Two of the stories that impressed me the most in Philippine comics in 2005 would be DUGO by Dodo Dayao and Bong Leal, and Baguio, 1992 by Cyan Abad-Jugo, Elbert Or and Jamie Bautista. There have been others that were also remarkably good, but these are my two favorites.
DUGO came out in Reno Maniquis' Tabloid Komiks, serialized in issues 2 and 3 from May to August 2005, sixteen pages in all. It's written completely without dialogue and illustrated in a very nice line art style. Without dialogue, the role of the artist becomes very important as it is on his shoulders alone that the story will be told. It's very difficult to pull it off but Bong does a really good job of telling it very clearly.
It's a remarkable achievement, far surpassing their other work on their own comic book Askals.
My most favorite story of this year has to be Baguio, 1992 from Siglo: Passion published by Nautilus Comics in December of this year. It's written by Cyan Abad-Jugo, illustrated by Elbert Or, and colored by Jamie Bautista.
The story really took me by surprise because it explored themes I had been trying to explore myself in my own work. Themes such as memory, nostalgia, ruminations of things old and worn today were once new and fresh. The story that Cyan wrote was so poignant and touching that it literally had me in tears. I don't remember being so moved to tears by a comics story since Dark Phoenix Saga back when I was a lot younger.
I was so impressed by the story that I immediately wrote the writer a "fan" letter, telling her how much I loved this story and thanked her for writing it.
