On the afternoon of February the 12th, thirty minutes later than I originally intended, I stood in front of an audience of twelve (in the Ching Tan Room of the Ateneo which had a seating capacity of a hundred), and started to speak.

     My voice cracked, like a child hitting puberty; everyone laughed, and I could feel my face flush, embarassed. And to think I still had twenty minutes worth of opening remarks to go through, I thought to myself.

     It was the first time I delivered a speech in public since I was six; here, during the first event I have had the great honor of organizing. The event was After Eden @ the Ateneo, a talk and open forum on the medium of comics. It was sponsored by the Comic Collective, a student organization of which I am a part, in cooperation with Adarna House, a publishing company, with the goal of promoting comics as a medium worthy of academic attention and study, filled with as much literary and artistic potential as, say for instance, a novel or a painting.

     It was relatively easy to convince Adarna House to help us sponsor the event; they are, after all, one of the first mainstream publishers in the country to truly recognize the comics as a valid medium for expression. Traditionally a publisher exclusively of children's story books, Adarna House recently expanded their range of material last year to include novels for young adults, and a separate imprint for graphic novels - a more scholarly way of referring to comic books - of which their first release is After Eden, written and illustrated by Arnold Arre. The people at Adarna House even helped us raise funds for our organization's own comic publication by letting us sell copies of After Eden, of which a small percentage of the revenue was granted to us.

     Even easier to convince was Arnold Arre himself, who, being a comics creator, was quite excited about the opportunity to be able to help promote the still under-appreciated comics medium. He even arrived earlier than expected during the day itself; although owing to the general tardiness of the audience, we still started thirty minutes later than planned. (That's the infamous Filipino time for you.)

     Which brings us back to when my voice cracked, two words into my opening remarks which reached some of the highest notes on the scale. Gathering the strength to continue, I went through the formalities of making introductions and so forth, moving on to few other announcements such as the results of an Ateneo-wide comics making competition.

     This I followed up with an introduction to Arnold Arre, which I reproduce here in full, in the hopes of communicating his significance to the organization, as well as to the local comics industry:

     �Now then, we welcome today's special guest, someone who we owe a lot to as one of the finest comics creators in the country today. Among others, he wrote and illustrated The Mythology Class and Trip to Tagaytay, which won him two National Book Awards in a row, and whether directly or indirectly, led to the opening of a separate National Book Award category by the Manila Critics� Circle for best graphic novel last year. His latest release, the graphic love story After Eden, has been garnering great reviews both here and abroad, and is being credited as something of a milestone as well, as it is the first time a major publisher like Adarna House, traditionally a publisher of children's books, has released and promoted such a book.�

     Arnold Arre, in his baritone voice and unassuming clothes, stepped in front of the room and began with a discourse on the history of the medium of comics. He narrated how modern comics started out during the 15th or 16th century in the form of newspaper cartoons that served as illustrations for lengthy editorial articles running alongside it. He went on to trace its development, from the gradual replacement of the editorials with shorter descriptive captions below the artwork, to the eventual inclusion of dialogue marked by quotations in the captions, and finally, when it became difficult to discern who in the illustration is saying which line, the introduction of the word balloon, which encloses the text in an oval with a pointed tail that indicates which character is doing the talking.

     �When one picture box didn�t become enough to get the message across,� he said as his pen danced across the whiteboard, making quick sketches to help illustrate his point, �they added two more boxes, two more panels. And they told a story in sequence�then the number of panels just kept on increasing until they went and [added] another page, and another page, until it became the comic book that we now know today.�

     As Arnold Arre�s talk progressed, I noticed more people coming into the room, including some faculty members who became quite interested with and impressed by Mr. Arre�s knowledge of local pop culture, as he cited early trends in Filipino comics � or komiks, as he would put it � �There were a few, like Francisco Coching, Nestor Redondo, Alex Nino, who tried to push the envelope in terms of Philippine comic book art, but most of them drew in the same style because it was the commercially lucrative thing to do.� Unfortunately, he added, nowadays, there is not much of an industry to speak of, and what little of it that exists still does what was being done decades ago � mimicking the style that is profitable, in today�s case, the manga and anime style. �I don�t have anything against it,� Mr. Arre added later on during the open forum, �but there should be a point where an artist has to find his own style and just grow.�

     Mr. Arre also noted that it wasn�t until the 80�s that comics began to be regarded by the mainstream culture. He cites Art Spiegelman�s Maus, which won a special Pulitzer Prize in 1992, and told the true story of his father�s experiences as a Jew in Auschwitz during World War Two. He hopes that this, and other works that followed it, such as Neil Gaiman�s Sandman and Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell�s From Hell, would help show people that comics are capable of more than gaudily garbed superheroes and adolescent and children�s humor books.

     He spent the second half of his talk with some demonstration exercises on how to tell a story using comics, utilizing the imagination of the audience, who gamely pitched ideas both wild and sublime to his spontaneously thought out tale of a scantily-clad female ninja and his gun-toting sidekick, replescendent in his mask and trenchcoat. Hand gliding over the whiteboard, he quickly drew in the characters �This sucks!� he laughed, his quick lesson on how not to draw comics ended.

     He points out instead that characterization should always be placed in top priority, not some arrogant desire to showcase one�s artistry or literary know-how. He supposes that this is why a lot of beginning creators fail, because their works call too much attention on the artwork, for instance, or in the flowery language that was employed. He notes that comics is a unique medium in that the words and pictures are inextricably connected and should be used together, to the fullest extent, to the service of the story and the development of the characters.

     On that note, he also talked about After Eden, his latest work, which has been described as a love story involving multiple characters, including a host of angels and demons deciding on the fate of the world based on the outcome of the romantic relationships between the main characters.

     During the open forum, a fan, who came all the way from UST in Manila, asked why Arnold Arre always seems to favor giving his stories happy endings. �Because I think that there�s already too many tragic endings in real life,� he replies thoughtfully. �Also, I feel that the tragic ending has to be justified, it has to have a purpose, both to the characters and to the reader. With happy endings, your character is changed in the end, from having solved the problems he or she encounters along the way; the reader is changed as well, because if I do my job right, then the reader is uplifted, and is given hope, that life can be better, happier, than it already is.�

     The event ended with members of the audience lining up to have their copies of his book signed; on occasion he drew quick personalized sketches on them. All the while I was thinking to myself, worrying, wishing there had been a larger audience instead of the less than two dozen members I counted towards the end of the talk. People, whether they regularly read comics or not, would�ve been impressed with what Arnold Arre had to say. No matter; in the end, he�s done his half of the job. Now it�s up to us, fans of his work and of the comics medium in general, to spread the word about it with renewed energy and hope, and give this under-appreciated, under-recognized medium of expression the happy ending that it deserves.