| What a "Trip" A talented comic book creator goes back to the future with this charming history lesson. After winning the National Book Award for the deliciously ground-breaking comic book series "The Mythology Class," Arnold Arre decided on a totally different direction for his next project. Thre result is the refreshing "Trip to Tagaytay," (Tala Studios and Quest ventures), what amounts to a self-contained short story set in the 21st century. Seen through the eyes of the hip teeneage narrator, it is a patently bizarre, futuristic time -- and utterly Filipino. Aga Muhlach (yes, that Aga) is President of the Philippines. Some 870 million Filipinos have joined the other countries in colonizing the stars. Yet, as we follow "Trip's" young protagonist in his seemingly ordinary walk about Manila, we discover that the crazy-quilt city, for all its technology and terrors, has survived with the spirit of its storied past intact. Despite its comic book form, "Trip to Tagaytay" is told completely in narration instead of word balloons, allowing Arre to condense the complex new history he has invented with a mind-boggling array of visuals. In fact, it is the thoroughly fleshed-out setting of "Trip" that galvanizes this reading experience. All 44 glossy, black-and-white pages are crammed with eye candy. Every detail is taken care of -- the Jollibee ads, the fares, the basketball scores from an IBA game, even the last existing jeepney, on display at the National Museum. Yet in the end, "Trip to Tagaytay" proves to be a charming ode to the simple things that transcend time -- friendship, love, patriotism, the power of dreams -- all told through Arre's distinctive winning style. "Trip to Tagaytay" is availalbe from all Comic Quest branches. |
| Fly Me to the Moon There are at least three reasons to be happy about the publication of Arnold Arreıs new book, Trip to Tagaytay. First, it is the finest work yet by one of our most talented comics creators. (Arreıs previous opus, the four-part Mythology Class, garnered a National Book Award from the Manila Critics Circle last year). Second, it is also a rare example of Philippine science fiction. Weıll get to the third reason later. Trip to Tagaytay is a 44-page black-and-white volume ? a short story in comics form, set in a future Philippines replete with flying cars and multimedia wrist-devices. In this vision of the future, Aga Muhlach is the aging President, the Eraserheads are on a Reunion Tour that spans the stars, and Philippine Spacelines is offering a 50% discount on Moontravel. We follow the musings of a young man as he journeys through the city, headed for the Grand Liwayway Station, where he plans to take the ³cheapest train out,² since ³they just opened the Tagaytay Ocean Tunnel connecting to Cebu.² All the while, he is composing a missive addressed to his love, who is living on a faraway Orbital Space Station. Trip features Arreıs most mature writing and artwork to date. While Mythology Class was certainly a most laudable effort, it suffered from the occasional bit of awkward dialogue or ungainly exposition, as well as a rushed quality to some of the drawing. There are no such problems here ? the artwork is amazing. Buildings and vehicles and machines and rooms are rendered in jaw-dropping detail, and the people are drawn in a simple yet very expressive fashion. (Readers who pore over the background details will be rewarded by such touches as a billboard with an ad for a movie entitled ³Minahal,² starring ³Tex Santos and Alicia Corgi, with Claudine Baretto as Lola Tessa.²) The writing is clean, effective, and engaging; never obscure nor overly dramatic. Comics afficionados will no doubt enjoy playing the game of spot-the-influence while poring over the artwork of Trip ? Some, enthralled by the details and textures, might be reminded of the work of Jean ³Moebius² Giraud, while others, noting the way the figures and faces are drawn, might be put in mind of Katsuhiro Otomoıs Akira, or even Love and Rockets by the Hernandez Brothers. In the end, though, Arre can lay claim to an attractive, recognizable style that is truly his own. The central attraction of Trip is its vision of a late 21st century Metro Manila. ³Itıs a tough job, predicting the evolution of technology,² writes James Gleick in his book, Faster, ³but somebodyıs got to do it.² Arre proves himself up to the task, with a rendition of a future Manila that is far from a gleaming idyllic Utopia. In this city, high-tech and squalor exist side by side, much as they do today. Makati has become a vast squatterıs area. A flying car hovers above a plodding carabao. Food can be bought by flashing your wrist-computer at an electronic eye, and yet the streets are still crammed with vendors and their makeshift stalls. But it is not just the look of the future that Arre has conjured; he has come up with an outline of an entire future history, involving massive outbreaks of drug use, major natural disasters, and space colonization. It is important to note that this kind of hardı science fiction is very rarely attempted here. Writers such as Eric Gamalinda (in the ³Quasci-fi² section of his collection, Peripheral Vision) and Jessica Zafra (in her story, ³Ten Thousand Easters at the Vatican²) have used the trappings of science fiction to great effect, in works of scathing satire and unsettling imagery, and yet one can safely assume that they do not consider their future-scenarios all that plausible. On the other hand, you have Gregorio Brillantes, who (in his story, ³The Apollo Centennial,²) envisions the Philippines in the year 2069 as being, well, essentially the same ? implying, perhaps, something about the static nature of certain elements of Philippine society. Arre combines that notion with the technological daydreaming of more conventional sci-fi to come up with a hybrid that is exciting, interesting, and feels real ? Not unlike a Philippine version of a Philip K. Dick Dystopia. It is a world, however, that while dark and cynical in many ways, is still capable of cradling wonder (albeit, in a twist of delicious irony, the corporate-sponsored kind), and friendship, and love. Which brings us to the third reason why I was happy to have read Trip to Tagaytay. At its core, it is a simple story, a heartfelt love letter, touching and sincere without being cloying ? which, when you think about it, may be a harder thing to pull off than convincing Philippine sci-fi. I read Trip while jammed into the cramped back seat of a Fairview-bound bus sputtering along EDSA, and despite my surroundings, when I reached the last few pages, I was still sufficiently affected by the main characterıs longing to feel a lump rise in my throat. (Of course, maybe Iım just a sentimental fool). There are those who might feel it is too short, that after 44 pages all we have seen is the setting, that there is not enough story there to merit our attention. I understand these concerns, but I, for one, felt that this Trip was well worth taking. Trip to Tagaytay by Arnold Arre is available for P130 at Comics Quest branches. About the Author |
| A Poetic, Sci-Fi, Surrealistic Head Trip: Sometimes, it takes a dystopian look at the future to prick our sensitivity to the present; within the imagination, the Future merely becomes a mirror for the concerns of the present. Pepper Marcelo writes about the sci-fi illustrated masterpiece of Arnold Arre, Trip to Tagaytay. "Trip to Tagaytay" is writer-artist Arnold Arre's second work, following his highly successful and critically-acclaimed "Mythology Class", which bagged a 2000 Manila Critics Circle National Book Award. Whereas his initial limited series comic book focused strictly on a spiritually-inflected, fantasy-adventure story with indigenous cultural underpinnings, "Trip to Tagaytay" takes the opposite route, portraying Arre's highly personal vision of a futuristic Metropolitan Manila landscape. Taking place in the latter half of the 21st Century, this cityscape is filled with flying, "Akira-chromed", vehicles; vertically stretched industrial complexes crisscrossed with endless roads that twist and twine in all physically improbable directions; daring youth styles, which upon looking more closely, are not so different and shocking from our own trends; and most uniquely (though curiously not dealt with directly), a displaced lower class still immersed in poverty - left behind in the "gold rush" of humanity's socio-technological advancement. It is this last, more powerful aspect of "Trip to Tagaytay" that actually expresses a moral theme of social relevance, and acts as a type of "future-shock commentary" in relation to our own troubled times. Our guide through this amusingly distinct, "Blade Runner-esque" third-world environment is a young, middle-class(?), nameless male protagonist (though obviously an Arre alter ego), whose perspectives and occasional, though listless, commentating evoke a feeling of overall apathy and malaise towards the city in which he resides. The only passion he does openly express (one could say unabashedly) is for his girlfriend, "Hyacynth" or "Cynth", a character who is only encountered through photographs. She seems to be little more than a device through which the character narrates his thoughts, which generally goes to the vital political and environmental events which have transpired in that century, giving the reader a historical bearing of time and place. No details are actually given as to their romance, to lend substance or emotional depth (Who is she? What does she mean to the protagonist other than he "misses" her?) for the audience to invest their own feelings and sympathy in, so his love comes across as trivial and adolescently simplistic. It is a shame, because in such a brutal-looking dystopia, Arre could have revealed a deeper, more humanistic side to the narrative, via the relationship with "Cynth". As it is, the supposed "story" itself is as one-dimensional and simplistic as the love portrayed; the protagonist is on his way from his home to a pre-planned getaway trip on a newly-constructed "ocean tunnel connecting Tagaytay to Cebu." It isn't revealed what his purpose is in making the trip, or what he's going to do when he gets there, or what, if anything, is his overall purpose in life (other than reuniting with his girlfriend). Before the protagonist's "Trip to Tagaytay" takes place, however, he travels through the city and casually, almost blithely makes curt observations of a predominantly squalid Manila. Rather than creating a future too alien and unfamiliar, Arre took the temptation of concocting a future that pays homage to our present; Aga Muhlach is the president of the time, the E-heads are on a "reunion" tour, Nokia cell phones are sought-after antiques, and virtual-reality head trips, or "commercials" of glossed-over Philippine history, are sponsored by PLDT; these are just some of the cute details interspersed throughout the course of the book. Although littered with the latest gadgetry and immense advanced machinery, this "illusion of progress" can't mask the fact that most people are still living sub-human lives. Images such as a parent and child sleeping on newspapers, beggars with cups looking for handouts, weary merchants looking for a sucker to rip off, trash and debris strewn everywhere, and squatters and shantytowns which, unfortunately, remain all-too familiar even after so much "progress" has been made, are all graphically very impressive. It is the highly potent artwork - all in gritty, black and white - that makes "Trip" worthwhile. His visual style is reminiscent of the legendary underground graffiti artist/cartoonist Vaughn Bode, and not counting a few Japanese images littered here and there, is almost devoid of the unoriginal, manga-style rendering so popular these days in the local comic art scene. But the curious question remains: why doesn't the character feel rage towards his society? Why does he subtly accept, not acknowledge, the conditions of his environment? Repulsively, the character simply feels sickened by the immense crowds and calls gang sub-groups "plagues", without any true moral awareness to question how or why this came to be in the first place. It is with that stroke, consciously or not, that Arre has created a real "future-shock" observation, which reflects on the apathy and indifference characterizing the youth of today. To many observers, most adolescents and young adults don't understand much of the societal injustices and inequalities occurring in our contemporary "modern" lifestyle, nor would most want to exert the effort to learn more and actually make a difference. All the youth care about is the improvement of their own personal/professional social strata, i.e. themselves (or as Jessica Zafra stated in a Newsweek article, "They want to be yuppies"). And perhaps, sad as it may seem, Arre's current work is an extension of that. But "Trip to Tagaytay" isn't a propaganda piece to incite the literary masses, and neither is it, for the most part, a pretentious exercise in "pop culture-saturated" male angst. It's Arnold Arre's futuristic head-trip, and, though lacking slightly in narrative fundamentals, it is exceptionally deserving of praise, for it is one of the few truly "Filipino" comic books on the racks done with creative care, balls-out effort, and a unique voice which credibly captures the Filipino youth generation of today. "Trip to Tagaytay", a one-shot comic book written and drawn by Arnold Arre; it costs P100, and is available at finer comic book shops nationwide. One can also take a look at the official website: http://trip.to/tagaytay. About The Author |
