The Carver's House

For the 2017 digital edition, I changed the cover. Back in 2001, when social media wasn't a thing yet, I self-published my first comic book called "One Night In Purgatory." It's a simple story about a gay guy and a straight guy--best friends--who spend a night talking about a turning point in their friendship. That 56-page story earned me my first book award citation, a finalist slot for a Manila Critics Circle National Book Award. I wasn't able to earn back my investment, but it gave me a taste of going about the whole comic-making biz on my own. Now, 16 years after I first released it, I converted "One Night in Purgatory" to digital format. If you want to have a copy (in either PDF or CBR format), you can get it for the ridiculously low price of Php60, or less that $1.30. You can get it through Gumroad . No registration necessary. All they need is your email address and payment information. Once you've made payment, you will receive an em

I wrote this post as a note on Facebook. Surprisingly, it was shared 160 times as of this writing. I'm copy-pasting the text here. - - - - - - Let me begin with a story. Yesterday, I met with the organizers of Komikon, and during that meeting we talked about the challenges that local comic book makers are currently facing. Suffice to say, there's a lot. Later that day, I was in a coffee shop and ran into a couple of dear friends I haven't seen in a long time. During our conversation, one friend talked about a medical procedure he had gone through, a procedure that cost him quite a bit of money. After we parted, I began to wonder what would happen if I suddenly had an emergency and I needed a significant amount of money. Money that I didn't have. And when you reach a certain age without a retirement fund, without a backup when something goes wrong, things become very scary. This is the reason why I thought of quitting comics. Sure, I've had great succes