Last Seen After Midnight

I was first introduced to the Trese series by a colleague of mine at the university I'm teaching at, who chose to discuss the comics as part of her class. She encouraged me to read them, and I was immediately hooked. I love mythology and folktales and horror, especially local ones. And I also love Mike Mignola's Hellboy, so falling in love with Trese really wasn't so hard.

But to call Trese a “Filipino Hellboy” would be doing a great disservice to its creator and writer, Budjette Tan, and its artist, KaJo Baldisimo. For one, the stories told and the way those stories are told are simply not in Mignola's style, or anyone else's for that matter. As I mentioned in another review, Tan's storytelling is very Filipino. There is a cadence, a rhythm, in the way he tells the stories that is rather unique to the way people tell stories in the Philippines, particularly the scary ones. And Baldisimo's art, while somewhat similar to Mignola's in that he also relies on chiaroscuro to create a specific look for Trese, his art is more fluid, less blocky, with fine, delicate lines adding and highlighting movement. To reiterate something I mentioned in the other review, Baldisimo's art looks like the city of Manila under the light of streetlamps, where those streetlamps exist. It's a very unique look, and Baldisimo captures it perfectly.

Three collections come before Last Seen After Midnight: Murder at Balete Drive, which introduced the world to Alexandra Trese, the Kambal, and the Manila they inhabit; Unreported Murders, which expanded on what was presented in Murders at Balete Drive and created set-up for what promised to be a collection full of revelations regarding the Kambal and Alexandra herself; and then Mass Murders, which did indeed prove to be very revelatory, explaining the Kambal's origins, as well as how Alexandra became Manila's newest protector.

With such excellent stories already told, it went without saying that readers wanted to know what happened next. Mass Murders raised many questions: where is Alexandra's grandfather? What happened to her brothers? Will any of them be showing up anytime soon? Is the Talagbusao gone for good or will he be making a comeback? Those were just some of the questions raised after Mass Murders, and many - or rather, I - was hoping I would get some answers.

Last Seen After Midnight turned out to be something else entirely, more like Murder at Balete Drive: a collection of cases with no connection to each other or to any greater story arc - or at least, a previously written story arc. While this is rather disappointing, the stories themselves are well-told, and fascinating all on their own.

Part of the reason why these stories are so interesting is that Tan draws upon Filipino pop culture and history - both past and recent - to form a basis for his stories, blending them with the eerie, shadowy creatures from myth and folklore for a world that is easy to get lost in. For instance, in the first story, “Cadena de Amor,” Tan references incidents as reported in the news, as well as the ancient, older folklore about engkantos, sets it in a familiar place (in this case, Luneta Park and the Bay area), and throws in a popular song by the Eraserheads as the cherry on top of all that goodness. This is classic Trese at its finest, and it's a very strong way to open the collection.

The next story, “A Private Collection,” did not prove as strong as the first one, mostly because it's central antagonist is not exactly a figure that's common in Filipino pop culture or folklore. The concept of a hunter who hunts for the next thrill, and is willing to do anything and everything to get that thrill, isn't one that's firmly embedded yet in the folkloric and pop culture memory of Filipinos. Sure, it's been featured often enough in TV and movies for it to be recognizable (the movie Predators will certainly ring more than a few bells), but it's not as interesting as the other Trese stories, which draw primarily from Philippine events, history, and folklore, and resorting only minimally to Western concepts or folklore. Had there been a similar kind of figure in the news, then perhaps it would have been more interesting, more relevant, but so far there has been no such thing reported. Despite that, however, the hunter in "A Private Collection" is interesting because he is not the typical sort of opponent Alexandra encounters. Alexandra fights ghouls, ghosts, demons, engkanto and aswang, but rarely does she fight humans - and if she does, usually those humans are controlled by something supernatural, as was the case in the Talagbusao storyline in Mass Murders. For Alexandra to fight a fully-human, non-supernaturally-aided opponent is extremely intriguing, and is hopefully something Tan and Baldisimo will keep in mind, for a better story later on.

Fortunately, the third story, “Wanted: Bedspacer,” returns to more familiar ground: the concept of the bangungot, known to science as Sudden Unexpected Death Syndrome, or SUNDS for short. Just like in “Cadena de Amor” and other Trese stories, the locations are familiar (especially to college students, who form a large bulk of the readership of Trese), and almost everybody knows what bangungot is. This is all well and good, and very familiar, but the way Tan has conceptualized the bangungot is a clear echo of Asian horror movies - something which might raise a few eyebrows. The idea that a bangungot is a spirit that clings to the brokenhearted (not necessarily brokenhearted from love), and essentially kills them by clinging to them and squeezing their heart until it stops beating, seems a bit like the Thai movie Shutter. Traditionally it is the batibat that causes bangungot by sitting on its victims, and Alexandra does mention this in the story, but then draws a distinction between the batibat and the bangungot.

Despite this similarity, however, “Wanted: Bedspacer” might be viewed as a more direct continuation of the events in Mass Murders than the other three stories in the collection. When curing the inadvertent victims of the bangungot, Alexandra chants a song she learned "while up in the balete tree" - a direct reference to the events of her rite-of-passage in Mass Murders. Also, the final discussion she has with the doctor who was treating the patients, a discussion about letting go and moving on, seems to be a reference back to the events in Mass Murders where Alexandra's brothers, save one, all disappeared into the underworld to continue the fight there, while her own father died protecting the balete tree she was in. If only for this link, any similarities to Thai horror movies might be forgiven.

But the intertextuality of Trese, already made clear in each and every story up until this point, reaches a peak with the last story in Last Seen After Midnight, titled “The Fight of the Year.” This story is unique in that it is set outside of Manila, in General Santos City - and the location should already give the reader a very good idea as to who the main character (aside from Alexandra, of course) is in this story. While the idea of selling your soul to the devil is nothing new, and has already been used in previous Trese stories, what sets "The Fight of the Year" apart from all the rest is its reference to Manny Pacquiao, playing on the commonly-held belief that, like heroes in epics and folktales, whenever he fights, he is doing something good for the nation - the reason why he is called the "Kamao ng Bayan," the "Fist of the Nation." With every fight he wins, Pacquiao saves his country - and his equivalent in "The Fight of the Year" does just that on a more literal level.

The level of intertextuality in “The Fight of the Year” - and indeed, in the Trese series as a whole - is the main reason why this series is so entertaining. Teasing out the references, reading the implied threads of meaning, is all part of the fun - and all part of why this series is as good as it is. To understand Trese, one has to understand, at least in part, the Philippines as it is today, but one also has to understand the Philippines as it was in the past. The reader can only see and appreciate the hidden threads of thought and reference in Tan's stories and Baldisimo's delicate black and white images if they are familiar with the Philippines - Manila, more specifically - as it was then, and now. And if the reader does not, then they are missing something great and wonderful indeed.