K-Day


Unstoppable. Implacable. Invincible. AVAILABLE.

All righty, then!

K.I.A. Vol. 1 - Kai: Indomitable Assassin is on sale NOW at Comic Quest Megamall. By next week or so, it should also be in stock in Comic Quest Alabang Town Center and Comic Quest SM North EDSA. The black-and-white, 160-page anthology comic book costs Php195.00. Buyers will get, as a bonus, a FREE copy of Angel Ace NEXT, the latest Angel Ace comic and a prelude to K.I.A. (while supplies last)

K.I.A. has been almost two years in the making- originally meant for release in 2004, things just got extended and we had to push it back time and again. However, everything eventually fell into place and here we are. I am just so lucky to have gotten such a cool bunch of people together to work on the book, and hopefully this will not be the last time such a convergence takes place.

I'll be at Comic Quest in the late afternoon until closing, hanging out and signing any copies. Lucky customers will probably get their copies signed by several members of Team K.I.A who may be around as well.

See you all there!

Gaming Bits

With movies like The Godfather and Scarface coming soon to consoles, the latest crime film to make the jump to videogaming is Goodfellas (the Ray Liotta/Robert De Niro starrer). You'll play the game as real-life ex-gangster Henry Hill, starting off as a snot-nosed kid bashing in car windows with a baseball bat, and working your way up to gangster and later, cocaine dealer. Mini-games will include cooking pasta, getting a wife and dressing her up as the perfect mobster's wife, and disposing of dead bodies. Just don't get whacked!

The lackluster Suikoden IV did little for fans of the franchise, so Konami has announced that the next game, named aptly Suikoden V, will be a return to the roots for the series. Expect loads of familiar faces to return, such as "Blue Lighting Flick", Viktor and the McDohl heir. Better hope you still have that original Suikoden save...

The unthinkable has happened... Streetfighter vs Mortal Kombat will bring together the flagship fighters of the two landmark beat 'em ups in one fiery package. There will be two modes of visual style, which will allow players to choose either hand-drawn sprites for their characters, or digitized graphics using live-actors. Capcom of Japan has denied that they will cut corners and use footage from the old, old Streetfighter the Movie game. It is unknown whether or not Ryu will have a fireball fatality, or if the Mortal Kombat crew will get super combos. The game is slated for an early 2006 release on various consoles.

Sony has announced plans for the PSPDA, a Pocket-PC hybrid with their existing Playstation Portable. In addition to playing UMD games, you can surf the web via WIFI and save games on the device's hard drive. A battery pack, built into a belt accessory, will provide the additional power supply needed to keep the convergent device working.


Oh, and of course...

Happy April Fool's Day!

Old Favorite

Back when I was a college student in UP, one of the MUST places to have a meal was Rodic's. It's a tapsilog place that specialized in this sweet-savoury tapa (cured meat), rice and fried egg meals which just hits the spot everytime. The Rodic's in UP Shopping Center was almost always full of hungry students, and the cramped but cozy interior had lots of character, if not ambience.
Well, it's been years since I've had a Rodic's tapsilog, but that changes today. Amazingly enough, a branch has opened about a discus throw away from the office (and from all accounts, it's doing brisk business), so the office gang decided to get ourselves some tapsilog delivered for lunch. Yummy. This should bring back memories of those university days. Heh.

Getting Ready

It takes more than packing comics in plastic to ensure a good release. I also bought a nice hang-on rack for the book, which fits nicely in front of the CQ comic rack... fellow comics, sorry but we just can't just drop K.I.A. into the rack as is- it's so small, it'll sink and be lost. Aside from the posters and some other little stuff to promote the comic, I'm damn lucky to have Cams in my court as PR Dominatrix. Well, all of us in Alamat have in the past always been helped by Cams whenever we would launch a comic. She's got connections in all the radio stations, knows literally hundreds of people to talk to and get stuff done, and she's all systems go to get the book the hoo-hah factor it needs to sell.

So if you hear K.I.A. being promoted on the radio, or surf to the 99.5RT website and see Kai there, it's thanks to Cams.

The release this weekend will give the comic to readers, but it's really not a big launch. I'll be around, and I'll chat and sign every copy sent my way. If things look great, I'll try to put together a real Launch Event. We'll see.

Things look good though. The local comic community seems expectant of the book (met comic dude Jonas and dudette Jac tonight, which was pretty cool), but the real test will be getting the walk-in customers and casual readers to take a gander at our product. But darn, I feel great. It should be cool and it's really nice to have your efforts pay off. Anything else from now on is gravy. Heh. Optimism is good.

WTP

Last night saw me packing away, inserting things into plastic jackets and seeing things rise. I could have brought in a couple of the household help to help me pack, but I really just had to pack by myself tonight.

Yep, I made myself busy putting copies of K.I.A. into plastic bags, and then organizing everything into neat piles. I packed no less than 75 copies, about two-thirds of which are Comic Quest stocks, while the rest are for the members of Team K.I.A. Generally, I am pretty happy with the stocks... so far, I've seen only five copies which I do not want to sell since they have some damage- a couple had spots on the cover torn away by some adhesive, and a couple had folded parts. Nothing really horrible.
I remember the second original Angel Ace issue had more than HALF the stocks with defective qualities- misregistered cover images, covers missing lamination... it was a nightmare. The horrid thing was that we, neophytes then in this publishing thing, paid the bastard printers in FULL. And they just gave us a half-hearted consuelo de bobo reparation. That was the worst.

Well, about five books later, I'm still a relative neophyte in printing comics, but having a good printer seems to work wonders since K.I.A. looks great, and I am really excited to get the copies out to the store and into readers' hands.

Whew. I'm tired from packing all night (okay, ENOUGH). If I was a smoker, I'd probably be having a drag right now. Instead, I just have a can of Pepsi, a cookie and watch the latest Amazing Race.

Hey, it's tomorrow already. Less than two days to K.I.A. Saturday. Yay!

Smartly-priced Smartphone


A budget smartphone?

The next smartphone to come from Finnish phonemakers Nokia will be the 3230, a well-rounded Series 60 model that thankfully seems free of the queer keyboard syndrome that plagued most of the earlier Nokia models. The phone will come with a 1.3 megapixel camera, a large 176 x 208 color screen, video capture and editing, push-to-talk, Bluetooth and other bells and whistles. The 3230 will supposedly be priced at an affordable range- I'm not sure though how that will translate here in the Philippines though. Anyway, this latest smartphone has all the goods from the later released Nokias such as the 7610 and the 6630, in a pretty and compact frame. So those out there looking for a nice new smartphone need not go for the aging 6600 anymore. The 3230 is set for release later in 2005.

K.I.A. Saturday


She's coming for You this weekend.

This Saturday, April 2, 2005, comic-lovers will be able to grab their own copy of K.I.A. Volume 1- Kai: Indomitable Assassin at Comic Quest Megamall. Soon after, stocks will be available at other CQ branches. The 160-page, b/w comic anthology will have a cover price of Php195.00. Customers who buy K.I.A. will also get a free copy of Angel Ace Next (which is a prologue to the new book).

Spread the word, everyone. Fly, fly, fly.

Cool Wars

As mixed my feelings are for the Star Wars prequel movies, I am a total fan of Genndy Tartarovsky's Clone Wars microseries. The action is great, the Jedi and ARC troopers badass, the villains scary and the acting is a lot better! Darn, cartoon Padme and Anakin are a hotter couple than the live ones. Sigh.
Anyway, I was able to download both seasons 1 and 2 last year, and it bites that I somehow deleted the files along the way. I guess I'll just have to get them on VCD or DVD someday.
In the meantime, while waiting for ROTS, the 3rd season of Clone Wars looks awesome. The longer (at 12 minutes per ep) episodes will bridge the gap to Episode III, and chronicle the Separatists' attack on the Republic's capital at Coruscant, and the battles of the Jedi versus the new and deadlier threat of General Grievous.

Clone Wars will be shown on Cartoon Network locally, though you can view the new episodes NOW from Starwars.com. Check them out!

Nicked


I'd love to have Fairy Godparents to make my every wish come true...

Over the holidays I found myself liking a lot of new things. I bought myself a copy of the New Avengers though I have never liked the government-sponsored superteam. I have also now apparently become a fan of a couple of Nickelodeon cartoon shows, or 'Nicktoons'; My Life as a Teenage Robot and Fairly Odd Parents.

My Life as a Teenage Robot is all about the adventures of XJ9 or simply Jenny, an almost invincible super robot who has to juggle being a teenager and Earth's greatest defender. The character design of Jenny herself is cute, with big eyes and nice ponytails that give her quite a bit of anime flavor. I guess I like the series as well since it reminds me a lot of my own Angel Ace- in another world, Angel's adventures would be like Jenny's, and her character is very much like Angel's.
Fairly Odd Parents is just hilarious- I love the wacky situations and the fast-paced stories, with the many wishes of hero Timmy Turner asked of his fairy-godparents Cosmo and Wanda almost always snowballing into some crazy consequence. The episodes aren't as braindead as the more popular Spongebob Squarepants (which I don't like probably since it's about non-human characters), and there's quite a bit of sophistication in the writing. But I think what really made me like Oddparents is the recently-shown Channel Chasers special/movie, which was quite excellent. The spoofing of every cartoon from The Simpsons to Tom and Jerry to Speed Racer was just so cool. Darn, I wonder if this means I'll be looking for DVDs or VCDs of these Nicktoons... even more stuff to stockpile in The Sanctum again.

Oh well. Broadening Horizons is always good. Right? Sigh.

Lord of the Rings Extended Version

They're showing The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring on GMA7 right now. It's the extended version. Nope, not the DVD-only cut with an extra hour of additional scenes. This is the theatrical cut with an additional hour of COMMERCIALS. Well, I guess there are still people out there without dvd or vcd players who will still watch this, despite having the cinematic experience broken every now and then by an ad for Max Fried Chicken or whatever. Heh.

Angel Update


Hopefully, Angel won't be sitting idly for too long.

With all this effort I'm throwing into K.I.A., I've been often asked by people if I'm still coming out with Angel Ace. Readily, I say 'yes'. Angel was my first comic, and while I'm still doing comics I'll continue to develop her story until her saga is done. That's a pretty big task to do, honestly, since her story is epic, to say the least. We haven't even reached anywhere near the foothills of the mountains of high drama that Angel's story will reach. That's something that cannot be hurried, I have to say... the need to flesh out a character, to show her many adventures and filler episodes before that final stretch of major plot that will lead to the endgame.
It's going to be hard, and I'm not sure I can do it. But I will give it the good ol' college try. Somehow, someway.

What's next for Angel? A nice stand-alone adventure. It's a matter of deciding what story to do; the long-in-the-making 'Philippines' story or a rematch with The Sorcerer. I'll be able to decide soon after I finish the business with K.I.A.

Happy Easter!

The end of yet another year's Lenten Season. And one fine vacation period, if I may add. It was nice to just kick back and relax, just read and watch and sleep the whole day long. But then again, just sitting around the house, snacking every so often makes me feel the calories just pile up. I'd much rather have a vacation where I can go out and enjoy the town, instead of being cloistered at The Sanctum.
Well, today's one more day to me before work begins yet again for a stretch, until the Christmas vacation. Most probably I'll just stay indoors, do some more writing, reading and watching until the day runs out. Then progress on the impending release of K.I.A. will continue. Which makes the end of the holiday a bittersweet affair. Oh well.