Ikabod blues

With the passing away of Nonoy Marcelo, Philippine cartooning and newspaper illustration have gone through a sea change. Marcelo’s comic strips changed our way of reading "the funnies," because he drew them in such a way that we laughed so hard that it hurt.

If Larry Alcala, who passed away in June, was known as the dean of Philippine cartoonists, Nonoy was the prodigal son and rebel with a cause. He was obviously without peer, "walang kaparis" as they would say, and a mentor and guide as well to a whole new generation of cartoonists and illustrators.

For anyone who grew up in the 60s, Tisoy was standard reading fare that became almost larger than life, indeed eventually was translated into TV and the big screen, aside from rearranging the entire vocabulary of the restless youth culture of that troubled decade.

It was from a Tisoy comic strip where we learned the trick of faking a fever by standing before a cooking stove long enough.

In the martial law 70s, Tisoy gave way to half-black Kinse, son of Tisoy’s best friend Clip and grandson of Aling Otik, who continued to earn her meager living as a Metro Aide residing in the slums of Intramuros.

In the tradition of diminishing returns of military rule, Kinse gradually ceded center stage to the streetsmart cat Bos Myawok, who in turn gave up the role of chief protagonist to the mouse Ikabod Bubwit and the rest of his merry band in Dagalandia.

At the post-EDSA I Manila Chronicle Nonoy was art director holding the fort in the newspaper’s Port Area office, the Bos Myawok to the team of artists and illustrators that included Ludwig Ilio, Jose Tence Ruiz, and Benjo Laygo.

There always seemed to be a stack of cassettes lying around without their cases, near a battered cassette player that was constantly playing anything from heavy metal to Brazilian pop, as well as magazines like Heavy Metal, but maybe this last detail is a figment of imagination, another trick of memory since the Chronicle art department was like a science fiction scene out of the pages of that magazine.

There is one jacketless cassette I remember having borrowed from the Chronicle stash, Talking Heads’ True Stories, which had one song entitled Papa Legba, that could easily refer to Nonoy himself, a kind of shaman surrogate to many a fledgling cartoonist, not the least of whom was Dengcoy Miel, who for a time practically lived in Nonoy’s apartment in UP Bliss, literally drawing at the feet of the master.

Once during another drunken stint as self-appointed barangay tanods of nearby UP Village, Ilio, Roxlee and I stumbled into Nonoy’s apartment only to be greeted by Dengcoy, who promptly advised us that Nonoy was still sleeping or was out or was in bed with a woman, do not disturb.

"Wag kang magsasabing ‘I love you, I love you’," was the advice Nonoy gave to a lovelorn artist who tried to make a pass at one of his (Nonoy’s) students, as if to say that’s not the way to do it amigo, you don’t lay your cards on the table all at once.

The guy was very easily misunderstood, even failing to show up at his own exhibit opening at the Hiraya Gallery sometime in the 80s, while the guests and kibitzers milled about and spilled over into the sidewalk on UN Ave., sipping lambanog and munching on spiked brownies.

It was during that wondrous year of ’86 when Nonoy relaunched PTYK, ang jaryong komiks, back in a new incarnation after its first run earlier in the decade.

PTYK issues of that period are now considered collector’s items, the whole newspaper consisting mostly of cartoons and illustrations, with a token editorial and feature article or two. There were sections too, with corresponding editors to handle the page full of comics – Ilio for business, Roxlee for behavior, Dante Perez for health, Sonny Bismonte for travel, Dengcoy for editorial.

I won’t mention anymore the time when we tried to get Nonoy’s car started in the Chronicle parking lot, after a long day’s work a little exercise was not a bad thing.

When I asked Nonoy loyalist Jabek Chionglo whatever happened to that car, she said that the artist lost track of it, left it in a shop for repairs and the next time he looked, the shop was no longer there.

It was apparently not the least of his troubles with mechanical things, as I recall his having written in his journeyman column "Ni Ha Ni Ho" how very early one New Year’s morning, at around 3 a.m. when the fireworks had all but run out and a horrific smoke enveloped the city, he suffered a flat tire along EDSA.

A couple of weeks or so after my father died who was it on the phone but Nonoy asking me to write something about the old man in a tribute he was putting together for the resurrected PTYK, and could Jabek pick up whatever I could come up with in a few days?

The cover portrait of erpats is one of the best renditions I’ve seen done of him, with the swirls of impasto that amused my mom no end, "kuhang-kuha niya." I never did get to thank him for that PTYK issue which I plan to have framed. This for the meantime will have to do by way of thanks to an ever restless bohemian who wielded a mean, mean pen.