The Dead Heart
Before I finished Wasted, I wrote and drew a 23 page story called "July 16" for a new title I was doing called "The Dead Heart". The title was to showcase tragic love stories that I had in profusion at the time. It was by no means a followup to Wasted, as it was released before Wasted was finished.
It's a title that I got from a song by Midnight Oil, a really cool Australian rock band.
"July 16" was a story that I decided to do after being haunted by the tragedy of the deaths up in Baguio during the 1990 earthquake. I packaged the story mini-comics style and released a little over 100 copies back in 1996.
I soon followed that up with a 2nd issue, featuring "Blood Brothers", a story I wrote and was drawn by a pre-superstar Leinil Francis Yu. This time, it's story I came up with after my brother asked me to be his best man at his wedding. I released it again as a mini-comic, along with a 4 page "Stupid Chicken Stories" in 1997 with a print run of something a little under 100 copies.
I have a third complete 11 page story, this time drawn by classic Pinoy love story artist Marissa Hilos-Nepumoceno. She had been working in local comics employing the classic Pinoy look that is so associated with our comics for many decades. I wanted to use that style for a horribly gruesome story that that style is not associated with just to see what kind of contrast would result. This story is as yet unreleased.
I'm considering the idea of compiling all these three stories into one book, an idea that I had been thinking about for many years now. Because really, hardly anyone has had a chance to read those first two stories, and the third one none at all. I think it would be nice to have them in a single package printed on nice paper with a color cover.
What kept me back is the fact that I'm sort of unhappy with the art I did for July 16 now. I briefly thought about redrawing the entire story, and I've gone as far as redraw the first page. But that is as far as I got. I feel that redrawing this would be moving backward instead of forward. But then I could be wrong. I'm leaning more now towards just letting it be as it is, with minor corrections to the lettering.
I wonder if this is something that would interest readers? What do you all think? Any ideas? I'll still be coming out with this eventually, but I would just like to find out if visitors to this site has any thoughts about it. Thanks!
