photo c/o Mark Cerbo
DC comics writer for Teen Titans Go! and Ninja Scroll, J.Torres joins Oni Press comics artist Elbert Or for a comic book signing event and also preview of their team up project for Oni Press entitled "Lola: A Ghost Story", that will be available this Summer 2009 in Comic Odyssey and all comic shops.
I arrived late for the comic book signing, but on time to meet and have a talk with J. Torres (J. is for Joseph) at the Comic Odyssey in Robinsons Galeria, me and Mark surfed the MRT just to reach there almost on time to meet the comics star after attending an afternoon event in Manila. The comic shop is still full with comics fans, buyers and artists, and it looks like that it is another comic convention forming inside the mall. Sandy Sansolis, owner of the store brought us to this table full of comics and gave us copies of Teen Titans Go, Ninja Scroll and X-men Ronins. It was great to have comics to sign, because I told Mark and Sandy that I got a lot of DC for kids comics at home and failed to bring it with me and it has reprints of Justice League Unlimited and Teen Titans Go. ( read more below)
Been reading some of his interview at DC for kids, back in time when Reg Ting is still in the crew of the comics and one of his staff interview J.Torres and there I learned that he is Filipino, and also been reading a lot of news plugs from Budj at the Alamat ML whenever there are pinoy comics artists are being featured in some comics news website.
There I met J.Torres sitting beside Elbert Or behind the comics display cabinet and they station themselves there to meet and do signings for comics fans, It was the busiest section of the store and because that I can't get a nice double interview with J. and Elbert, I just took a time to interview J. for this blog and later on snatch a glimpse of Elbert during my video intervew ( which my video has a poor audio quality, and because I dont have a better cam with at that time)
I just told him that it was very rare to have a Filipino comics writer in the roster of DC Comics and he just smiled and I think he aggrees, and he shared to me his success story on how he got into the industry. J. Torres started writing for small comics and independent comics studio back then and he reminded me that he started small and then go for the big project and the difference of working in the past between indies and mainstream comics are pretty much the same, but not entirely on the industry itself, because for me working in the main industry of comics is very hectic and fun too. I just didn't got some parts of the talks due to low audio of my video recording,but I learned that his favorite titles he worked are on the independent comics, which he refered to me on his works with Elbert Or in Oni Press' "Lola: A Ghost Story". He also shared to me that he wrote an story for an episode of some Nickolodean cartoons and to Cartoon Nework's Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi cartoons.
And after the comics event, We ate in Chef Angelos and there I met Ivan Brun, a French comics creator and there got to read his comic book entitled "No Comment". It was big bash snacks with the artists and writers, and we talked about comics, the industry, the Valley Golf mess, and Marcelle's bending fork magic stunt haahaha. It was a fun event.
There's another comic book event next week, will post the details here after this blog post.
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Thanks to Sandy and Comic Odyssey for the comics, event and snacks, to J.Torres, Elbert Or for making more comics, and to everyone! kita kits sa susunod!
-azrael coladilla
more photos in my album at J.Torres and Elbert Or comic book signing event in Comic Odyssey
and mark's coverage at Comic Odyssey 01.03.2009
