, niche market books for children and young adults, anthologies, and even deluxe hardcover archival editions.

On the 2011 Eisner Award judging panel are Metropolis Comics store representative John Berry, Comic-Con board of director Ned Cato, Columbia University librarian Karen Green (Columbia University), “The Shadow” comics writer and editor Andy Helfer, publishing consultant Rich Johnson, and Lone Star Comics retail manager Chris Powell.

Ballots with this year’s nominees will be going out in mid-April to comics creators, editors, publishers, and retailers. A special website has been set up for online voting. The results in all categories will be announced in a gala awards ceremony on the evening of Friday, July 22 at Comic-Con International in San Diego, California.

Before arriving in Manila in 2005 on a Fulbright scholarship, Bartholomew, a self-effacing “basketball freak” and assistant editor at Harper’s, had seen or heard little to prepare him for the local obsession with the sport. In the Philippines, a game imported by American colonial educators a century ago (intended originally for girls’ gym classes) had since become “a cultural force on par with the Catholic Church,” he writes. Bartholomew’s survey is consequently full of wide-eyed observations: the laughably unsporty names of Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) franchises, like the Barangay Ginebra Kings (named for a San Miguel offshoot that makes gin, vodka, rum and whiskey) or the San Miguel Beermen (sponsored by the beer company); the taxi driver who tells Bartholomew he’s given his son the name Kobe Bryant Salem; and the balletic street ballers in flip-flops who specialize in herky-jerky circus layups and other maverick shots, most Filipino men being too short (at an average 5 ft. 5 in.) for thunderous dunks. All of this is woven into the book’s loose narrative structure — a chronicle of the Alaska Aces’ storybook journey to the 2007 PBA championship. (The team is named not after the frigid American state, but for a local milk company.)

There is exposure, too, of a seamier side to Philippine basketball. Bartholomew alleges that important games are often fixed, depicting smashmouth fans angrily chucking peso coins and beer cans at refs. He claims that councilmen trade courts for votes in “craven hoops-related politicking,” building hoops instead of much needed schools, hospitals or food banks. Add to this the racism toward foreign players (many of whom are black) and the twisted popularity of “skirts vs. squirts” games — between transvestites and midgets — and you’ve got a compelling sociological story in your hands.

There’s also something to be inferred here about a nation’s psyche. Despite the fanaticism for the sport, the Philippines last qualified for the Olympics in 1972 and in international rankings is now a dismal 53rd, just below Kuwait. Bartholomew doesn’t fully articulate why, but suggests earlier success was predicated not on overwhelmingly superior play but because so many other nations had yet to adopt and develop the game.

Neither does Bartholomew offer enough historical context to make Pacific Rims consistently interesting. He links basketball to post — World War II nationalism, calling it “a binding agent for the whole archipelago”; he speculates that its popularity today has much to do with the Marcos years, when it was one of the few things to watch every night on heavily censored TV. But he also spends rather too much time on highlight-reel longueurs — pages-long descriptions better left to YouTube clips. These tend to dampen “the siren clank of ball on rim,” with which he lures us at the start of his book. And yet, given his tender years (Bartholomew is just 28), this can be indulged as a mistake by a rookie. In its subject matter, enthusiasm and occasionally brilliant flashes of gonzo prose, Pacific Rims is mostly All-Star stuff.

*credits to TIME Magazine Asia

by Jessica Hagedorn

Hagedorn’s latest masterpiece described by the New York Times Book Review as “a narrative collage hopscotching from year to year, from place to place and from one point of view to another: that’s what Jessica Hagedorn offers in her intricate new novel, which boldy links a Manila millionaire’s ‘discovery’ of a Stone Age tribe on Mindanao with a filmed recreation of the Vietnam War on that same guerilla-plagued island six year later.”

I just started reading this novel and am savoring every word of it – that is why I elected to read it only on the train going home from work. I usually finish a novel in one sitting. But this one deserves to be taken in slowly … as I want to live and relive within the countless web of stories in it. It is a very lush and baroque novel just like her Dogeaters of several years ago, and just like the Philippines, full of contradictions, half-baked notions, inferiority and at the same time superiority complex, characters dropping by and disappearing without excuses, confusions, noise, dust, grime, and all the things we miss from home. If you are a martial law baby, this will take you back to that era of dangerous uncertainty, breathing in and choking on that insidious feeling of confinement and self-imposed censorship. You just know. Sometimes you even squeal (well, I guess me) with delight when you encounter a character or an event that you recognize. I may sound like I am portraying the book as insular but it’s not. It works on so many levels and for those of you who missed that era or who don’t know anything about the Philippines, there’s enough here to learn about the horrible undercurrent prevailing during that dark, yet to some, golden age of the Philippine history that, catches up with us when we least expect it.

Source

In Spanish, Ilustrado means “enlightened one.” During the 19th century, it referred to the Philippines’ Europe-educated literati, whose revolutionary ideas helped establish the foundations for Asia’s first democracy. Fast-forward 200 years: expatriate Filipino author Miguel Syjuco has put a modern spin on this dated term with his 2008 Man Asia Literary Prize–winning novel Ilustrado. Syjuco’s novel follows the exploits of a young Filipino protagonist — also named Miguel Syjuco — who returns to the Philippines and the past he left behind to investigate the death of his dissident mentor Crispin Salvador. This satire of Philippine society comes at a time when this Southeast Asian nation stands at a political crossroads. Born into a well-to-do political family himself, Syjuco is not unfamiliar with the elite class he parodies, but he is quick to point out the differences between himself and his fictional namesake. During his whirlwind Asian promotional tour, Syjuco spoke with TIME in Hong Kong about the power of the written word and his transnational exploits as a modern-day Ilustrado.

How was your return to the Philippines? Was it a big homecoming for you?
It was. I saw friends who I haven’t seen in a decade, in many cases. I spoke at my alma mater, the Ateneo. I saw all these teachers who, quite rightly, are surprised that I ever did something, got anywhere with my life. I surprise myself that I’m not dead in the gutter somewhere, surprised that I haven’t given up. (See pictures of the 2009 politically driven massacre in the Philippines.)

What drove you to leave to begin with?
I left to pursue my education as a creative writer. I studied in New York. I fell in love with an Australian-born, half-Filipina girl. So we moved to Australia when she went to her university and I moved with her. We moved to Montreal because she was going to take her year abroad and I wanted to see if I could keep on writing there. It’s really hard to make it as a writer in the Philippines. But I also wanted to see if I could make it on my own. I wanted to live in a place where nobody knew my last name and didn’t ask where I went to school. I wanted to get by on my own merit. As many young men and women do, they have to leave home, leave their parents — their loving parents — and strike out on their own to prove themselves.

In Ilustrado, the protagonist is named Miguel Syjuco. Why did you name him after yourself?
The Miguel Syjuco character is not me. I wanted him to represent my own fears and frustrations and guilt, my own worst tendencies and my optimistic expectations. He’s a cautionary tale for me. But he’s also an examination of the darkest things that haunt me as a person. I named him after me because I think it keeps the reader a little bit more engaged and wondering what’s real and what’s not. And that’s a good thing. (See the TIME 100 list of the world’s most influential people.)

What is your writing process like? How do you motivate yourself to fill the page?
I treat my writing like a day job, like my main job, even if for many years I was doing other jobs to pay the bills. I worked as a copy editor. I was a medical guinea pig. I was an eBay power seller of ladies’ handbags. I was an assistant to a bookie at the horse races. I bartended. I did anything I could to make ends meet. And those to me were hobbies that paid money, because my main job, even if it didn’t pay any money, was creative writing. So I’d wake up, and I’d go straight to my desk, and I’d work until I couldn’t work anymore. I feel like an overworked executive trying to make a promotion. I think that’s how writers have to do it. I think of the romance novelist Nora Roberts. Her philosophy is pared down to three words: butt in chair. So I stick my behind in my office chair in front of my computer and just work.

That must take a lot of discipline.
Discipline and desperation, I guess. And delusion.

As a diasporic author, did you feel any pressure representing your mother country?
I’m a Filipino. I’m nothing else but a Filipino. I’d like to be a writer, not just defined by race. The book deals with those issues — the guilt and the sense of purpose and wondering if what you are doing is right or wrong. But I think that’s natural. I think that anyone living abroad would feel that way. And if you were living at home, you’d be feeling other things. So I guess I am a diasporic writer. If you ask me, I’m just a dude who sits at his desk and writes as best he can. And everything else is just subsets of that.

It was Jessica Hagedorn who once told me, “Don’t just try to be a Filipino writer. Try to be a writer.” The beauty about being a writer is that you put yourself in other people’s shoes. You imagine the lives of your characters. My writing changed after she told me that. It stopped being so angry and militantly nationalistic. I stopped trying to explain the Philippines, or I stopped trying to prove everybody wrong about the preconceptions and misconceptions that they have about Filipinos. I started just focusing on the story. The book is about the Philippines, but it’s about the Philippines that I’ve created within the context of the novel. So it’s a real place, but it is a work of fiction.

With the elections happening, your novel comes at an important time for the Philippines. Did you plan this release purposefully?
Yes, I pushed my publishers to do it. They’re wonderful. They listened, and they understand how important this is. I wanted it to come out before the elections. It’s funny — as I was revising it this last year, a lot of the things that go on in the book seem to have happened. It seems prescient almost. And I thought at first, “Well, why is this? Am I just ripping off? Am I Nostradamus here?” But no, I think it’s really just because the Philippines is in a cycle of constantly recurring problems and issues that we have never really solved. That’s why I’m able to write about these things in the book, because they’re just constantly recurring. And hopefully now that I’ve articulated them, put them down, people can read about them. Now we can see them a little bit more clearly and maybe turn our eye towards discussing solutions.

So you believe that words can create change?
I think every writer at their heart believes that when they sit down and write, they can do something meaningful with their work and they can incite change. It’s what keeps us writing. Well, maybe some writers do it for the money, but I certainly am not. But I have no illusions about the idea or even the possibility that my book will come out and all of a sudden everybody’s going to vote properly and they’re going to change the country and they’re going to get rid of all the corruption. It’s not going to happen.

Do you have hope for the future of the Philippines?
Yes. I believe change will come from the grass-roots level. I don’t think we have a Barack Obama who can inspire the people and really lead them to change. We’re a fractured society, and I think that change will come from organizing the people who can benefit most from change and helping them help themselves. But again, I’m just a writer. I don’t know much about politics.