Preview Art for TRESE BOOK 6

For SUMMER KOMIKON, we are releasing a special preview book which contains the first chapter of TRESE BOOK 6.

It will also contain THE CHOIR (from the STORIES FROM THE DIABOLICAL blog) with new artwork from Kajo.

Preview Art for THE DARK COLONY

  
Dark Colony Book 1: MIKEY RECIO AND THE SECRET OF THE DEMON DUNGEON.
Comic Book Story by Budjette Tan. Art by Bow Guerrero. Prose Story by JB “Taps” Tapia. (Php120.00, 80-pages. Black-and-White. Contains bonus pages, character designs, and sketches of the Knights of St. Michael.) 

Be the first to get it at the VISPRINT table, Summer Komikon, April 13, Bayanihan Center, Pioneer St., Mandaluyong City.

Synopsis: Mikey had other plans on his Holy Week holiday. Driving for his grandfather was not part of it. Nor did it involve running into a very unholy secret.

“Mikey Recio and the Secret of the Demon Dungeon”
Story by Budjette Tan
Art by Bow Guerrero

“The Mission at Estero de Vistas”
Story by J.B. “Taps” Tapia
Illustrations by Bow Guerrero

Exclusive TRESE story in MANILA NOIR

Got my advance copy of MANILA NOIR! This anthology is edited by Jessica Hagedorn and will be published by Akashic Books.

We were invited to contribute to this anthology of prose stories and Trese: Thirteen Stations is the only comic book story in the line up. It is an honor and privilege to be part of such a great collection of writers and storytellers.

MANILA NOIR will be available in the United States this June. The Philippine edition will be distributed by Anvil and will also be in local bookstores June 2013.

Here's the press release from the AKASHIC BOOKS catalogue:
http://www.akashicbooks.com/catalog/manila-noir/

Launched with the summer ’04 award-winning best-seller Brooklyn Noir, Akashic Books continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies. Each book is comprised of all-new stories, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the geographical area of the book.

Original stories by Lourd De Veyra, Gina Apostol, Budjette Tan & Kajo Baldisimo, F.H. Batacan, Jose Dalisay Jr., Eric Gamalinda, Jessica Hagedorn, Angelo Lacuesta, R. Zamora Linmark, Rosario Cruz-Lucero, Sabina Murray, Jonas Vitman, Marianne Villanueva, and Lysley Tenorio.

One of the most populous cities in the world, Manila provides the ideal, torrid setting for noir. It’s where the rich rub shoulders with the poor, where five-star hotels coexist with informal settlements, where religious zeal coexists with superstition, where “hospitality” might be another word for prostitution, where politics is often synonymous with celebrity and corruption, where violence is nothing out of the ordinary and pretty much anything can be had for a price.

From the Introduction by Jessica Hagedorn:

“Manila is not for the faint of heart. Built on water and reclaimed land, it’s an intense, congested, teeming megalopolis, the vital core of an urban network of sixteen cities and one municipality collectively known as Metro Manila. Population: over ten million and growing by the minute. Climate: tropical. Which means hot, humid, prone to torrential monsoon rains of biblical proportions.
I think of Manila as the ultimate femme fatale. Complicated and mysterious, with a tainted, painful past. She’s been invaded, plundered, raped, and pillaged, colonized for four hundred years by Spain and fifty years by the US, bombed and pretty much decimated by Japanese and American forces during an epic, month-long battle in 1945.

Yet somehow, and with no thanks to the corrupt politicians, the crime syndicates, and the indifferent rich who rule the roost, Manila bounces back. The people’s ability to endure, adapt, and forgive never ceases to amaze, whether it’s about rebuilding from the latest round of catastrophic flooding, or rebuilding from the ashes of a horrific world war, or the ashes of the brutal, twenty-year dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos . . .

Many years have passed since the end of the Marcos dictatorship. People are free to write and say what they want, yet nothing is different. The poor are still poor, the rich are still rich, and overseas workers toil in faraway places like Saudi Arabia, Israel, Germany, and Finland. Glaring inequities are a source of dark humor to many Filipinos, but really just another day in the life . . .

Writers from the Americas and Europe are known for a certain style of noir fiction, but the rest of the world approaches the crime story from a culturally unique perspective. In Manila Noir we find that the genre is flexible enough to incorporate flamboyant emotion and the supernatural, along with the usual elements noir fans have come to expect: moody atmospherics, terse dialogue, sudden violence, mordant humor, a fatalist vision.”

Download TRESE eBooks

UPDATE (October 2017) -- sorry, all the links these ebooks are not working now. Will update soon! Many thanks!

Hi all! If you've got friends abroad who'd like to start reading TRESE, please tell them that they can now download the first two cases from several sites. This was all made possible by our friends at FLIPREADS. Kajo made some new covers for the TRESE eBook edition. He also modified the artwork from these cases. You'll find the links to the eBooks under each cover. Please help spread the word on where they can download TRESE! Thanks!

Trese 5, one of Inquirer's Top 10 Books of 2012

Inquirer's Ruel de Vera wrote: ‘Trese 5: Midnight Tribunal,’ by Budjette Tan, illustrated by Kajo Baldisimo. (Visprint, Inc) The single best ongoing Filipino comic-book series continues to impress and terrify. Paranormal investigator Alexandra Trese is challenged by new cases that expand on and shake the spooky natural order of “Trese”—plus, an unexpectedly effective villain is added to the menacing mix. Here in this fifth volume are Tan and Baldisimo doing what they do best.

Read the complete list at: http://lifestyle.inquirer.net/83535/top-10-books-of-the-year

Trese Christmas Card 2012

It was a good year for TRESE. We were able to release Book 5 and was lucky and privileged enough to win the National Book Award. Most of all, we got to meet more of our readers at the book signings and here online. Thank you very much for all your support! It's always fun to answer your questions, hear your theories, watch you guys debate, see your artwork and fanfics, and just simply hangout with you at the Trese FB page. Merry Christmas and have a magical New Year! --budjette & kajo

Trese 5: a bestseller

TRESE 5: MIDNIGHT TRIBUNAL is now #5 on National Book Store's Bestseller List (Philippine Publications). 

THANK YOU VERY MUCH TO ALL OUR READERS!!! :-)

Shanty Harmayn talks about TRESE

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"From the first moment I got a glimpse into the world of Alexandra Trese, I was hooked.  It was wonderfully new and exciting, yet somehow familiar as many of the supernatural creatures and their stories were similar to the tales I grew up hearing in Indonesia. With Budjette's masterful ability to weave a great mystery and Kajo's beautiful graphic imagery, I look forward to visiting Trese's world many times over."-Shanty Harmayn, CEO at Salto Film Company Producer of the award-wining Indonesia film “Sang Penari” (The Dancer)

Aaron Rahsaan Thomas talks about TRESE

Image from :

http://vimeo.com/32845239

 

“The late Steve Sabol of NFL films once said, ‘Tell me a fact and I’ll remember. Tell me the truth and I’ll believe. But, tell me a story and it’ll live in my heart forever.’ It is a unique and admirable skill to craft a well told story set in an intriguing world, inhabited by compelling characters. Yet, every time I open a chapter of the Trese saga, I’m blown away by Budjette’s imagination and by Kajo’s imagery. They’ve created a series full of swagger, featuring one of the most dynamic heroines you’ll ever see. Trese is thrilling, engaging and epic.” Aaron Rahsaan Thomas, Executive Producer of Southland; writer/producer of CSI:New York, Numb3rs, Friday Night Lights

Photo courtesy of

http://malikaziz.com/2010/10/14/10-questions-with-aaron-rahsaan-thomas/

November 24 TRESE book signing

National Book Store presents 
the TRESE 5 book signing session.
National Bookstore, Alabang Town Center
November 24, 4pm

Join us and get the chance to meet Trese and the Kambal!

Models: Malbin Hung, Joy Wilgin Ong and Kim Wilgin Ong, Photo: Katherine Lei Caparas, Artwork: Malbin Hung

Be there for the launch of the special NBS Edition of TRESE 5: MIDNIGHT TRIBUNAL.
This version comes with an Exclusive NBS Dustcover.

Join Budjette Tan and Kajo Baldisimo, creators of the award-winning graphic novel TRESE, for an afternoon of mysteries and revelations.

Ask them questions about the underworld. Check out the Trese art gallery.
Get the chance to win Trese art work and shirts. Stick around for the book signing session.
Have your pictures take with the Trese and Kambal cosplayers!
Hosted by Yvette Tan, author of WAKING THE DEAD

See you this Saturday!

Trese 4 wins 2011 National Book Award

 

PRESS RELEASE

“Trese” wins National Book Award, Best Graphic Literature for 2011

Trese Book 4: Last Seen After Midnight, written by Budjette Tan, illustrated by Kajo Baldisimo was awarded Best Graphic Literature for 2011 at the National Book Awards.

The award was received by Tan, Baldisimo and their publisher Nida Ramirez of Visprint, Inc.

Kajo Baldisimo, Budjette Tan, Ruel de Vera, Nida Ramirez, Manix Abera

This is the second time that National Book Development Board and the Manila Critics Circle have recognized and awarded the works of Tan and Baldisimo. Last 2010, Trese Book 3 won the same award.

Trese follows the adventures of paranormal investigator Alexandra Trese. She is the main consultant of the police whenever they encounter crime involving supernatural creatures. In Trese Book 4, she is called to solve the murder of a manananggal, stop a plant elemental from committing a massacre, investigate a case involving a bangungnot, and reveal the secret of the country’s champion prize-fighter.

Ruel de Vera of the Manila Critic Circles, wrote in his introduction for Trese 4: “With each case, Budjette and Kajo raise their levels of artistry to new heights without ever resorting to gimmickry, relying instead on an expertise in the unexpected twist and self-awareness, a feat that transcends the tropical islands Trese originates from. From a cult hit, Trese has now become a true mainstream success—which it deserves—and the next step should be widespread international recognition—which it deserves as well.”

In the past two years, Trese has received much praise from here and abroad.

"Trese continues to impress and surprise, daring to go where no Filipino comic book dare to go," said Gerry Alanguilan, creator of the award-winning graphic novel Elmer. 

Leinil Yu, artist of Marvel’s Indestructible Hulk said, "Trese excites the little child in me which used to believe in the wonders of Filipino folklores, and my adult self who enjoys intelligently written and drawn tales.  Budjette and Kajo's Trese is a gem"

Aaron Rahsaan Thomas, Executive Producer of Southland and writer/producer of CSI:New York, had this to say about the graphic novel: “The late Steve Sabol of NFL films once said, ‘Tell me a fact and I’ll remember. Tell me the truth and I’ll believe. But, tell me a story and it’ll live in my heart forever.’ It is a unique and admirable skill to craft a well told story set in an intriguing world, inhabited by compelling characters. Yet, every time I open a chapter of the Trese saga, I’m blown away by Budjette’s imagination and by Kajo’s imagery. They’ve created a series full of swagger, featuring one of the most dynamic heroines you’ll ever see. Trese is thrilling, engaging and epic.”

"From the first moment I got a glimpse into the world of Alexandra Trese, I was hooked,” said Shanty Harmayn, CEO at Salto Film Company, Producer of the award-wining Indonesia film “Sang Penari” (The Dancer) “It was wonderfully new and exciting, yet somehow familiar as many of the supernatural creatures and their stories were similar to the tales I grew up hearing in Indonesia. With Budjette's masterful ability to weave a great mystery and Kajo's beautiful graphic imagery, I look forward to visiting Trese's world many times over."

In 2011, after Trese 4 ended up on National Book Store’s Best Seller List, Tan received this email from Neil Gaiman, “So ridiculously proud of you! When I came out all those years ago for the first time, that was what I wanted to see happen... I feel like you and all the smart Filipino writers and artists out there are doing something really brave and powerful, making a whole new wave of Filipino art and story. Well done!”

National Book Awards was held last November 17, 2011 and was presented by The National Book Development Board and the Manila Critics Circle in cooperation with the National Commission for Culture and the Arts. The event was held at the Old Senate Session Hall of the National Museum of the Philippines.

National Book Award Trophy designed by Michael Allen R. Cacnio

Trese 5 Book Signing Sessions

National Book Store presents TRESE 5 book signing sessions

https://www.facebook.com/events/478421955531732/

Be there for the launch of the special NBS Edition of TRESE 5: MIDNIGHT TRIBUNAL.
This version comes with an Exclusive NBS Dustcover.

Join Budjette Tan and Kajo Baldisimo, creators of the award-winning graphic novel TRESE, for an afternoon of mysteries and revelations.

Ask them questions about the underworld. Check out the Trese art gallery.
Get the chance to win Trese art work and shirts. Stick around for the book signing session.

November 10, 4pm: Bestsellers, Robinsons Galleria, Ortigas
Hosted by Karen Kunawicz

November 24, 4pm: National Bookstore, Alabang Town Center
Hosted by Yvette Tan

Trese 5 MIDNIGHT TRIBUNAL

Hi! If you found this page because you were searching for TRESE ISYU 5, learn more about it at: http://tresekomix.blogspot.com/2013/06/trese-isyu-5-komiks.html

 

In a city where the aswang control everything that is illegal and where ancient gods seek to control everything else, enforcing the law can be a very difficult task. 

 When crime takes a turn for the weird, the police normally call Alexandra Trese. Lately, it seems like others have been taking that call. 

A mysterious racer has been breaking the speed limit, running after and capturing criminals. 
A masked giant has been demolishing drug dens and breaking up gangs. 

 Trese must confront these supernatural crime-fighters and bring order back to the city, before the underworld attempts to seek balance in its own way. 

TRESE: MIDNIGHT TRIBUNAL 
Budjette Tan and KaJo Baldisimo 
Winners of the Philippine National Book Awards for Best Graphic Literature 

Trese Book 5 is now available in all bookstores. To make sure your favorite book store orders copies, please go to their Customer Service Counter and place an order for the book. Give the following information found below. Give them your contact info/telephone number and they'll call you when your order arrives. Thank you very much for all the support!

TRESE: Midnight Tribunal

By: Budjette Tan and KaJo Baldisimo

ISBN:  971-05451-8-3

B and W Graphic Novel

SRP: P150.00

Trese Weekend

September 15 (Saturday)

See you guys this Saturday at TEAM MANILA (1st level of the New Wing of Market! Market!) September 15, 2 pm. Me and Kajo will be there to sign your books (yes, copies of Trese will be available at Team Manila stores) and we'll even sign your Team Manila x Trese shirts.


September 16 (Sunday)

On Sunday, me and Kajo will be at the 33rd Manila International Book Fair (MIBF), along with Mervin Ignacio and Ian Sta. Maria of SKYWORLD. We will be at the National Bookstore booth from 2pm to 3pm. Come over and we will gladly sign, doodle, and vandalize your comic books.

Coming Soon! MANILA NOIR

Launched with the summer '04 award-winning best seller Brooklyn Noir, Akashic Books ( http://www.akashicbooks.com/manilanoir.htm ) continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies. Each book is comprised of all-new stories, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the geographical area of the book.

Fresh noir from one of the most intense, congested, and overpopulated cities in the world.

Original stories by: Lourd De Veyra, Gina Apostol, Budjette Tan & Kajo Baldisimo, F.H. Batacan, Jose Dalisay Jr., Eric Gamalinda, Jessica Hagedorn, Angelo Lacuesta, R. Zamora Linmark, Rosario Cruz-Lucero, Sabina Murray, Jonas Vitman, Marianne Villanueva, and Lysley Tenorio.

ONE OF THE MOST POPULOUS cities in the world, Manila provides the ideal, torrid setting for noir. It's where the rich rub shoulders with the poor, where five-star hotels coexist with squatter settlements, where religious zeal coexists with superstition, where "hospitality" might be another word for prostitution, where politics is often synonymous with celebrity and corruption, where violence is nothing out of the ordinary and pretty much anything can be had for a price.

JESSICA HAGEDORN was born in Manila and now lives in New York. A novelist, poet, and playwright, her published works include Toxicology, Dream Jungle, The Gangster Of Love, Danger and Beauty, and Dogeaters, which was a finalist for the National Book Award in fiction. She also edited both volumes of the groundbreaking anthology, Charlie Chan Is Dead: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian American Fiction. Visit her website at www.jessicahagedorn.net

From the Introduction by Jessica Hagedorn:

Manila is not for the faint of heart. Built on water and reclaimed land, it’s an intense, congested, teeming megalopolis, the vital core of an urban network of sixteen cities and one municipality collectively known as Metro Manila. Population: over ten million and growing by the minute. Climate: tropical. Which means hot, humid, prone to torrential monsoon rains of biblical proportions. 

I think of Manila as the ultimate femme fatale. Complicated and mysterious, with a tainted, painful past. She’s been invaded, plundered, raped, and pillaged, colonized for four hundred years by Spain and fifty years by the US, bombed and pretty much decimated by Japanese and American forces during an epic, month-long battle in 1945. 

Yet somehow, and with no thanks to the corrupt politicians, the crime syndicates, and the indifferent rich who rule the roost, Manila bounces back. The people’s ability to endure, adapt, and forgive never ceases to amaze, whether it’s about rebuilding from the latest round of catastrophic flooding, or rebuilding from the ashes of a horrific world war, or the ashes of the brutal, twenty-year dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos . . .

Many years have passed since the end of the Marcos dictatorship. People are free to write and say what they want, yet nothing is different. The poor are still poor, the rich are still rich, and overseas workers toil in faraway places like Saudi Arabia, Israel, Germany, and Finland. Glaring inequities are a source of dark humor to many Filipinos, but really just another day in the life . . .

Writers from the Americas and Europe are known for a certain style of noir fiction, but the rest of the world approaches the crime story from a culturally unique perspective. In Manila Noir we find that the genre is flexible enough to incorporate flamboyant emotion and the supernatural, along with the usual elements noir fans have come to expect: moody atmospherics, terse dialogue, sudden violence, mordant humor, a fatalist vision.

Manila Noir
edited by Jessica Hagedorn

published by Akashic Books

Mystery/Fiction Anthology
A Trade Paperback Original
ISBN-13: 978-1-61775-160-8
e-ISBN: 978-1-61775-176-9
280 pages | $15.95

http://www.akashicbooks.com/manilanoir.htm

How to order TRESEv1 shirts

Available sizes: XS, S, M, L, XL
P500 (plus shipping and handling)

Available sizes: XS, S, M, L, XL
P500 (plus shipping and handling)

UPDATE: Shirts are now sold out.

Trese Book 4 Finalist in National Book Awards

"The National Book Development Board (NBDB) and the Manila Critics Circle (MCC) are pleased to announce the finalists for this year’s National Book Awards. The names of the winners will be revealed during the awarding ceremonies that will be held on November 17 at the National Museum."

GRAPHIC LITERATURE

1. Private Iris Case 18: The Programmer’s Puzzle, by Jaime Bautista and Arnold Arre, Blue Cow

2. Trese 4: Last Seen After Midnight, by Budjette Tan and Kajo Baldisimo, Visprint 

 

MANILA CRITICS CIRCLE SPECIAL PRIZE FOR AN EBOOK

1. Alternative Alamat, by Paolo Chikiamco, Flipside Digital Content Company

2. High Society, by Paolo Chikiamco and Hannah Buena, Flipside Digital Content Company

3. The Long Weekend: A Komix Novella, by Adam David, Flipside Digital Content Company

4. The Top 25 Power Words Every Call Center Agent Should Know, by Rye Gutierrez, Flipside Digital Content Company

 

 

In the middle of a very hectic workday, I got a text and an email from our publisher that Trese Book 4 (Last Seen After Midnight) is a finalist in the 2011 National Book Awards, in the Best Graphic Literature Category. I texted Kajo the great news and he replied: Nakakawala ng pagod, Budj. Sarap. Later that day, I got five new pages from Kajo. (Yes, we are making good progress on Book 5 of Trese.)

Was also happy to see some familiar names nominated in this year's National Book Awards.

Jamie Bautista and Arnold Arre's PRIVATE IRIS is a finalist in the Graphic Literature category.

Paolo Chikiamco, my co-editor in Kwentillion, is a finalist for his Alternative Alamat anthology, which, by the way, has a Trese story. Paolo's comic book story "High Society" is also a finalist in the eBook category, as well as, Adam David's "The Long Weekend: A Komix Novella".

I do hope more people check out these books, as well as the other books nominated for the National Book Awards. Below is a link to the complete list of finalists.

NBDB: 31st National Book Award finalists announced

http://nbdb.gov.ph/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=888&Itemid=114

Precinto 13: MIDNIGHT PATROL

PRECINTO 13 : MIDNIGHT PATROL

Story by Budjette Tan

Art by Atan

Trese (and other related characters) created by Budjette Tan and Kajo Baldisimo 
Sgt. Nathan Alan created by Budjette Tan and Atan

READ THE COMPLETE STORY AT: http://tresekomix.blogspot.com/2011/05/precinto-13-premeditation.html

READ THE COMPLETE STORY AT: http://tresekomix.blogspot.com/2010/09/precinto-13-domestic-disturbance.html