The Great Greek Mystery (or Why I had a TL named Ulysses)

If you’re my age (27) or thereabouts and live in the Philippines, you’re likely to know or have known at least a few people named Nestor, Ulysses, Hercules, or any other great Greek mythological figure.  I myself had a neighbor named Nestor, a Team Leader named Ulysses, and once drew and wrote a comic strip for a man named Hercules.  I’d always thought this was peculiar.  Not that these are bad names by any means, it’s just that I find it extremely odd that Filipinos would name their children after Greeks, especially since we have no cultural ties with them whatsoever.  Jose and Juan and Michael and Ryan are easy enough to understand, given our former colonial masters, but Hector?

What singularity brought about the sudden grecophilia that gave this generation of children their unique names, I wondered.  I think I may have found the answer.  I did a bit of google work, researching movies about Troy.  My rationale was that it must have been some sort of pop cultural device that brought Filipinos to the the story of the Iliad.  Lo and behold, in 1956 a movie called Hlen Troy was released.  In the spirit of epics like Ben-Hur, which were popular at the time, the movie was released at almost the perfect time to influence young Filipino minds into naming their children after great Greek heros.  This may also explain why there are many women in that same age group who are namedHelen and corresponds with the “Helen Theory”, in which my college friends claim that almost 90% of the women that work in National bookstore are named Helen.

I’m obviously pulling this out of y ass, so if anyone has done any real research into this topic (and I don’t see why you wouldn’t), please do let me know what you’ve found out.

I am a Vambie!

And for today’s “laughing so hard your stomach hurts” moment, I give you, ladies and gentlemen, VAMBIE!  Brought to you by the-isb.  OK so it’s less funny the more you read it, but I swear to got this caught me off guard and had me laughing my ass off for a good 5 minutes the first time I saw it.

Astronauts in Trouble

Unlike Bulletproof Monk, Astronauts in Trouble was well worth the 5 dollars I paid for it.  It’s not a story that sticks with you for the rest of your life, but it’s definitely an entertaining read.  It’s sort of like a Michael Bay film, except with a little humor and a lot more soul.  If you see it in a bargain bin, don’t hesitate to pick it up.

Bulletproof Punk

So I bought the Bulletproof Monk TPB while I was in Singapore, since it was on sale for $5 and I’m a bargain bin whore.  I gotta say, it’s probably one of the worst written comics I’ve ever read.  Michael Avon Oeming’s art is terrific, but the writing really just smacked of Americans trying to sound mystical and Asian and shit, and the pacing was phenomenally bad.  You’d literally jump from one plotline to another and sudden emotional changes were forced upon characters to fit the plot.  I also partly bought it because the movie wasn’t half bad, but the storyline of this TPB had absolutely nothing to do with what eventually unfolded onscreen.

That said, I had a bit artist’s block yesterday morning, then I came to the conclusion that the first reason I watched the BPM film in the first place was the title.  It’s just an ear/eye-catching title.  Bulletproof Monk.  How can that not be awesome?  So I started to think of other words that might work work with “bulletproof”, and eventually settled on “punk”.  Then the image of a punk flipping the bird with a bullet in between his teeth came to me, and there you go.

It sort of ended up looking like a vertigo comic cover, so I played with that a little bit, making the title and added the “Wertigo” logo plus the number 1 (collector’s edition!).  So the lesson for today is that you shouldn’t shy away from shitty comics, because they just might inspire you.