John A. Lent

Hugo D. Yonzon

When cartoons and comics sprouted in the country at the turn of the 20th century, the populace was just beginning to read after being kept for years by the Spanish colonizers from the illumination of literacy. The American occupiers brought public education and, by consequence, a freer discourse. There was an explosion of expression that remains to be contained up to this day. The repressed exuberance of the Filipinos exhibited itself in politics, entertainment, and media. The Philippines is a young country and may not have a deep and complex history like Japan that has its emaki and kibyõshi dating back to the late 18th century, very readable materials replete with drawings that are said to be the forerunners of manga or comics. But in 1821, the Philippines had Ilocano painter Esteban Villanueva depicting the Basi Revolt in vivid sequential paintings like storytelling in comics. Although those paintings, considered the first historical ones in Southeast Asia, probably do not count because they were not printed on paper and publicly disseminated. --Amazon.com

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