ALAMAT: 10 Years of Comics
It's Alamat Comics' 10-year Anniversary today. Wow, TEN YEARS! I still remember December 1992 when I first got in touch with a growing community of comics fans and would be creators. Comics were suddenly HUGE, and everyone wanted to read and make their own comics. I fell in with a talented group of writers and artists who were creating a comic book which will eventually become Lakan, the finished but as yet unreleased title.
Through the course of two years, comics made by these young creators started to come out like Exodus, Flashpoint, P-Noize, Comics 101, Memento Mori, etc. The earliest mini comic I became aware of was Dino Ignacio's Sigaw Saklolo, a format I would later use for my own mini comic Wasted.
Whilce Portacio became the catalyst through which these varied group of creators be united under one banner: ALAMAT COMICS, officially formed in 1994.
10 years later, we are still here and we are STILL creating and publishing comics, even though most of these comics were never done to make money, but for the sheer love of comics and sharing stories and art with other people. Alamat isn't a typical comics publishing company in that we have to release titles on a regular basis and we have an office where we have salaried employees. Alamat is simply an anchor through which individual creators publish their own comics out of their own pocket.
Alamat is a support group composed of creators who help each other out in their respective projects. To this day, all my mini comics carry the Alamat logo, and all my self published stuff in the future will carry it.
We may not have been successful in coming out with a comic to commemorate our anniversary as we have planned, but I'm confident that everyone will see comics created by this group of people who love the medium and has a sheer passion for creating them.
Here's some pictures from the early days of Alamat:
Circa 1994. Wow, how thin we all were back then! Jeez! From left: Mark Gatela, Budjette Tan, ?, Arnold Arre, Brandie Tan, Gerry Alanguilan, Whilce Portacio, Ian Orendain, Chris Bernardo, John Toledo, Oliver Pulumbarit and Alex Manabat.
Alamat Comics 4-day Exhibit at Robinson's Galleria, circa 1995
The Lakan Booth, I'm the one next to the guy in stripes.
Mark Gatela and Arnold Arre at the Comics 101 booth.
David Hontiveros (in black) and the Flashpoint gang at the Flashpoint booth.
The LAKAN Booth with a bunch of still unreleased artwork. I still feel bad about Lakan not being released inspite of the fact that the artwork have all been finished. Even from this picture you can see how AWESOME some of this art is. I'm confident that it will be released somehow in the future. I'll make sure it does and it doesn't matter how many bones I break!
Happy Anniversay guys! Here's to 10 and MORE years! :)
