1 Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION “Everything you can imagine is real”- Pablo Picasso Perhaps a closer examination of what the renowned painter actually means is that if a human being can imagine something in the scope of the natural laws of reality and physics, then it exists. This rings true for visual art. Whatever a person can conjure in his mind, whether a creature of imagination or an event, the fact that he thought about it means it exists in the realm of reality—not necessarily the realm of physical reality but in the realm of cognitive and mental reality. Pablo Picasso’s quote has been proven by the dominance of visual culture at the present. Today, fascination and enhancement of what people can do and what people can appreciate in the visual realm has seen a significant rise among the people of this generation. With the rise of virtual reality and the Internet in the West, combined with the global popularity of television, videotape and film, this trend seems set to continue (Mirzoeff 1999). In a book titled An Introduction to Visual Culture by Nicholas Mirzoeff, he explained that visual culture, very different from it’s status today, suffered hostility in the West: “a hostility to visual culture in Western thought, originating in the philosophy of Plato. Plato believed that the objects encountered in everyday life, including people, are simply bad copies of the perfect ideal of those objects” (1999, 9). Plato had the idea that what artists do are mere copies of the original, which makes it lose significance because copying what already exists, for Plato, is pointless: 2 In other words, everything we see in the “real” world is already a copy. For an artist to make a representation of what is seen would be to make a copy of a copy, increasing the chance of distortion. Furthermore, the ideal state Plato imagined required tough, disciplined individuals, but the arts appeal to our emotions and desires. So there was no place for the visual arts in his Republic: “Painting and imitation are far from the truth when they produce their works;…moreover, imitation keeps company with the worst part in us that is far from prudence and is not comrade or friend for any healthy or true purpose. (2000, 10) But regardless of Plato’s opinions, art flourished away from the usual perception of art as “high art” of classical antiquity and now enjoys diversity of genres especially now in a much more visually cultured world. Graphic arts are a testament of the adaptability of art as a medium, it has appeared in the Internet not only as a finished work but the process of doing art as well can now be done online. When I was a kid, I was always showered by a multitude of books, mostly comic books and fantasy novels from my mom as she is a bibliophile. And because I am her first-born I was the first person to get my hands on those treasures. While boys my age were holding Nerf guns and PSPs, I was busy holding the latest issue of Archie comics and C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia. So, it is not surprising to say that I also grew up a bibliophile with the sole high school problem and luxury of spending my allowance on buying books every Friday. Inevitably (I would like to believe) I took up BA Language and Literature in the most prestigious school in the country. In 2016, at a local bookstore, I stumbled upon Rob Cham’s Light a small graphic novel stamped with the National Book Award of the year sign. The cover photo already sold me but the stamp was a sign from the heavens for me to buy it. I remember being eager to go home and just read my eyes out but when I finally got to open the book, I was surprised to see that there were no words in it. And so I wondered how can a wordless book even be considered a nominee for the National Book Award? And this thesis was inspired by that question. 3 The First Komiks In 1884, the first ever Filipino comics, or “komiks” as it is termed in the Philippines, emerged in a London newspaper called Trubner’s Record written and illustrated by no other than Dr. Jose Rizal. It was “Si Matsing at si Pagong” (“The Monkey and the Turtle”) and it is considered as the precursor of children’s literature in the Philippines. Komiks is the formal spelling of the Filipino counterpart for comics. It pertains to comic strips written by Filipino artists, published by local publishing houses, and contains stories depicting or reflecting life, consciousness, and culture in the Filipino context. The term shall be used throughout the paper to pertain to the primary texts. It is amazing to think that over a century ago, there was no such thing as a children’s book as we know it today (Mikkelsen 2000). It is a fact that there have always been children in every civilization and every culture and the fact remains that all humans were children once in their life. But what sets children apart according to Keith Thomas as mentioned in the book by Nina Mikkelsen titled Words And Pictures: Lessons in Children’s Literature and Literacies (2000), is that children were very much a separate society with its own system of order and classification, its own perceptions and values. This is very much true as the discrepancies between adults and children when it comes to values, priorities, and attention is very obvious (2000, 14). True enough, when children did find themselves holding a book that is supposedly for them, they discovered that these books are often about rules of behavior rather than humor (Mikkelsen 2000). This fact runs deeply true in ancient Puritan culture which forbade children from reading tales of fairies, dragons, and mythology for fear that children may develop 4 mischievous habits. It is clear at this point that children, in a sense, have become a marginalized sector in Puritan society. But recent advancements in technology and software for creating digital comic book illustrations have changed the genre. Mainstream local publishing houses like Adarna have created a new line of books called Anino Comics that caters to modern and picture-based comics without words and which has won the hearts of both critics and readers alike. In 2016, the National Book Awards was given to a book published by Anino Comiks called Light by an author named Rob Cham. It is interesting to note that, at that time, a book such as the nature of Light was not a well-known genre in the country: that of a wordless graphic novel. A. Background of the Study The Filipino and his komiks For the Filipinos back then, komiks was seen as a tool of pure entertainment. There was no internet, no television, and there was still no social media to keep the people busy. Komiks provided a way for the people to find a breather from the chores of everyday life. Not to mention the cheap price of komiks made it accessible to everyone, regardless of class status. True there were already cinemas in the country especially during the American Occupation but they were available mostly in the urbanized areas only, leaving a big part of the population still turning to komiks as a source of entertainment. Filipinos love komiks, but unfortunately, most of them grew up believing komiks to be nothing but cheap entertainment. “Cheap entertainment” is a phrase often used in correlation with Philippines-made comics even up to the present time ( Alanguilan 2010). 5 Even Carlo J. Caparas himself, often called the Stan Lee and Father of Filipino Komiks, would call comics “cheap entertainment for the masses” in newspapers, TV and radio. The low status of komiks and how it is perceived in the country is evident also in the government’s late attempt to preserve national komiks. Before 2004, a tradition of preserving, archiving and collecting classic Philippine comics never existed. The Philippines never had that kind of tradition, in spite of the fact that this country has one of the oldest comic book industries in the world (Alanguilan 2010). Cynthia Roxas and Joaquin Arevalo, Jr. stated in their book titled A History of Komiks of the Philippines and other Countries (1985) that to understand the relationship of Filipinos with their komiks, it is important to discuss the economic reality of the people and that majority of them belong to the lower and middle classes. The way of life of the average Filipino is simple, his salary is just right to meet the basic needs of the whole family yet the wish to enjoy and seek pleasure even if only once in a while is very much part of him. And the easiest way to do this is by buying komiks. The komiks has appealed to pre-media Filipinos because it projected various aspects of Filipino reality. The usual komiks at the time always presented a setting in which the mother, the father, siblings, and other members of the extended family are present—not just in a minor role-- it is important to note, but a recurring one with the same level of exposure and significance to the narrative as the protagonist would. If the komiks is an embodiment of the Filipino, especially of the Filipino mases, it is no wonder that it occupies a special place in his life ( Arevalo Jr. 1985). 6 Brief History of Komiks in the Philippines As mentioned, the first ever recognized komiks in the Philippines was by Dr.