The Manila Connection

Yessiree, folks! It's that time of the month (yes, our period!)
where we review yet another relic from the SSM! Vault.

Kidding aside, we sincerely hope everyone's doing fine amidst your self-quarantine and
quite possibly your city's curfew/lockdown.

As mentioned earlier, this was straight from the vault and definitely inspired by Naturalism's blog entry:
http://naturalismavrotor.blogspot.com/2019/07/my-childhood-glorious-age-of-comics.html

Upon googling either Frankintin and Cesar Asar, this would yield you with unsatisfactory or unrelated results.
Armed with the power of excellent blogging skills( what skills?) and the necessary materials (at exactly 2 newspaper's worth)
needed, we aim to both inform and entertain.

Similar to the Drey comics article we did way back when:
http://silentsanctummanga.blogspot.com/2018/09/drey-comics-by-toni-m-bernal.html
And as always, these strips were all shot in dimly lit rooms.
For blurred and faded is the new hi-res after all.

Frankintin

and Cesar Asar

are of course old (much emphasis on the "OLD" part) newspaper strips from Manila Bulletin.
How old?

Well, let me tell you how old.

THAT OLD!

Frankintin by Mr. Mannie Villegas was about a Frankenstein's monster armed with sarcasm and witty remarks.
Most strips would feature either this witch character

or a random tambay (loiterer).
They would usually banter back and forth within this 3-panel strip.
We also remembered him interacting with a manananggal(a type of
aswang that can separate itself) as well. But then again, we couldn't be too sure since
we don't have those strips at hand.

This character would also serve as a major inspiration for SSM's very own Frankenstein's monster type character named Fronknonoy.

Straight from the pages of SSM! Jet Komiks (2011).

There is also a weird disconnect as the label appearing beside the strip would always be Mannie Villegas.
And yet he'd (or someone else) sign his strips under the name Lito Ty.

Cesar Asar by Mon Lee and Rox Lee was a series of situational strips involving an almost mute character
(whom we could only assume is Cesar himself) and his funny observations of everyday life and everything that encompasses it.

We don't know much about Mon Lee but Rox Lee is, of course, the iconic cartoonist (Jingle Magazine), animator, filmmaker, painter, and our Facebook friend.

An absolute authority and graces most art documentaries produced within this decade.
With his other work being nameless Nose People

appearing in Komikera anthologies.

Favorite Panel:

And later, with a collected book entitled:

Both strips are now discontinued.
Totally not like these two badasses:

Staying consistently on the first and second spaces up to this day.

Together with the two aforementioned strips were
Jerry Scott's Nancy.
(Now, there were two versions of this. We were a fan of the latter version.)

Russel Myer's Broom-Hilda.

Greg+Mort Walker's Beetle Bailey.

Jim Scancarelli's Gasoline Alley.

And Finally, Art Galindez's Help Wanted

and
Q & A.

Help Wanted was an editorial strip between a barong wearing person and a snake.
With the punchline/bottomline being always delivered by the snake.

We were too young or naive to understand these strip at the time.

Q&A would also follow this same formula but in a more straight forward manner.

And that's about it for this entry.
Know of any other throwback topics we can discuss?
Feel free to suggest/recommend at the comments section down below.
Thank you and have a nice & safe quarantine, folks!

Drey Comics By Toni M. Bernal

The 90's, back to a simpler time when the internet wasn't
as affordable/reliable(???) as it is today. Back to a time
when we had to rely on various reading materials to get informed, aroused
and ultimately entertained.

Most of the comics from those EXTREME era were dark, gritty
and violent. It was presented in a variety of ways and we
loved every bit of it.

Speaking of unconventional comics, Drey by Mr. Toni M. Bernal 

could be considered as such. As it appeared weekly on the now
discontinued Disney Time under Manila Bulletin.

Yes, Manila Bulletin used to have their very own Sunday Page
dedicated entirely for kids.  I bet they still do but under a different name perhaps.

As a very passive lad during those decades, this was sort of a big deal.

It had very relevant news,

(This cloud editorial art was my all time favorite.)

fun activities,

(This was actually drawn in by my dad, one of the rarer occasions
I'd get to see him draw something.)

and of course, COMICS.

A whole bunch of them to be exact!
Both locally and internationally.

But for the sake of this blog entry, let's stick with the local titles.
Titles like D'WENDE by *NICA.

Which I'm speculating was drawn by Mr. Roni Santiago under a female sounding
pen name. Notice how their eyes are slightly droopy aka "lazy eyes".
That's a trademark Sir Roni trope right there!

Alex W. Matias' Puto Maya.

And of course, Mr. Toni M. Bernal's Drey.

In addition to Drey, Mr. Bernal would also draw strips like:
Tobie.

Hard-Head Spike.

Rant.

And the very promising but discontinued Axid.

Mr. Bernal had been with the company from 1995-1998 (or even longer).

He had handled some if not all of the graphics, layout and any added illustrations
that the Sunday fun page might have needed.

From editorial cartoons to those that appeared on the trivia sections of the
newspaper.

His art style is easily recognizable by his usage of dark shadows and sort of digitally airbrushed renderings.

He would also later revealed to be Mr Game Guru himself.

Drey started out as half a page on the comics section.

But due to its popularity and overall appeal, it was given the full page treatment later on.

It has also come to our attention that Drey

does look a bit like WCW's Sting.

The parted hair style and the somewhat similar trench coat, you'd definitely see
some intentional and coincidental resemblance seeing as to how big wrestling was during the 90's.

Drey was a crimefighter. And in every sense of the word, a darn good one!

Accompanied by his trusty ally, Stryke.

They'd fight crime with their very own brand of justice.

Receiving both the attention and ire of the criminals and various other thugs along the way.

My google searches of both Toni M. Bernal or Drey Comics usually yields me
with irrelevant results. Most of which were either that of
TONI gonzaga, kris BERNAL or joyce BERNAL. None of which are
the artist I'm currently looking for hence the need for this blog entry.
His collaborator, Totel De Jesus now currently works
for Philippine Daily Inquirer and there weren't a single mention of this awesome comics
anywhere else ever again.

Drey was an awesome Sunday comics. Sure, some issues
featured nothing but reprints of a previous strip. Making collecting it
rather difficult. But it made for some very exciting Sundays for all of us.
It left us in a cliffhanger and made us anticipate the next
Sunday all the more.

Looking back at it today, I shouldn't have folded my collections in the middle. But the again, a very
naive and 90's version of ourselves wouldn't really know any better.
And no, it wasn't silly of me to have kept these newspapers from 23 years ago.
If I didn't, then we wouldn't have had this topic here now ,wouldn't we?