Komikero Comics Journal

LOTS OF THINGS

Bruce Springsteen's new CD has just come out and I've got a copy. ha! ha! As far as I know, it's hasn't been released locally yet. And it's absolutely terrific. Can't say anymore about it except that.

Finally finished the entirety of High Roads, all 6 issues of them. #5 has just been released. It's great relief to finally finished an entire project of this length where no fill in inkers were needed to do pages here and there. Every single page, except covers, was inked by me, and I'm really kinda proud of that because often times, in other projects, other inkers were called in to do 4 or 5 pages of an issue.

Well, that's INKING. I still wanna move on and do pencilling (and inking) full time. I know it will be difficult, but I gotta do it. I don't see myself just inking till Kingdom Come. Of course I don't mind inking, specially when I get to work on talented people like Whilce, Leinil Yu and Roy Allan Martinez, and I get to work on characters like Superman, Wolverine, X-Men, X-Force and Fantastic Four. But I gotta, I wanna move on. I see myself inking for at least just a couple more years, more or less depends on whether I get that pencilling job or not.

Anyway, I wanna rant about inking for a while. It's one of the most misunderstood jobs on the planet. Some inkers don't even know exactly what it is they're doing and why they're doing it. I wanna explode some idiotic fallacies associated with inking.

Penciller and inker work on Project X. People love the art. For Penciller's next project, Project Y, he is teamed up with a different inker. The art sucks or is not as good as the art on Project X. People blame inker, wish him unemployment, and curse his talentless ass into hell.

What's important to think about is THIS:

DID YOU SEE THE PENCILS BEFORE THEY WERE INKED?

If no, then you don't know what the FUCK you are talking about.

Let me explain. What you see on the printed page is, in fact, the inker's handiwork. No trace at all of the penciller's line work can be seen. So what basis can any person have, save for the editor, penciller and inker, to judge the inking on any objective manner? Previous work perhaps? The penciller is known to do this quality of work and all of a sudden in the hands of this inker, the penciller's work suddenly sucks. Yes, the inker may be at fault, but as a reader YOU CAN'T BE SURE. The penciller could be having a bad day. He could be sick, he could be in a hurry or he is just deliberately changing his style.

It has been observed that Leinil's art has suddenly become cleaner and simpler when I came aboard to ink him. They reminisce about the good old Wolverine days when Leinil's art was gritty and dark and so I should be butt kicked out the door and get his old inker back.

They forget that Leinil is an artist and that his art develops. It's developing with every page that he does. If his art is clear and simple today, it simply means that Leinil is drawing simply and clearly. It's got nothing to do with me. I'm just there to ink whatever line he draws down.

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Getting ready to go back to Wasted full time. I hope we finish a lot of stuff this August. As much as I enjoy doing the movie, I no longer wanna be still doing it by December. I think we've found our Jenny. She's very pretty, very nice, but she's taller then me. I can always stand on boxes dammit! We're still gonna test her to see if she can do it, but Noel Lim is a guy who I think can make an actor out of anybody. He's trying with me though. Not sure if he's succeeding. ha! ha!

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Got 3 Kurosawa DVDs yesterday. Ikiru, Drunken Angel, and The Throne of Blood They're not available in the US so I just bought Region 3 versions (the only versions available so far). While its cool to have these movies finally, I just wish they would get better translators because the subtitles absolutely SUCKS. I feel I may be missing a lot in the story simply because the dialogue wasn't translated very well. Makes me wish Criterion would handle all these titles as well.

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San Pablo Post Office get your act together dammit! A friend of mine mailed a letter off to me last Friday right here in San Pablo. It's Wednesday now and it's STILL NOT HERE. What the fuck?

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Augy, happy birthday! Jac, good luck! Nil, hey dude, when you coming back? Nakita mo lang si....nakalimutan mo na kami. :) Maggie, can't wait to meet you allright? Chez and Paolo...hello! Wala lang. Vernon, where's Wasted dude?

Ilyn....well, you drive me crazy. In a good way. :)