Tomorrow Will Be Awesome

Hello everyone! As requested, I’ve released my comic digitally on both Gumroad and Itch.io– if this short little gay comic about insecurities over drinks interests you, please check it out!

Gumroad: https://agentomato.gumroad.com/l/juicecomic

The Five Senses of Desensitization

A revamp of a comic I made two years ago. With recent events, I figured it’s an appropriate time to post this.

Contributor applications are now open! Applications will remain open until March 21st 2022, at 11PM EST, so make sure to sign up while you still can!

If interested, follow the link below to sign up!

and you were a velvet one

My second piece for @hwsrazzledazzle, about the dissolution of Czechoslovakia and independence of Slovakia and Czechia respectively. Below the cut is the footnote I have featured in the anthology, as well as some more personal thoughts!

Upon the implementation of Martial Law on September 23rd, 1972 by the authoritarian Ferdinand Marcos, one of its first casualties was the press—Letter of Instruction No. 1, which had been signed a day before, authorized the military takeover of all privately owned newspapers, magazines, radio, and television facilities under the justification of preventing any anti-government propaganda. Thousands of journalists and other media personnel were arrested and thrown into jail without due process, and what could be published had to go through rigorous censorship through channels that only Marcos would allow.

This did not mean, however, that alternative news outlets that published more subversive, critical pieces did not exist. One of the most notable newspapers in circulation was WE Forum, established in 1977 by Jose Burgos Jr. WE Forum became the outlet for hard-hitting news coverage regarding the Marcos administration, one of its most notable pieces being the article debunking Marcos’s wartime medals in the November 1982 issue. It was due to this article that WE Forum was raided by the military and shut down, but that didn’t stop Burgos from establishing the paper Malaya a year later to continue the outlet of critical journalism the Philippines sorely needed.

WE Forum was pivotal as a prelude to the alternative press—or, as Marcos called it, the “Mosquito Press”—that emerged in the 1980s and helped contribute to the eventual end of the Marcos regime.

For more information regarding WE Forum’s history, I highly suggest the documentary Portraits of Mosquito Press directed by one of Burgos’s own children, JL Burgos.

Hey there! I’ve got two pretty important announcements to make in regards to the fanzine, so without further ado here they are:

1) The non-profit charity has finally been decided! All proceeds from purchase of the fanzine once it’s released will be donated to the Alliance for the Great Lakes, a non-profit environmental organization dedicated to the conservation and protection of the Great Lakes, as well as educating and empowering communities to help preserve these natural bodies of water shared between the US and Canada.

2) Due to the recent controversy and discourse around Gumroad, I’ve decided to instead move to hosting the fanzine on Itch.io! Itch.io hosts more than just games on their platform, so I figured it’d be a good place to host the fanzine for the meantime.

Hello everyone! Below is a link to an interest check for a non-profit charity fanzine about the familial bond of HWS America and HWS Canada, from the series Hetalia World Stars! If you’d like to see this project happen, please check out the link below, and it would be wonderful if you could reblog it and share as well!

After all, the Filipino is an identity constructed out of colonialism– so when it comes to redefining what the Filipino is, due to the numerous perspectives of people within the archipelago, of course there will be contention regarding different approaches. Much as already been stated about why the Philippines should not be represented by a single individual in precolonial times, or even come from a precolonial polity at all. Generally, my approach is in line some of these arguments; but I want to invite room for different perspectives to coexist. That’s what our interpretations in Hetalia come down to– perspective, and when it comes to defining the history and origin of certain personifications, that makes all the difference.

Once again, I’m opening up commissions! I only have five slots open, so if you’d like some art from me then secure your slot as soon as possible!

For further questions and inquiries, please email or DM me.