Go Get Your TPGFA Comics Anthology!

April 22, 2010

The late poster that I am; The Philippine Graphic/Fiction Awards Comics Anthology is finally out! To those not familiar with that, it all started several years ago when Neil Gaiman visited the Philippines for the first time. On what he probably thought would be a routine signing and interviews event, transgressed into something much larger than he initially expected. He greatly appreciated how the Filipinos’ received him with “a wall of sound”, before ultimately getting astounded by the plenty amount of untapped talents in the country.

To cut everything short, he, together with Jaime Daez’s Fully Booked chain of bookstores, decided to put up a series of contests that encouraged Filipinos to explore the magical and fantastic world of the unreal and use it in our literature. This, after Mr. Gaiman observed that almost all of the works by local authors that he was able to read, tackled the realities of one’s self and his surroundings. Very few wandered into the realms of our fantastic mythologies and legends. Not that it was a bad thing, but he longed to see Filipino unrealism, created by Filipinos.

The result was The Philippine Graphic/Fiction Awards. The contest that (if I am not mistaken) has spanned seven years since the first challenge was announced to the final judging of the third installment of the series last March.

And now, all the winning entries, plus some other notable entries that didn’t make it, are published in the thickest (and very gorgeous) pinoy comic book that I’ve ever seen. I’d like to mention too how the book itself is great. It’s the best pinoy komiks ever in terms of printing and paper quality! Thank you , Fully Booked for not going cheap on it.

 

I was blessed to have my entry get picked as a winner in the second TPGFA. My story, “Afterlife” made the third place back in 2007. The experience allowed me to get published alongside an array of highly talented fellow Filipinos who share my passion for creating original stories and comics –not to mention sit and dine beside Neil Gaiman himself. That victory (although it was not the grand prize) also initiated me as a serious comics creator –specially as a writer. It boosted my esteem to write more and somehow, I proved to myself that I can accomplish a lot more in comics than what I usually did before the contest.

It was mentioned in the awarding ceremony of the third contest that Neil and Jaime agreed on three installments of the TPGFA. Did they mean the third TPGFA was the last of it? I am really hoping it wasn’t, because I have set a personal goal to win it one day –I am thinking, the next one!

Click here for a review about the book: