I'll be at the 2nd Annual Toys and Collectibles Convention on the 5th Floor of SM Megamall this Saturday, June 21 from 1pm to 6pm. I'll be selling Wasted, as well as a Preview of my upcoming KOMIKERO Portfolio book. I'll be hanging out there with many other artists including ZsaZsa himself, Carlo Vergara, Ryan Orosco, Wilson Tortosa, Carlo Pagulayan, etc.

The KOMIKERO Portfolio book came about when I started to move house late last year. I cleaned out my room and in the process stumbled upon stacks of my old artwork, most of them have so far gone unpublished or have had only very limited release. I wanted to get this stuff out there somehow, so I put together what I can and put it into this book. It's interesting, at least for me, to see the various kinds of things that I have done over the past 10 years. I'm at least glad to say that I never got stuck to just one way of drawing.

Right now I'm not so sure when exactly I can release it. It really just depends on when I get my next checks. It will take a lot of money to publish my own book and once I get it I'll be setting aside part of it to get this printed.

I'm collecting toys for the first time in my life. A lot of people have asked if I collected toys, specially Noel Lim, but I've always said NO. I just didn't have the interest. But boy, did those McFarlane toys look cool or what? Still, no matter how great they looked, I just didn't feel like buying them. I feel I just don't have any use for them. Well I broke down and started buying action figures from the newest Star Trek series ENTERPRISE. The figures here are Weapons Officer Malcom Reed (Dominic Keating) and Chief Engineer Charles "Trip" Tucker (Connor Trinneer), two of my favorite characters in the show.

Why did I start buying now? I just happen to be totally NUTS about this series, as a previous blog entry would attest. My wife is a trekkie now because of ENTERPRISE. She liked it because one, she's a fan of Scott Bakula from the old Quantum Leap series, and two, she feels that ENTERPRISE is populated by more "human" characters than previous Treks. I tend to agree. I really like these characters. They tend to act and talk like someone I would know personally.

All of a sudden, having action figures around the house isn't so bad. All of a sudden I really want that McFarlane Alien action figure REALLY BAD.

Last week, I don't exactly remember when, me and Ilyn took our dog, Eugene, out for a walk. After a while Eugene smelled something inside a plastic bag along the sidewalk and when I tried to tug he woudn't budge. I looked at what he was smelling and Ilyn and I both saw a little kitten. It was probably the offspring of some person's cat and they didn't want it so they threw it away. Ilyn wanted to take it home but I didn't want to. It was too young to be on its own and without its mother, chances are very high that it will die. But after considering it a little bit more I decided to take it home after all. I thought that we'd give it our best shot at saving it. We called the little kitten Smeagol.

I scoured the town for a medicine dropper and bought some fresh milk. I tried to feed Smeagol a little every once in a while. I placed her in a huge box with lots of newspapers and used shirts so she could be warm. The little kitten was really loud. It cried all night and all day and all night again, looking for its mother. We tried to comfort her as much as we could. After a few days she seemed to grow stronger as her appetite for the milk grew. But her eyes were still closed. After a few more days, her meowing seemed to grow weaker. She still drank a lot of milk, but she seemed to grow weaker and weaker. This morning Smeagol died. There was nothing we could do. She had been just too young to be apart from her mother. I curse whoever left her on the sidewalk. They could have at least waited until she was strong enough to be on her own and we would gladly have taken her in.

It's going to be a very busy month. With 17 pages of pencils, inks and letters for a Bram Stoker story, 23 pages of Superman to ink, a Wasted movie to shoot, I doubt if I'll get much sleep before June is through. So I hope you all forgive me if I don't get to respond to emails right away or to post much at the message board. I'm sleepy. I think I'll go take a nap...in JULY!!

STAR TREK!!

I've been a Star Trek fan ever since I could remember. My very first Star Trek memory is watching a black and white Kirk on the bridge of the Enterprise being happy and victorious after capturing a comet (which episode was this?). I wasn't able to finish watching it because my parents forced me to go to bed and sleep. It was late they said. Kids shouldn't stay up late. I was so frustrated I still remember it some28 or so years later!

Now I'm 35 I've watched them all. I've seen all episodes of the original series, most of the Next Generation, some of Deep Space 9, some of Voyager, and half (so far) of Enterprise. While the original series will always be my favorite, I just love watching Enterprise now. I was disappointed to learn that it wasn't rating that good in the US. Which is baffling to me because I think it's one of the most imaginative, exciting and fun Star Trek so far. Maybe people are complaining that the Enterprise ship is too slow and weak, Scott Bakula is too bland, the stories boring. WHAT? Are we watching THE SAME show? I love Enterprise because they struggle with what the other Star Treks have taken for granted. The simple matter of transporting from the ship to a planet and back is a serious matter, being a new technology for them. Communication with alien species is more realistic because they don't speak english right off the bat. They need their communications officer to slowly decipher then translate the language. At last Enterprise has shown what the true potential of a communications officer really is, rather than just saying, "Hailing Frequencies open sir! Aye Sir! They are not responding sir!" There is no prime directive yet so they have to slowly discover the need for one. And the difference I'm most happy with is that they've gotten really REALLY good actors this time around. The characters seem more human, and lot less stiff than a lot of the characters in previous Treks. I can't wait to watch the next episode!!

And at last! I've finaly seen NEMESIS, the 10th Star Trek movie. And I'm puzzled. This is the least earning movie of the entire franchise. A lot of my friends think this movie sucks, and sucks even more for trying to do a Wrath of Khan. Again I ask...are we watching THE SAME movie? I thought NEMESIS was spectacular. I loved it! Nothing more I can say than that....