Yesterday would have been really tough, so really must thank for Leinil Yu for the assist. 500 copies of Wasted arrived at PULP yesterday, and Nil helped me to carry all that stuff back to his place. He then helped me carry a hundred copies to Comic Quest Megamall, and he dropped me off later at the bus station because I myself was carrying another 85 copies back home to San Pablo. So THANKS man! I really owe you one.

So I really have to apologize to you too because your name had been mispelled on the book! Jeez...

Apologies also go to Philip Tan because his drawing didn't make it to the book as I had thought.

Nevertheless, WASTED is already available right now at Comic Quest Megamall, and should be available very soon in other outlets. I'll announce where here.

WASTED STUFF


If all goes well , Wasted: The Final Edition will be available starting Saturday at Comicquest Megamall, with other branches in Festival Mall, Alabang and SM North Edsa soon to follow. Comicquest will by no means be the only distributor of the book.

In 1998, Alamat Comics published the first compilation of the book with a print run of 500 copies. It sold out in a few months and a lot of people have been asking me for copies since then. Pulp Magazine will be the new publisher of an all new edition of the book. Of course, it will have the same old story, but I've removed much of the other extras in the first edition including intros, chapter stops, my endless rants at the end. The new edition will have a new full color cover, with new pinups from Whilce Portacio, Leinil Francis Yu, Arnold Arre, Roy Allan Martinez, Edgar Tadeo, Philip Tan and Marissa Hilos-Nepomuceno which will act as chapter stops. It will have intros by Karen Kunawicz and Barbie Almalbis of Barbie's Cradle. Pulp will be printing 2000 copies. I get to have some copies to distribute to Comic Quest, Comics Odyssey, CCHQ, Cold Cut and others. It depends on Pulp on where they will distribute the majority of it.

My contact at Pulp tells me that the 500 copies I get should arrive at their offices today. Of course, if all goes well. Leinil will be helping me get the stuff there and store it at his place for the meantime. At least that's the plan. I really REALLY hope that Pulp comes through with this. Because a lot of stuff has been put into motion because of their promise of delivery. There's the scheduled release of the book at Comic Quest, the promises I've made in turn to many people asking for its release, and the scheduled New Worlds Sci-Fi convention next week where Alamat Comics will have a booth which I am a part of. Posters and a huge banner have been made so I could pimp the book at the con.

If the book doesn't come out....well jeez. I don't even wanna think about that.

Why "Final Edition"? To be honest, after Alamat Comics had compiled the book in 1998, and after the book had sold out, I thought that it would be over. I thought I would move on to other projects, other drawings and stories. But the book just won't leave me alone. People who had only just read the book would come up to me and talk to me about it. It continues to surprise me today that I still get messages from people who want to talk about it.

Then came Vernon Go who wanted to serialize Wasted in monthly installments in PULP, cutting it up the way it had been originally cut up as a sporadic mini comic. A lot of people got to read the book who didn't before and once again I started to get feedback, good as well as bad. Even old classmates whom I hadn't met in a long time would get in touch to say they read my story.

Then came talk of compiling the book again. I thought...OK. I brought all original artwork to the PULP offices in Quezon City so they could be scanned properly. Soon after, the PULP offices burned down, taking with it all the original pages of Wasted. I was bummed, but I thought, that was that. It's finally finished. The book will finally leave me alone.

But then Noel F. Lim came to me with the idea of making the story into a live action film. And he seemed really serious about it. At first I wanted to decline, but the sincerity by which he had approached me made me think. It also made me think of all the letters I had gotten through the years because of the book. Letters from people who tell me how the book helped them deal with their own pain in their lives. Letters from people who eventually became good friends. As I look back on my life for the past 8 or so years, I'm surprised to realize that my life will be totally different if I had not done Wasted. Most of the friends I have made in the past several years are there because of this book. A lot of the exposure and work I have gotten in the same time came to me because of this book. I cannot turn my back on it. And I realize now that I don't want to. Wherever it takes me....it will take me, I guess.

The movie is taking a long time, but it WILL get made. The reprint from PULP took a long time coming, but now it's nearly here. Well, at least I HOPE so.

I just hope none of the pages are printed out of order, dammit.

Last Tuesday, February 25, me and Ilyn went mountain climbing. It wasn't really a mountain, but a very tall hill which is part of my family's property in Sta Catalina. I can't believe our family actually owns this awesome looking hill full of really huge boulders near the top. Part of it actually looks like a stone cliff face, and I'm really challenged to climb it one day. Tuesday though, Ilyn and I took the easy way up, which is a winding pathway along the side of the hill right to the top.

Below this hill is a cute little house built by my parents. And when I say cute it really is cute. Its no larger than 5meters by 5meters, but it has everything including living room, dining area, bedroom, kitchen and a really nice bathroom. Crap! This bathroom looks a whole lot better than the one we have right here in my apartment. In fact, that's one of the best looking bathrooms I've seen. I'm really going to enjoy shitting there.

I haven't been to this place in a long time and I'm glad I went because it was so peaceful, so cool, and it really made me want to draw. Good thing I brought my sketchbook with me. Ilyn and my mom went the easy way up along the path. Feeling Daredevil me wanted to find a much more fun way going up, and I nearly fell because of it too. If I hadn't grabbed hold really tight of a mahogany tree near the top I would have rolled down that hill and would not have stopped till I reached the very bottom. See that landscape behind Ilyn? That's WAAAY steeper than it looks. She didn't look down because she's afraid of heights. Well, I am too, but at least I have things there I can grab on to.

Right at the very top there is a long seat fashioned from one of the protruding stones. We sat there a bit as I sketched a dead branch. The breeze was soft and cool, the birds were singing and the bamboo trees were groaning against each other. It sounds as if they're about to collapse but that's just the way they sound in the wind, I guess.

We went back down after a while and hung out at the cute little house. The place didn't have electricity, but I think I could live there if I really wanted to.

We went back home as I still had a lot of work to do. I went back to inking Superman: Birthright and the deadline was so tight it was driving me nuts. It was a good thing I had a little mountain break as the deadline was really killing me. But I finished the issue with the help of Ilyn and I can't help but feel good about it because I think Leinil and I did some really cool stuff with the book.

Later in the week Leinil and I reviewed the inked pages and he seemed really happy with the pages. There are some revisions here and in the next issue, but it's OK.

Ryan Orosco, me, and Leinil Yu and his girlfriend Yai went to Mango Comics's launch of DARNA #1 the other night and it was a blast! The book wasn't getting much good reviews, but damn, this launch was really fun. There were lots of bands, a dancing Darna, pyrotechnics, souvenirs, food (where?), and lots of friends. I did meet some philosophical opponents like James Palabay of Culture Crash. He seems like an OK guy and I'm pretty sure he is. I just hope we do stick with the work and leave the personal stuff alone. It was really cool meeting the people who had worked on the book. Ryan of course, was the star of the night, next to Darna of course. He drew the first issue and people lined up for autographs and photographs. Aside from Ryan, the other people who worked on the book includes Gilbert Monsanto, Hugo Yonzon and Bart the colorist.

Ely Buendia and his new band MONGOLS was there. Pretty sneaky of Ely to call his new band Mongols, which is a popular brand of pencil which has an.....eraser head? ha! ha! ha! I also met Genie Ranada, one of the rabid Wasted letter writers back when I was still working on it. She had designed the CD cover to Sugar Free's album, another really great band to perform that night.

A pleasant surprise was the band NARDA. I saw them play and they were really cool. I liked their music right away. Later in the night, Ryan introduced me to the lead singer of the band. It turns out she really REALLY liked Wasted. Wow, that was sooo cool. There I was really happy to meet her and here she was talking about my book. It was really very flattering.

Here's another screen shot from Wasted test footage. :)

Just saw this at the FLIM's blog. Dammit! You told me you were going to send me more screen shots of the movie. Where the heck are they? Now I see you posted one at your blog. HM!



This was taken very early in our shooting. In fact, I didn't even have my apartment in Malate yet. I stayed at a hotel the previous night and went straight to the FLIM's house very early the next day. We shot a lot of footage that day. Most of which are pretty USELESS since NONE of them is in the SCRIPT. This is part of footage of me shooting a sidewalk cook simply because he looked at me funny. Totally out of context with the entire story. I don't know why the heck we even shot it, but it's good practice and that is a terrific composition by the FLIM. Hm! So he knows how to hold that damned camera. He's not so completely useless after all.

WASTED UPDATE!!

PULP called me up last night (at 10PM!!) to tell me that the book goes to press last week of February. That's just a couple of weeks from now. 2000 copies will be printed (1,500 more than the original printing). PULP will take care of distributing 1,500 of those copies in their regular outlets, and I will take care of distributing the other 500.

I'll try to make it available at http://www.coldcut.com for those of you abroad who are interested in getting copies. Getting copies directly from me may be quite bloody, but possible. I'll post details of it soon....

WHAT IS WASTED?

I will be attending NEW WORLDS, The 1st Philippine Science Fiction & Fantasy Convention on Mar. 12, 2003, at the Premiere THX Theater Complex, where I will be pimping WASTED along with other ALAMATERS Budjette Tan, Arvie Villena, Carlo Vergara, Karen Kunawicz, etc.

MORE INFO AT:
http://www.newworlds.tk/

Where the HECK is Premiere THX Theater Complex???

Come up to meet you, tell you I’m sorry,
You don’t know how lovely you are.
I had to find you, tell you I need you,
Tell you I set you apart.
Tell me your secrets, and ask me your questions,
Ah, let’s go back to the start.
Running in circles,
Coming up tails.
Heads on the science apart.

Nobody said it was easy
It’s such a shame for us to part
Nobody said it was easy
No one ever said it would be this hard
Ah, take me back to the start

I was just guessing, at numbers and figures,
Pullin’ the puzzles apart.
Questions of science, science and progress,
Do not speak as loud as my heart .
Tell me you love me, come back and haunt me,
Oh when I rush to the start.
Running in circles,
Chasing our tails,
Coming back as we are.

Nobody said it was easy
Ah, It’s such a shame for us to part
Nobody said it was easy
No one ever said it would be so hard
I’m goin’ back to the start.

The Scientist-Coldplay

:o(

Some of my plants have died. It's the FLIM's fault. He keeps sending me these negative vibes by bellyaching about my gardening. He says I should be shooting instead of messing with plants. Really, when you plant, you feel like you're helping something alive grow. And when it does grow and grows healthy, you feel great. And when it dies, you actually feel bad. And man, did I feel bad earlier today when one of the seedlings I planted turned brown, inspite of my watering on a regular basis. The others seem OK though. It feels as though you lost a pet or something.

Anyway, I did some work on the Wasted Movie site. Everybody told me how much they HATED that front page. So I went and re-uploaded the old front page. I also added a director's bio and pic page as well as cast bio ang pics page. I also added a page where you can view a few screenshots from the movie.
http://www.wastedthemovie.com

I'm still inking Superman with a deadline in a week or so. I'm confident that I can finish it in time. I still can't believe I'm involved in a project involving the big "S". While it is great providing inks to a talented artist, I would like to get a shot at actually drawing the big guy one of these days.

I heard there was a BIG fire in town earlier today. It may still be raging right now. I certainly hope no one gets hurt. If there's one thing I hate dying of, it's FIRE. I'd rather drown, or freeze to death.

By the way, I'm one of the featured artists on the official Terminator 3 site. I did just one drawing very quickly where Arnold fights off a woman transforming into a giant weapon. It was really fun to do. It was hard trying to get Arnold's likeness and I'm not really sure I got it, but what the heck. :)
http://www.terminator3.com

I'm at Leinil's place now with Edgar Tadeo and his girlfriend Amie, Ryan Orosco, Efren "Jay" Anacleto, and Augy De Lara for one of our rare DVD Marathons. We started out with Spirited Away (which was really cool), then the extended version of Fellowship of the Ring, then Frailty (which was damned creepy), and now they're watching Eight Legged Freaks. I've already seen that....really funny. I don't feel like sleeping anymore, but I am sleepy. But I'm enjoying the power of Leinil's DSL too much to just sleep it off. he.he.