Creatures & Beasts | Writers of “The Lost Journal”

This book is about truth, however dark and disturbing that might be.

Every so often something truly exciting happens in the exploration of Philippine Folklore.   Picture a lost journal being discovered which detailed the creatures of Philippine myths as they had been imagined by 19th century Filipinos.  What malevolent images haunted their dreams and crept in the darkest shadows of night?  How would one describe their venture into the unknown and realms of fear.  This is the premise behind “The Lost Journal of Alejandro Pardo: Creatures & Beasts of Philippine Folklore”.

Of course there isn’t actually a lost diary – the book starts off with a disclaimer stating it is a “work of fiction” – but what an incredible entertaining scenario to introduce the creatures of Philippine Folklore to this generation.  A creative juggernaut was put together for this vivid and imaginative project, and I was lucky enough to pick their brains about the process behind creating Alejandro’s lost journal. The writers and artists were so generous with their time that I have broken the interview into 2 parts. (artist’s interviews here)

Below is the interview with writers, Budjette Tan (Trese) and David Hontiveros (The ‘Verse).  In the next article we will meet the artists.

 

Creating a long lost ethnographic series on the creatures of the Philippines is such a cool idea. How did it come about and what was the process for assembling such a talented group of creators?

BT: Summit asked us to develop a “guide book to Philippine monsters”. So, I asked if they wanted it in time for the election. Then I figured out they weren’t talking about those monsters.

To create “The Ultimate Guidebook to the Creatures of Philippine Myth and Folklore” is something I’ve always wanted to and this book comes close to doing that mission. This might not be the “ultimate guide” just yet, but it’s a good start and hopefully we’ll get to do more.

At first we thought, it can be a straight-forward encyclopedia-type book. Then I remember a book I had when I was in high school, The Goblin Companion: A Field Guide to Goblins by Brian Froud.

The book was drawn and designed to look like a little sketch book / journal and it had the illustrations of the different types of goblins and contains notes of the observer.

I also remembered one of my favorite storybooks “The Mysteries of Harry Burdick”, which was a book that contained 13 illustrations. The introduction of the book told the story of a man named Harris Burdick, who went to a publisher to pitch his book and showed those 13 artworks. He left the artwork with the publisher, left the building and was never heard from again. So, it was now up to the readers to figure out what those 13 art works were all about.

I pitched that idea to David Hontiveros and Bow Guerrero and soon enough, David started to send me “notes” from the lost journal of an explorer/adventurer named Alejandro Pardo.

Originally, the book was supposed to be launched in 3-4 months (in time for the Manila International Book Fair). So, I thought the book would get done faster if we got more artists to work on the book. Of course, I had to call up Kajo (Baldisimo) and I invited Mervin (Malonzo), since I’m a big fan of his work in Tabi Po. But the book didn’t get launched because of delays in the process (okay… okay… it’s all my fault! I didn’t get to submit my write-up on monsters on time). So, I’m happy that it’s now all done.

By the way, the great book design was done by Francis Galura,an editor from Summit.

 

DH: When Budjette first mentioned the idea to me, he was thinking along the lines of “book is found and published, but the writers are missing and never heard from again.”

Basically, the Blair Witch approach.

Now, since I’m a big film and horror geek, that approach felt tired to me (since it’s become the standard–and now weathered and rotted foundation–of found footage), so I suggested something a little more complex, with the idea that the main source of the book’s information comes from chronicles written during the Spanish colonization of the Philippines.

There would also be the conspiratorial mystery of the contemporary writers who have brought the chronicles to light and what happened (and is still happening) to them because of that decision.

I felt that establishing those two discrete time periods, with their own sets of characters and occurrences, would provide a little something extra, so the whole book would be more than just a collection of creature write-ups.

 

 

Did you and David have a good idea of which creatures you wanted to feature when you started?  What was the process of deciding and narrowing it down?

BT: Most, if not all, of the creatures came from the books and studies of Maximo Ramos. Since most of his books are now out of circulation and can only be bought from the publisher’s office, we thought that this book can help bring to light all those other creatures from other provinces that are not as popular as the aswang, kapre, tikbalang, tiyanak, and the other usual 10 top Pinoy monsters.

We divided the books between me and Dave and we picked the most interesting ones.

There is one creature that was found by Bow and it was from an article he found online. Project Gutenberg’s Philippine Folklore Stories, by John Maurice Miller, written in 1904.This creature was called the Ongloc. It had such an intriguing tale that we knew we just had to include it in the book.

 

DH: I think at the beginning, there was a common drive to feature both the usual Philippine folklore suspects, and then also get into the more obscure, less well known creatures.

In the early stages, I also opened up the floor to the artists and asked them which creatures they’d always wanted to draw (though if memory serves me correctly, it was only Bow who took up that offer).

Budjette and I ended up with 18 creatures each, and the choices we made were basically independent of each other. We came up with our own lists; I ended up submitting mine first. (The list then went out to the artists, who picked and chose the creatures they wanted to draw.)

My personal choices were based on a number of things, among them, I wanted to ensure that if I wrote about a creature here, that the creative extrapolation wouldn’t overlap with stuff I was doing in The ‘Verse comics (where I’m also taking a different look at Philippine myth and folklore).

So, basically, I needed to make sure that the aswang or kapre or tikbalang here would be different from the aswang or kapre or tikbalang in The ‘Verse.

(Because, while all Filipino genre writers are drawing from the same well, that doesn’t mean we can’t see just how flexible and elastic the concepts that are swimming down in those depths actually are.  Diversity: always a good thing.)

It helped tremendously that the impetus for how we define most of the creatures in THE LOST JOURNAL came from the artists. And we can thank Bow for that, since he was the one who suggested that we take the atypical approach to the material.

Once we’d settled on Bow’s suggestion, my guideline to the artists was, “Feel free to draw the creature as differently as you’d like, but keep the ‘traditional’ lore in mind.” (By this time, I’d already written the first drafts for my creature entries, which then went out to the arists).

They were free to jump as high up into the stratosphere and beyond with their visual interpretation, so long as the starting, take-off point, was the traditional knowledge we have of the creature in question.

That was also my personal mantra when it came to the write-ups; any creative extrapolation–whether suggested to me by the artist’s depiction of the creature (in some cases, the final published version of the written entry looks vastly different than the first draft), or my own thought processes–had to be firmly rooted in what tradition has established.

This is the approach I’ve always taken when it comes to dealing with myth and folklore and legend; no matter the new context, the established tradition needs to be retained and integrated into the whole.

 

Information about the creatures of Philippine Lower Mythology is so scattered and varied. Did this cause any challenges for your research?

BT: Most of the details and information that we used came from the books of Maximo Ramos. That was the jump off point for the basic details about the creatures. We then added to their stories using stories we gathered from other people, from friends of friends, which is how these tales normally spread.

After reading Ramos’ books, I wish there was a way we could do a follow up interview with these people in the provinces and get more stories about the creatures.

DH: Well, given that practically all the Philippine folklore research material we used came from the Summit library, the challenges I encountered weren’t really in the research portion (I’m a huge research glutton, so provided I’ve got the material at hand, that part of the writing is a breeze for me).

For me, the challenge was to present very distinct portraits of these creatures that were still firmly rooted in the rich soil of Philippine folklore. The creatures needed to be both unique to THE LOST JOURNAL and still somehow recognizable as the beasts that our great-grandparents and other ancestors further back down the line talked about in the dead of night.

I’ve never been a big fan of weird for weirdness’ sake (or, in this case, different for different’s sake). So part of the challenge for me was to make sure that the internal logic was firmly established, that those bits of connective tissue that linked our interpretation of the creature with the traditional idea of it were strong and substantial.

 



Which creature was the most fun for you to research? Anything that surprised you?

BT: I was surprised by the number of creatures that Maximo Ramos was able to catalogue and over 90% of them are creatures we’ve never heard of. One of them was an aswang-type creature that sucked out all your entrails through your anus. Sounds like a character from a hentai story.

DH: Well, I’m not sure “fun” is the right word, but I am glad I discovered the Ongloc because of working on THE LOST JOURNAL. Thanx must again go out to Bow, who brought John Maurice Miller’s book to my attention.

And, in relation to the Ongloc, one of the things that most surprised me (in a definitely so-not-good way) was just how deeply ingrained racism is in the body of folklore.

I’d been peripherally aware of this for some time (mostly due to my go-to guy for local myth and folklore, Father Francisco R. Demetrio, whose observations about the strongly Hispanic appearance of the engkanto stayed with me ever since I first came across them), but it was during my deep dive into the Maximo Ramos books that the reality of the near-ubiquity of the “big black man” motif could no longer be ignored.

Of course, I really shouldn’t have been surprised, given that racism is, at its core, really just the Fear of the Other, which is also glaringly evident in one of the most prominent of folklore tropes, the cautionary tale, which tells the listener to beware of the stranger–whether a mysterious handsome man or a beautiful and alluring woman or a big ugly black man–because they are dangerous and not to be trusted, because they are Them and not Us…

 

Were there any creatures that fascinated you, but didn’t make the cut for this journal. Might there be a Volume 2?

BT:  There was some creatures that just felt too similar to one another and yet Maximo Ramos devote an entry for each of them, maybe because they came from different provinces. So, we didn’t include all the “manananggal-like winged-vicera sucking cretures” that were in the books. But I would like to eventually go back and chronicles all of them. If Summit asks us to do Book 2, then we’ll gladly go back and see if Alejandro Pardo has more stories to tell.

DH: Oh, yeah, definitely!

There were some creatures that I waffled on while I was making my list, and ultimately, decided to hold back.

I would, however, like to keep those choices secret for now, so we can still have some surprises down the line, should we be lucky enough to be asked for a follow-up.

I imagine the possibility/reality of a Volume 2 (and, fingers crossed, beyond!) will lie in the public reaction to the first JOURNAL. (So, if you guys want to see more, then get your friends and family to pick up their own copies and not mooch on yours!)

Amongst ourselves though, yes, there have been comments and quasi-conversations, and personally, I do have a whole bunch of ideas about how to approach a volume 2, and yes, I do know how the dual stories/timelines progress from what we see in the first JOURNAL.

So, yes, as per my usual MO, the narrative blueprint is existent.

We just need for you guys to show Summit that you want to see more…

At this point, I’d like to take this opportunity to say “Thanx” to Summit, for starting the ball rolling; to the creative team (in alphabetical order), Kajo, Bow, Mervin, and Budjette; to Mica and Francis and the rest of the Summit editorial crew (for spearheading the gremlin clean-up); and to Jordan, for helping get the word out about THE LOST JOURNAL OF ALEJANDRO PARDO.

We sincerely hope you pick the book up…

 

Ask your favorite bookstore in the Philippines about “The Lost Journal of Alejandro Pardo: Creatures & Beasts of Philippine Folklore”.  If they don’t carry it, you should suggest they do.  It comes with 125 pages of awesomeness and retails for ₱295.  For those outside the Philippines, Summit Publishing has also made it available as a PDF from the Buqo Bookstore for $5.99USD.

ALSO SEE: Creatures & Beasts | Artists of “The Lost Journal”