East of Here and West of There

If you're free this weekend and you dig comicbooks, drop by and support homegrown comicbook talent. Gabby Atienza is a local artist and his Deputy Dodgers has been his personal project for some years now. Gabby was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome late in life and he documented his personal journey in an amazingly personal and creative comicbook, his debut project " My Life As A Comic Book." If you're in the Pasig area, drop by and check out his DEPUTY DODGERS: The Ulstarn Saga. More on Gabby and his first comicbook here .

When the sun sets in the city of Manila, don’t you dare make a wrong turn and end up in that dimly-lit side of the metro, where aswang run the most-wanted kidnapping rings, where kapre are the kingpins of crime, and engkantos slip through the cracks and steal your most precious possessions. When crime takes a turn for the weird, the police call Alexandra Trese. I was at the bookstore this morning and I was happily surprised to see the Trese books on display. My first run in with Trese was at a local comic convention way back in 2005. The comic book is the brainchild of writer Budgette Tan and illustrator Kajo Baldisimo and fuses modern urban fantasy tropes with elements of Filipino of folklore. Alexandra Trese reminds me a lot of Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden as well as Kevin Hearne's Atticus Sullivan but the girl has a far meaner and more serious demeanor. And the world Trese inhabits is also the book's big draw. The creators have populated their Mani...