Comics: School Run ~ Issue 1

Macoy x Ardie Aquino Edition

Illustration and Story by: Macoy and Ardie Aquino

(4/5 ★★★★☆)

"In post-zombie apocalypse Philippines, life is good! Or at least as good as you can expect in a third-world country with 80's technology and an everpresent zombie plague. But as Maki and her friends will soon discover, just getting to school in the morning can be a real killer.

SCHOOL RUN is a tongue-in-cheek zombie story with everything you look for in the genre: humor, action, social commentary, and the undead munching on kids."

The Good:

After almost a decade, School Run is back as Macoy made a collaboration with Ardie Aquino.

This update is thrilling to see in so many ways. It now comes in color with the dialogues updated from Filipino to English.

The cover has been changed to show a crowd full of zombies with some of the main casts in it. Also within the hoard are the creators so one would find it amusing to try and guess which one are they among the zombies.

The previous panels and script originally drawn by Macoy has been given a new look by Ardie. The details that can be seen at the background of the characters are worth to look at. Knockoff logos of familiar companies and brands can be seen like Food Panda, Angkas, Skull Head, and Meralco. An added bonus was the additional signage stuck on a post promoting Ardie's Home Massage Service beside a Mackoy Plumber post.

The story describes of a post-zombie apocalypse world that occurs in the year 2035. It still gives a fun and fresh look of the Philippines with young children as the main characters.

The Bad:

One of the biggest concern with this post-zombie apocalypse version is the NZP or the anti plague medicine that everyone appears to be taking. The presence of this item, which was also present in the original version, leaves a lot of questions. It insinuates that by forgetting to take this pill will turn you into a zombie aside from the primary means of exposure to a contaminated blood or body fluids. It begs to question if the zombie virus was also airborne. It is also appalling that no new drug has been invented yet in order to increase the interval time for this medication be taken by the general population. The need to take a pill every 4 hours is going to be a tiresome chore because it means setting an alarm so you could wake up from your 6 to 8 hours of sleep just to take this anti plague pill.

The Verdict:

Zombie apocalypse themed stories is still a nice story to dwell on. This updated version is more child friendly in comparison to the original one. This can be seen as the head of one of the characters pop up at the back of the school bus. Looking at it in black and white back then gives a more chilling scenario in comparison to the current multicolored zombies in the series.

Most of the original fans would be pulled back to rediscover the story of Maki. I just hope we can finally see the ending of this series.

More of the creators' works can be seen at:

Ardie Aquino:

Instagram: @chikidoodledoo

Macoy:

Twitter: @komiksnimacoy

Anthology: Balik Tanaw

Illustration and Story by: Ardie Aquino

Ardie Aquino Comics

(4.167/5 ★★★★☆)

"Ang librong ito ay koleksyon ng mga komiks na nagawa ko noong 2015. Ito ay anim na kwento na tungkol sa paghanap ng kaligayahan, pagluto ng sinigang, pag-hingi ng extra rice, lihim ng kasama mo sa bahay, pagkain ng bawal at pagbalik tanaw sa buhay. Sana sa bawat paglipat mo ng pahina ay madama mo din ang mga emosyon na nadama ko noon."

The Good:

Ardie's craft really has improved. This could be seen from the changes that he made with the Extra Rice with Extra Tries story as an example. His illustrations also improved, if one would compare this 2020 version to the 2015 original.

Balik Tanaw is a new story included in this 2020 remastered edition of Ardie's 2015 comics.

The best story in this compilation is Ang Roomate Kong Aswang. It tells about the battle between a human and an aswang, which mostly centers on the aswang pictured as a bad roomie rather than his identity.

Reading beyond the surface of this story would give the picture that every person is different and unique. It could be due to gender, sexual orientation, religion, nationality and even species. Despite these differences, what really matters is how a person interacts with others. Being angry to an individual does not need to be discriminatory but rather it could be plainly due to his or her awful demeanor towards others.

The Bad:

This anthology would have been better if the layout was improved. Some pages are hard to read due to the parts that are near to the spine of the book. This problem is already evident on the foreword page.

All stories exists in the same world except for Balik Tanaw and Hipon sa Hapon. It would have been interesting if they were connected in some way.

The story that didn't do well was the bonus story, Balik Tanaw. Its never ending story didn't work with me. If your future self went into your past to try to save your past self from doing the same steps, why on earth would you repeat the same things. It could have easily worked out by not helping the character find the crystal in order to prevent the same things from happening once again.

The Verdict:

Ardie's throwback to his previous works by creating an updated and better version of them is a good concept. It measures the growth you have achieved with your craft in doing so.

This anthology is a gateway to Ardie Aquino's weird and absurd ideas. Be sure not to miss it.

He can be seen at:

Facebook Page: Ardie Aquino

* Breakdown of Rating:

★☆☆☆☆ -

★★☆☆☆ - 

★★★☆☆ - Balik Tanaw

★★★★☆ - Burn Baby Burn, Sinigang: Kwento ng Lumbay, Extra Rice with Extra Tries

★★★★★ - Ang Roomate Kong Aswang, Hipon Sa Hapon

Comics: Extra Rice with Extra Tries

Illustration and Story by: Ardie Aquino
Ardie Aquino Comics
(3/5 ★★★☆☆)

The Plot:

We all have our own inner demons.

The Good:

The illustrations from Ardie are consistently great. He truly owns this weird chibi style of illustration.

The Bad:

The extra rice that was the title and main focus of the cover page illustration of this comic was not part of the main story. It only serves as an addition in the epilogue.

The Verdict:

This comic, as I percieve, is a motivational one. It tries to convey that no matter how much life scares us, even through our inner demons, we must always get out of bed and fight the day out.

Our dream serves as our refuge. A place to heal and regroup our thoughts on how to fight once we wake up again.

He can be seen at:

Facebook Page: Ardie Aquino

Comics: Sinigang: Kwento ng Lumbay

Illustration and Story by: Ardie Aquino

Ardie Aquino Comics

(3/5 ★★★☆☆)

The Plot:

A Filipino pork stew cooked to perfection with MeTube as a guide.

The Good:

The illustrations are becoming a trademark of Ardie Aquino's simple and neat artwork. It can be seen on how the ingredients were drawn.

The story is simple and could remind readers of memories of love and care through cooking.

The Bad:

Based on the flow of the story or recipe, an ingredient was missing from pages 1 and 5. Pepper was not included even though it was used on pages 12 and 13.

The Verdict:

Sinigang is a simple comic book that takes a look at our past. It gives that comforting feeling after engulfing a warm and delicious pork stew on a cold and rainy day.

The food brings beautiful memories as one savors each spoonful of pork stew. This is our Filipino dish  story equivalent to the Ratatouille dish of an American film.

He can be seen at:

Facebook Page: Ardie Aquino

Book News: Re-releasing School Run

A comic title will resurface once more, as the story of a group of school children fight for their lives in a zombie virus infected world. School Run was initially created by Macoy and lasted for 7 issues, School Run Part 7 titled as Casualties of War! was the last issue. The last issue was a total cliffhanger since no follow-up issues was released afterwards.

This surprise collaboration between Macoy and Ardie Aquino, creator of Random! Comics and Ang Roomate Kong Aswang!, makes it clear that they want to finish this story and want a new generation of comic-readers be exposed to this wonderful story crafted years ago.

No further details if this will follow the stories of Robert, Maki, Pipoy and the rest of the gang as they survive the zombie typhoon headed towards their school bus, or if it will be a fresh story that will just use the same concept.

This was set to be released at Summer Komikon 2020, but has been postponed at a later date.

Comics: Dive

Illustration and Story by: Ardie Aquino
Ardie Aquino Comics

(3/5 ★★★☆☆)

The Plot:

A diver. An angler fish. A mermaid.

Love blossoms even while diving at first sight.

The Good:

Great cover!

The illustration with its color just speaks of a possible haunting mystery that is about to happen.

The visuals were great. The expressive faces of the characters make up for the absence of dialogues.

The Bad:

The most intriguing part of this story is primarily the plot. Why would this man go diving in the first place? He doesn't appear to be a tourist or a fisherman since he isn't holding any fishing gear (unless he plans to manually grab a fish underwater). Then, there's this big question of why does he have to do this helmet diving. The very reason for his plunge into the water didn't make any sense.

The Verdict:

This vampire mermaid snake character story was an "okay" comic book. The illustrations were great. The cover would really get anyone's attention.

The main reason why I have difficulty liking this comic was due to the unexplained reason why the guy has to dive.

At the very least, we would appreciate the last illustration wherein it could really make the hair on your skin stand if you're in the diver's situation. You'd probably ask yourself "Why did I have to dive?" as soon you see the skulls underneath the throne you're sitting on.

Comics: Ang Roomate Kong Aswang!

Illustration and Story by: Ardie Aquino

Ardie Aquino Comics

(4/5 ★★★★☆)

The Plot:

Suspicious of your roommate because of things that suggests that he could be an aswang? Ang Roomate Kong Aswang gives an insight on those things, including the very crazy ones that could be thought of in order to connect the absurd things happening to an aswang.

The Good:
The illustrations and story are neat to look at. Simple illustrations paired with an entertaining story makes this comic worth your cash.

From time to time references to our local culture were inserted wittingly. The additional pages allotted for the alternate ending was great. The last dialogue shouts as a great kick-ass ending.

The Bad:
The initial impression regarding the illustration of the roommate would be that he might be a werewolf instead of an aswang. It is only when a werewolf-like character was introduced that we got to distinguish how the artist draws his version of an aswang and a werewolf.

The Verdict:
Ang Roomate Kong Aswang, is a very entertaining single shot story. It may look like a ridiculously exaggerated story about discovering a roommate's possible secret identity, however, on a closer look, it just portrays the reality of how we look at others. Our judgement and criticism towards others mostly deals on the superficial aspect of the person. Disregard of the whole personality is often done as we tend to linger more on what we see.

This comic is bound to entertain and surprise comic book enthusiasts as Ardie Aquino gives us a child friendly story despite the fact that mutilated body parts were drawn inside the refrigerator as the cover of this comic book. Maybe the smiling blue head made it more child-friendly.