Magical Mystery Tour Guide

Budjette Tan and Ka-Jo Baldisimo’s Trese reveals the busy mystical underbellies of Metro Manila and beyond through the supernatural crime scene investigations of Alexandra Trese. I personally liked issue numbers 1, 4, and 5. The third issue was just okay; I kind of figured out the demigod character’s costume design prior to the big reveal. What I’m actually looking forward to is the origin story of the title character, and eventually, her Kambal minions’. The self-contained stories are easy reads, although I’m curious to see an adventure that doesn’t require Trese’s arcane expertise in the regular case-solving structure, but one that proactively puts her in the thick of things.

To the creators, keep up the good work!

Time for Fussing and Fighting

Please read LAGABLAB’s detailed recap of the recent PDI column controversy and media-related gay rights cases from a few years back. Felt sad after reading it.

Learn to Fly All Your Life

It’s been two years since I last saw J.S., an old high school friend. It was nice timing when he texted me early last Monday morning. He wanted to meet me after work because he was feeling a little depressed, and I was feeling similarly weird because I had three consecutive strange dreams earlier. Since I planned to go out to a nearby mall that day anyway, I thought that it’d be a nice chance to talk and maybe help. I brought a couple of comics like he asked. They actually help him unwind, just as much, I’d guess, as the Justice League and Batman animated shows.

Over the years, we remained close friends, which is unusual, because he and I have contrasting personalities and mindsets. While he’s a conservative Catholic up to this day, he’s very tolerant of my liberal opinions. But I’m one of very few people he can freely talk to, while he freely cusses about his problems and people he disliked. It’s a brotherly bond, except I don’t think that a lot of siblings can be open about their personal problems and discuss respective love lives with each other. We’re both escapist geeks, so I guess we do have some things in common. I’ve seen him struggle through problematic periods years after college, and he’s seen me go through a dark period as well.

It was a nice fast food dinner; we talked about how we love our occasionally stressful jobs. We talked about how hard it is to make and save money. We laughed over long-forgotten high school inanities and embarrassing misadventures. We talked about other old friends and batchmates we ran into in the past few months. But we also discussed how serious some family matters have gotten, and how bummed out we feel about them.

The conversation shifted to reminiscing about high school times again, to details about teachers that we never mentioned before, and to how the old McDonald’s in the area that our small group used to frequent when it just opened is now about 18 years old. We walked to the place, where we sat for a bit and talked some more. It was cool hanging out with him, and interesting to learn how we’ve changed in the past couple of years. We may not always see eye to eye when it comes to certain beliefs and issues, but he’s still that old friend from simpler times, that person whose elephantine memories remind me that that certain stage of our lives was actually quite okay.