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...by presenting a certain picture of the past, can make some specific visions of the future look natural and inevitable, even when they're not. We talk about language and imagining other futures anyway. God knows I love SE Asian sci-fi, but there's a special place in my heart for Centennial 😭

Book cover of "The Apollo Centennial: Nostalgias, Predicaments & Celebrations" by Gregorio C. Brillantes. The cover depicts a dome-like image split into three parts: one of workers wearing hard hats and straw hats; one of the moon's surface; one of the Apollo moon landing.

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...is a valid mode of inquiry into Philippine notions of progress, modernity, and "The Future." We do a close reading of Centennial, and use the analysis as a jumping off point to talk about how leaders use Big Infrastructures to create national myths, and how officially-sanctioned museums...

The Cultural Center of the Philippines. Photo by Patrick Roque. From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0.

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...to do a special issue about Science and Technology Studies (STS) in the Philippines, guest edited by Kathleen Gutierrez and Paul Atienza. Ethan and I wrote from the humanities perspective, arguing that Filipino sci-fi stories are relevant to local #STS, and that literary analysis of sci-fi...

Book entitled "Philippine Studies Historical & Ethnographical Viewpoints — Science and Technology Studies in the Philippines"

Article by Ethan Chua and Scott Lee Chua entitled "Reading Philippine science fiction through Science and Technology Studies: The Space Race and authoritarian modernity in Gregorio Brillantes’s “The Apollo Centennial”"

Abstract: We propose that analyses of Philippine science fiction can meaningfully contribute to the growing intersections between Philippine studies and science and technology studies. We argue that science fiction is not only a literary genre but also a mode of inquiry into our notions of progress and modernity. Through this lens, we examine Gregorio Brillantes’s short story “The Apollo Centennial.” Set in a future where the Marcos regime never ended, “The Apollo Centennial” demonstrates how state infrastructural interventions can discipline Filipino subjects according to the dictates of an authoritarian techno-future. Nevertheless, the short story also gestures to the emancipatory potential of alternative linguistic and sensory modes through which state subjects might imagine other futures that defy narrative sequestration.

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...in the Philippines in the year 2069 — 100 years since the Apollo 11 moon landing, and incidentally, since the Ferdinand Marcos Sr. was reelected president. In Centennial, the Apollo astronauts are capital-H Heroes in the Philippines, like Air Supply or Michael Learns to Rock...

Screenshot from The Freeman Cebu, article entitled "Airsupply: ‘We’ve become part of the Filipino DNA'"

https://www.philstar.com/the-freeman/cebu-entertainment/2021/02/14/2077587/airsupply-weve-become-part-filipino-dna

Screenshot of the New York Times article entitled "The Scandinavian Soft Rock Band That's Big in Asia"

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/19/world/asia/michael-learns-to-rock-popularity.html

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While reading the new, beautifully curated and typeset Greg Brillantes collection last weekend, I felt compelled to dig through my crumpled college printouts and find the first Brillantes story I ever read: The Apollo Centennial 🚀 The story is about a school field trip to a space museum... 🧵 #STS

Book entitled The Collected Stories of Gregorio C. Brillantes, with introductions by Jonathan Chua and Reine Arcache Melvin

Old PDF printout of The Apollo Centennial

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We realized that by focusing on Roachman— an action superhero comic that makes narrative moves that (post-MCU) are universally understood and map easily onto the action game genre— we had a chance at making a video game adaptation of "The Art of CCHC" and its 3 braided narratives work...

Screencap of game WIP — Roachman character leaping through Singaporean shophouses.

Sketch of Roachman character movement animation test.

Level art background - Singapore shophouses against background of the skyscrapers that would replace them.

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...wrote the news of the day into his comics; but also about the difficulties of being a comic artist: on getting paid, censorships and publishers, of collaborations fizzling out... the works! So The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye is really three life stories intricately braided together:

Panel 1: A kopi shop. July 1963, 1:30pm.
Panels 2 to 7: A conversation between the Mosquito Press publisher, young Charlie Chan and Bertrand Wong, the co-creators of Roachman.

Publisher: (gestures to waiter) Boss! Three kopi-o!
(to boys) Here's the latest issue of Roachman, hot off the press... and the $200 I owe you boys for the last issue.

I know you've been hoping for a raise too... but we're only just about breaking even right now...

(Waiter: 30 cents.)

Boss: Especially with the government's anti-yellow culture campaign going on...some of the rental stores are worried about carrying your books because of the covers...

Charlie: But you said that we had to exaggerate the covers, make them racier, to attract more readers...

Publisher: Yes, yes. Trust me, I know... it's a real Catch-22 situation!

Charlie: Hey, isn't that the book you've been reading, Bert?

Bertrand, sipping tea: Mm.

Publisher: Sometimes, you just can't win!

Publisher: Speaking of books... have you boys seen any of the new comics from Marvel? One of them reminded me of "Roachman" quite a bit!

Charlie: You mean Spiderman? The whole insect bite thing was like deja vu! I told Bert they'd stolen our idea for sure!

Publisher: Heh, heh. Great minds think alike, I suppose. But I've been wondering if we ought to design a new costume... or find some way to make Roachman more relatable for readers...

Closeup on the tea as it steams...

Publisher: My son's been reading all the new Marvel books, and with ones like... what's that called now... Fantastical Four?

Charlie: Fantastic.

Publisher: Right. Fantastic Four... the characters may have superpowers, but they also face everyday problems anyone can identify with.

Charlie: But isn't that what we're doing already? Telling local stories about local events...

Publisher: I know, I know... and you boys know that I do like what you've been doing with the series... but the fact is, we still haven't quite hit on the right formula. Somehow.

Charlie: Well, maybe we could tweak things a little... like give Roachman a sidekick...?

Bertrand side-eyes Charlie...

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...called Roachman! A night soil man (i.e., sewage collector) bitten by a radioactive cockroach, who uses his powers not just to fight crime — but face the social ills of colonial Singapore! Liew also shows us how Roachman was made: how Charlie took inspiration from the world around him and...

Cover of a comic book entitled "Roachman No. 4: Kidnap!" with Roachman, a superhero wearing a blue cloak, brown pants, and red kerchief, leaps from above with a sword — surprising a mean man holding a woman hostage at knifepoint.

Two Roachman covers and some historical context for each.

Cover 1 - Roachman No.8: The Sergeant's Wife
"She screams... and screams..."
The cover depicts a sergeant choking presumably his wife.
Artist's commentary says, " Despite their sensatationalistic covers, the 'Roachman' stories were often serious meditations on issues of the day. The Lucien Hicks case, for example, where a British Army Officer was charged with killing his wife in 1959, was used as a lens to examine the nature of justice in colonial society in 'The Sergeant's Wife.'"
Some newspaper clippings with headlines, "Army pathologist gives evidence of findings at post-mortem of the 'badly charred' body"; "Hicks Trial"; "Hicks will serve term in Britain"

Cover 2
Roachman No.14: The Scratcher
depicting Roachman in fighting pose in front of a woman, while a large green claw reaches menacingly from the top of the page
Artist's commentary says, "'Crocodile,' meanwhile, starts out as an action-adventure yarn, as Roachman is tasked with hunting down a crocodile that has been sowing terror among the villages. The final panels, however, featuring shots of row upon row of crocodile skin merchandise, turns the idea of man-as-victim on its head. There were light-hearted stories, too, such as the police procedural farc, 'The Scratcher.'"

Newspaper headlines "Croc scares fishermen"; "The Scratcher: Police detain man on bicycle"

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...who grows up alongside Singapore, which only became an independent nation-state in 1965. The comic tells an alternate history of Singapore as interpreted through "Charlie's comics" — a "meta", dizzying range of comics in all its forms. Among Charlie's early comics was one in particular...

A comic drawn in pen on yellowed paper.

Panel 1: A police commander says, "Fire, fire!"
Panel 2: Police shoot laser guns with manga-esque SFX.
Panel 3: It's revealed the police are shooting at a giant robot. "It's no use! Bullets don't work!" as they flee.

Panel 1: Singapore, 1942! The Japanese army is marching triumphantly along Orchard Road. "Banzai, banzai, banzai!"

Panel 2: A Japanese commander says, "People of Singapore! We have liberated you from your colonial oppressors! You can trust us to look after you! We are all Asians, after all!"

Panels 3 to 5: Some political cartoons about the British occupation.
"And indeed, you had been but a mere second-class citizen under British rule! Now the Japanese promise a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, free from colonial subjugation! And offer the prospect of an Indian National Army to help India fight for its independence!"

Panel 6: A boy watches a Japanese prison truck leave. "But lo! Watch as they round up many innocents, who will never return!"

Panel 7: A boy watches flies devour decapitated heads. "Shiver, as you listen to whispered tales about their wanton acts of unspeakable cruelty!"

An older man says, "...And then they pulled your fingernails right off...!"

Panel 8: A boy looks at the forest. "And so you flee into the jungles of Malaya to escape the horrors!"

Three political cartoons.

Cartoon 1
David Marshall's reluctance to use force to curb trade union and student protests left the British with little confidence that economic and political stability would be maintained if independence was to be granted to Singapore.

Panel 1: A bird says, "The ants are marchin' again!" The ants hold protest signs: "Unfaire!" "Less" "More" "Juss Teace!"

Panel 2: The bird asks an elephant, "Why don't you stomp on them?"

Panel 3: The elephant says, "No, no... that would make me a latchkey, which I am not!"

Panel 4: The lion walks away. "Well, you cannot have your picnic then," says the lion. "The nerve!" says the elephant.

Cartoon 2
Marshall was caught in a bind. Taking tougher measures might help to assuage the colonial authorities, but he would also be accused of being a stooge and a lackey.

Panel 1: Monkey says, "Why so glum and gloomy, Sang Gajah?" Elephant replies, "It's those ants! They're always marchin' n' marchin'!"
Panel 2: "If I stomp on them, I'll be a latchkey," says Elephant.
Panel 3: "If I don't, they won't let us have our picnic!"
Panel 4: Monkey says, "Can't you just talks with them fellas?" Elephant replies, "I try, but there is a problem of commu-knee-kay-shons!" The ants speak in Chinese characters.

Cartoon 3
Regardless, Marshall continued to press for immediate and complete internal self-government, and once again threatened to resign as Chief Minister unless his demands were met. But the British remained unwilling to relinquish their control over matters of internal security, and would not be swayed by his threats this time.

Panel 1: Elephant says, "We want our picnic and we want it now!"
Panel 2: Snake says "You may have your picnic, but no sandwiches."
Panel 3: Elephant says, "A picnic with no sandwiches? Why, that's the height and bottom of absurdity!"
Panel 3: Elephant says, "That's it! I'm off! And no-one can stop me!" Mouse says "I met a sand witch once!" and Cat says "I hear they're great at picnics!"

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Scott Lee Chua @scottleechua.com · 31/10/2024

...a video game adaptation of Sonny Liew's landmark graphic novel, "The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye," which I first read in 2017 and haven't stopped thinking about since. The comic is a heartfelt kayfabe about a Forrest Gump-esque character named Charlie, a Singaporean comic artist...

Books Kinokuniya, Singapore. Charlie Chan stands in front of a shelf of books. "I come here for my comics these days. Used to go to specialist shops... after the war, there were also what we used to call 'five foot way libraries'. Another name for them was 'pavement libraries.'

An ink drawing of a streetside comics library entitled "Five Foot Way Library" by Chan Hock Chye, 1966.

"All sorts of comics started trickling in, from Hong Kong, Shanghai, and the UK... being English educated, I couldn't really read the ones in Chinese or other languages... But I liked looking at the pictures... and there was one that especially caught my eye."

Comic entitled "A Critic's Dream" by Chan Hock Chye, 1984, unpublished. A 4x5 grid of panels representing multiple critics' opinions of Charlie.

What do you think of Charlie Chan?
His art stood out right away.
The bold, confident, and expressive lines...
The superb balancing of darks and lights, of positive and negative space.
As a storyteller too, he is unsurpassed.
Such masterful pacing!
The perfect marriage of text and image.
How would you rate him amongst local comics artists?
Clearly, he would be at the very top.
Who else is there?
There are those who have achieved greater levels of financial success...
But when it comes to aesthetic achievements...
There is no equal.
And on the world stage?
I predict he will enter the canon, alongside the likes of Eisner, Herge and Tezuka.
Because in time
Great art will always be recognised
The cream always rises
To the top!

Charlie wakes up from his dream. "Oh, my! What a dream! I must have more delicious rarebit for my suppers!"

Inspired by Winsor McCay's newspaper comic strip "Dream of the Rarebit Fiend," in which strange and fantastical dreams would always be attributed to a meal of Welsh rarebit. Chan offers a glimpse into his own psyche and aspirations.

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Aquatic Lives by @suscipepe.bsky.social a genre-defying, life-affirming triptych of animal stories rendered in Reyes' heightened & poetic painterly style 🐠 I read this 2 weeks ago and today I'm still speechless! 🤯 Fresh, brave, and completely singular — this comic defined Shortbox 2024 for me. ♥️

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Peggy Piggybacks to Picnic by @azamraharjo.bsky.social a climate-anxious horror structured around children's nursery rhymes that delivered the SINGLE 😳 MOST 😰 EFFECTIVE 😱 JUMP SCARE 🤬 I've ever seen in comics — one that takes FULL advantage of the framing device & the digital medium. Lord god!!

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Here Be Monsters by @bonesbunns.bsky.social 1. No, it's not *a* Little Mermaid retelling, it's *the* Little Mermaid retelling 2. Yes, that was me CLAPPING and CHEERING all the way 3. Sometimes going with the happy ending takes the most courage — and Bones has courage in spades

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The Maker of Grave-Goods by @roseberrycomix.bsky.social a riveting, rhythmic künstlerroman // artist's story with a sci-fi heart 🚀 a masterclass in deft pacing; in 70 unhurried pages, Roseberry breathes life into a world that felt completely alien to me — and yet logical, lived-in, and TRUE ✨

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Moth to the Flame by @yllogique.bsky.social whose mixed media storytelling enthralled me in the intrigue of a Bridgerton-esque period drama that I COMPLETELY :) FORGOT :) that this was actually a gut-wrenching cosmic horror 🦋 ++ really great use of screentones in a way I can't articulate rn!

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Death Fiddles and We Dance by @jdebbiel.bsky.social — whose signature kaleido-curvy art style enables this ethereal solarpunk romance to move effortlessly between galactic-scale imagery and minuscule moments, between the epic and the tender 🪐 what a beautiful comic!

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The Shit Witch by Lis Xu bc the title had me cackling while browsing Shortbox, I worried I had set expectations too early— but I'm DELIGHTED to report that the comic COMPLETELY stands behind its title with PRIDE yes it's about a witch who shits, but also about the joy of just talking shit 💩

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yes!! and i was delighted to find she has an ongoing comic in this style called Aiya Corp Limited: jarchivist.hotglue.me

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Hometown by Renren Galeno a very Filipino horror on life after the death of a parent. Disturbing and spare, not a single word or penstroke wasted 🪦 a spiritual successor to Galeno's Sa Wala, which examines Filipino gambling and machismo culture through a similarly spooky lens

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Aglæca by German artist Mohnfisch a dark yet surprisingly uplifting homage // subversion of Beauty and the Beast 🏰 by way of a wonderfully moody, sketchy, charcoal Quentin-Blake-drawing-Roald-Dahl art style!

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Offering by Hong Kong artist Jocelin Kee a meditation on space, memory, and the guilt of modernization — of seeing gleaming infrastructures built on top of sites of culture and antiquity all that in the guise of a short story about being deskmates with a god 👌

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Here's the most updated version of the earlier graph showing how many spam texts I get per day. The red line is Jul 22, when Pres. Marcos banned POGOs. For a month after, no spam whatsoever. (And then, because cockroaches never die, I got 2 spam texts on Aug 21.) 20/23

Graph showing number of spam texts per day from Sep 2022 to Sep 2024. Since July 30, the POGO ban, most days have no spam at all.

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As time went on, I started to morbidly enjoy seeing what was "trending" in the spam world: - "Happy Xmas lucky draws" during the holidays - 8/8 "Shopee sales" - my favorite: fake SIM registration links 😂😂 11/23

Spam texts that look like SIM registration alerts. One reads "Unionbank final warning: This is a notice regarding the new SIM registration law. Please update your number at <URL> to continue receiving OTP"

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... but days before the deadline, less than half of all SIMs had been registered, so the deadline was extended to July 30. Did it work? The graph below shows many spam texts I got on each day, starting Sep 28, 2022. July 30 is the black dotted line. You tell me... 10/23

A graph showing count of spam messages per day from Oct 2022 to Feb 2024. Spam texts continued to arrive well past the July 30 deadline.

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...and was concerned that we were creating a new database linking not just people's names, but also birthdays, government ID numbers, and home addresses to their mobile numbers --- a very valuable target for cybercriminals indeed! simreg.smart.com.ph/campaignPage

What information are needed for me to register my SIM?
Subscribers are required to provide and submit the following information for them to register their SIM: Mobile number with serial number; full name; date of birth; complete address; sex; upload a valid government-issued ID; a liveness check or live selfie photo

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Online scams and cybercrime continued to increase. Even with crime "increasingly migrating to 3rd party platforms such as WhatsApp," these platforms usually still require mobile numbers to make spam accounts in the first place. Compared to the 🇵🇭... 5/23 www.imda.gov.sg/how-we-can-h...

A graph from a Singapore Police report showing increase in total scam and cybercrime cases from 2019 to 2023. "Scams and cybercrime continue to be a key concern. From January to June 2023, the number of scam and cybercrime cases increased by 69.4% to 24,525 cases, compared to 14,481 cases in the same period in 2022."

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