There is a storied history of brilliant Filipino comics creators shaping American heroes in the west. Both Image Founder Whilce Portacio and prolific DC artist and Jonah Hex co-creator Tony DeZuniga had a huge influence and brought many Filipino creators into the fold of western comics. But with the recent release of cult Filipino comic Trese, readers in North America are starting to learn about the Philippines through the lens of comics by Filipino creators. A new Kickstarter by Filipino-American writer artist team Jeff Estrella and Fabian Lelay’s Balikbayan is continuing that movement, taking supernatural traditions and bringing a beautifully illustrated new comic that you can support right now!
“After years of estrangement, a sudden tragedy forces Ben into contact with his father, bringing up memories he’d rather forget. He must confront his broken relationship with his father before they face the malevolent force calling them back to their homeland. They will learn firsthand that the sins of our past will always find us, no matter how far we try to run.”
To celebrate the story, we chatted to the creative team about Balikbayan, its origins, and their fave horror films.
Rosie Knight: I love the personal aspect of Balikbayan and its origins. Could you talk a little bit more about the family legend that inspired the comic?
Jeff Estrella: So, growing up, my dad was big on telling stories. He’d tell us the plots of movies he liked (a habit I picked up as well), he’d tell us stories from his own tough childhood and younger years, but my favourite were always the strange stories of the weird and supernatural.
One night he told me the story of my great-great-grandfather who was with a beautiful and mysterious woman. However, he met someone else and fell in love and eventually married her, and this did not go over well with his first love. It turned out she was an engkanto, a spirit who was slighted by the betrayal, and in an act of vengeance, cursed our family to ruin. All the men in our family would fail or have tragedy befall them.
According to my father, because of this many of the men in our family have had a bad go of it. My grandfather died when he was still quite young, and many of my father’s older brothers died young or were beset by illness and misfortune. He said that the only way for us to right this was to travel back to the Philippines, confront the engkanto woman and make things right. Or at least that’s what he told me, but maybe it was just the Scotch talking!
You mention films like Hereditary, The Wailing, and The Farewell as inspirations on the comic. How do you translate the tone and vibe of haunting horror films to the page?
JE: I think translating the vibe of horror really comes down to identifying what you personally find horrifying and expressing that. At least that’s what I try to do. I ask myself, what would I see that would really unsettle me. Not just startle but really eat away at me. Make me wake up in the middle of the night and think, “wait, did I really see that?” And then I just go from there.
Fabian Lelay: I personally am focusing on tension and the human emotions that are extracted from horrific situations a horror story provides.
Fabian, I love the note that you included about the rich history of the supernatural in the Philippines. Could you expand on that a little more and tell us about your connection to those supernatural traditions?
FL: My exposure was quite limited back when I was living in the Philippines. One title that I can say I followed religiously until it’s cancellation was Culture Crash. It was an anthology of young and up-and-coming creators telling their own stories. They spanned from fantasy to sci-fi to dystopian futures.
The Philippines has a fantastic comic book tradition that is only really now coming to light in the west. Did you read any Filipino comics growing up?
JE: I moved to Canada fairly young and grew up mostly reading western comics and manga. There have been a lot of great Filipino artists who inspired me that have worked on western books from legends like Nestor Redondo, Whilce Portacio, Lenil Francis Yu, and Gerry Alanguilan, to contemporary FilCan and FilAm artists like Francis Manapul and Jerome Opeña. I’ve discovered some Filipino komiks as an adult which I really enjoyed and helped inspire this book, like The Mythology Class by Arnold Arre and of course Trese by Budjette Tan and Kajo Baldisimo, which was adapted into a show by Netflix.
FL: Currently with properties like Grimm and Trese, we know about monstrous beings in Filipino folklore, but we have more than that. A lot of our creatures and spirits known by children and adults are of fae origin. It is so vast and rich without culture. From the spirits of Mount Makiling to the stumps of mango trees where dwarves are often sighted, the supernatural is deep within our country’s lore.
What are you most excited for people to discover when they read the book?
JE: I’m most excited by exploring the world of Filipino folklore through the eyes of a first-generation immigrant. I think it’s a pretty unique world view, one that straddles the line between both old and new worlds. Filipino people are, generally speaking, very superstitious and very spiritual, but coming to the West at a young age you get introduced to a very different world that you are expected to assimilate into immediately. You become part of both worlds but ultimately don’t belong to either. What I try to do with this story is take that world view of wanting to believe but also being a skeptic and applying it to the vibrant and often terrifying world of Filipino folklore.
FL: I am just excited for people to discover Asian stories that branch out from the well known East Asian stories.
You can support Balikbayan now, but hurry the campaign ends on March 22nd!
