The Apex Book of World SF 2 (16 page)

"Just believe." I
put down the glass on the table and fled to the hallway.

I pressed my hands
to my face. I knew that my father had wanted to talk about the future before he
died. Was it good news or bad? I realised his message didn't matter. What I see
in the future doesn't matter—for we are not unlike each other, the old lady and
I. I know only a little bit more, and still I asked her to believe me. And what
about me? Do I believe myself and what I have seen?

Or do I decide not
to believe, and only believe what I wish for myself?

I clenched my teeth
and hoped I had a little of my heart left still, for it has to feel. If it
breaks in the process, it still has to feel.

I know the future.
But I resist it.

I turned away from
my past smelling of cinnamon, and while my clogs rapped loudly and quickly on
the floor as I fled towards my room, my future melted at last and, salty and
streaming, it overflowed.

 

The Secret Origin of Spin-Man
Andrew Drilon
 
Andrew Drilon is a Filipino
comics creator, writer, illustrator and editor. He was a finalist for the 2008
Philippines' Free Press Literary Award and is a recipient of the Philippine
Graphic/Fiction Award. He is best known for his experimental webcomic,
Kare-Kare
Komiks
, and is a regular cartoonist for
The Philippine Star
newspaper.

 

So you don't know Spin-Man?
Five-nine, lantern-jawed, starry-eyed Spin-Man? Spin-Man the Caped Cosmische,
Spin-Man the Super-Cop, Spin-Man the Meta? Muscle-bound, brown-skinned, wrapped
from beefy neck to toe in blue-and-gold spandex? Don't worry about it. It's
okay. I don't blame you. Spin-Man was one of those forgotten heroes of the Dark
Age of Comics, just before the Image Era of big guns and chains and Spawn and
bloodstained alleys. The champion of the Multiversal Continuum, balls-out
science fantasy, following in the footsteps of Jim Starlin and Silver Surfer
and Jack "The King" Kirby—Spin-Man was the last good Space Hero of the 90s and
my number one favourite super-person. I'll explain.

 

Okay, this may seem
unrelated, but hear me out first because it's important. When I was nine, my
little brother and I went to the bargain bins of CATS as often as we could.
After being picked up from school by our assiduous driver, Manong Eddie, who
had been instructed to take no detours but had a soft spot for us boys; after
an intermittent car ride, owing to the long stretch of traffic circling the
vast perimeter of our private school; after a half-eaten merienda of adobo
sandwich and Zesto Orange sent by our grandmother, God rest her soul; James and
I would take it in turns (sometimes called out in unison) to remind our driver:
"The main entrance of Virra Mall! We'll only be thirty minutes! Mang Eddie,
pleeeese!" Then the drive past Uni-Mart, around the corner facing McDonalds, as
we busied ourselves counting the money in our pockets, at times almost two
hundred pesos when pooled together, until finally my grandfather's Altis slowed
outside the mall's main entrance, and we'd thrust the car doors open and hop
out, promising Manong Edie that we'd be waiting there at exactly 4.45, no
later, cross our excited little hearts.

Running in, ignoring
the cinema schedule by the entrance where five or six people always stood
deliberating what to watch, we would brush past strangers and other boys in
school uniform, our trajectories plotted through the long air-conditioned
corridors of the mall to avoid the various temptations that lined its
capitalist halls (including the arcade) until we arrived at the shop of our
hearts' desires. Its windows, covered with painted posters of masked men and
women, sheltered under a primary-coloured electric display that announced its
most hallowed name: CATS. (Comics And Then Some.)

For a moment, we
would ogle at the comics on the New Arrivals rack, committing their covers to
memory and silently promising to acquire them when we had more money, after
which we would go directly to the bargain bins; James starting on the leftmost
end while I worked on the opposite, thumbing our way through rows and rows of
titles as if in a marathon, flip flip flip, until we met at the middle, ready
to sort through two piles of bargain comics. We would debate on 30-peso copies
of X-Men, Avengers, Batman and numerous other titles, eliminating possible
purchases by creating an agreed-upon hierarchy based first upon the title's
character, then artist, then writer. On rare occasions when we came to a
disagreement, we would split our money down the middle and dictate our own
purchases, though most of the time, our tastes were in complete accord.

By the end of our
ritual, a stack of five or six carefully-considered comics were rung up at the
till and wrapped in the customary CATS plastic bag, complete with a crude
drawing of Wolverine printed under its wonderful, acronymic logo. Manong Eddie
would be waiting for us outside, as patient as ever despite the extra quarter
of an hour of waiting, resulting in a drive home that transpired in complete
silence, as James and I lost ourselves to the outrageous adventures of these
fictional men and women.

James and I agreed:
the world's greatest comic book artist was Jim Lee. I also liked Erik Larsen on
Spider-Man; but his replacement, Mark Bagley, couldn't draw Carnage with the
appropriate menace, in my view. At an early age, I had become acutely aware of
the people who worked on these comics, and in my wildest dreams I imagined
myself drawing the X-Men under the pen of my favourite writer, Chris Claremont.
I spent hours scrutinising these comics, copying my favourite poses, memorising
the costumes and learning the vagaries of super-hero anatomy; the intricacies
of foreshortening and the convolutions of idealised musculature wrapped in
spandex. James struggled to keep up with me, but in the end resigned himself to
colouring my illustrations in deference to my burgeoning drawing ability. I
suppose our tastes were still far from refined, and if you had told us back
then that Neil Gaiman was far superior to Scott Lobdell, we would have argued
you out of the room. As a nine-year-old who could draw Superman with a modicum
of accuracy, I had pronounced myself an expert on these multicoloured worlds,
and James was more than willing to share in my obsession.

James, in turn,
proclaimed himself to be the real-world counterpart of Daredevil. He would sit
in the corner of our room facing a crumbling dartboard, one hand over his eyes,
a trained dart in the other, declaring: "I will hit a bull's eye using only my
ears!" He rarely made the centre of the board, but when he did, it was a cause
for celebration, and we'd jump around the room in a mock-battle between
Daredevil and the vampire, Morbius. For a while, I myself was intent on
developing a keen psychic talent à la Professor X, but that ambition fell by
the wayside when I failed to read my classmate's mind during a critical science
exam. Fortunately, I had gained some popularity at school for my art skills,
and in the end it was this ability that I cherished as my one and only
superpower.

It was 1991, the
year of the Pinatubo eruption, when James and I were invited to stay over at our
Lolo Doming's house in Los Baňos to finally meet our long-lost uncle: Tito
Fermin. According to my mother, he had lived in the States all our lives,
hiding as an illegal immigrant, and it was only that year, when he had married
into an American citizenship, that he was able to visit the Philippines without
fear of recrimination. Both James and I were eager to meet our uncle, having
heard that he was a comic book artist; one who actually made a living conjuring
up the four-colour worlds we were so fond of.

It was with some
disappointment that we learnt the specifics of his occupation: Tito Fermin was
a cartoonist for neither Marvel nor DC, but for a small independent company
known as Echo Comics. They produced a grand total of four titles a month, one
of which was a black-and-white superhero comic that, Tito Fermin said proudly,
he both pencilled and inked. We were slightly more impressed when he showed us
samples of his work, but though his art had the romantic quality of classic
Tagalog Komiks, it lacked the inflated modern dynamism that we had grown
accustomed to.

Regardless of his
artistic prowess, Tito Fermin was a striking character. Long, shaggy black hair
spilled down from his head and his face was rounded out by a full beard which,
in retrospect, made him look like a Filipino Alan Moore. His eyes had the hint
of a Chinese slant; he spoke in a low, sonorous voice that commanded attention
and, as with our grandfather (who we'd nicknamed Santa Claus) you could rarely
tell if he was smiling under that beard.

Tito Fermin spent
most of our first dinner talking with Lolo Doming, the details of which I can
no longer clearly recall; only the slurred American accent that possessed my
uncle in the midst of his soliloquies on life abroad and the inscrutable grunts
that my grandfather contributed to the discussion. Rain hammered through the
trees outside, splashing against the windows and conversation, the warm yellow
light of the chandelier washing over the lazy Susan that pivoted food around
the dinner table. James and I contented ourselves with fielding questions from
Lola Lita, who we had insisted on calling Lolita in spite of her good-natured
refusals. We asked her what superheroes were popular in her time and she shook
her head as she replied, "My heroes were movie stars, ballet dancers and
singers—Judy Garland, Irina Baronova and Frank Sinatra. Those three are my
favourites." And then she crooned a few lines from the song she always sang
when she put us to bed, the song I will always remember her for:

 

No, there's nothing
to be ashamed of if you stub your toe on the moon

 

Though it may be a
blow to your pride, you're a hero because, well, you tried

So don't give up too
soon, if you stub your toe on the moon

 

Perhaps, as a
consequence, as we were falling asleep that night, James confessed that he had
grown tired of Daredevil. "I want to be Silver Surfer now," he said. We
contemplated the means by which James could acquire cosmic power and a silver
board capable of space flight. I suggested that he find a way to contact
Galactus while he mused on the existence of cosmic rays beyond our atmosphere,
and after a while we simply lay in our beds for the thousandth night next to
each other, our thoughts racing to find the path to James's goal until,
finally, sleep overtook us.

 

Due to its distance
from the city, Los Baňos was a place that we rarely visited, and when we
did it gave off the impression of being otherworldly, like a dream that never
happened: bosky mountains stretching to the horizon, tiny three-floor shopping malls,
the subtle incline on all the roads, sari-sari stores, the musky-sweet smell of
Lolo Doming's cigars, trips to the video rental store, a rough-painted cement
ceiling, flower-patterned bed sheets, non-cable television, wood-panelled
walls, kare-kare stew, marble floors and, best of all, discount bookstores with
five-to-ten-peso comics.

It was there, in the
Book sale beside Carmela Barbershop, that Tito Fermin began to participate in
our love for comics. He was leaving for the States the next morning and had
been meaning to pick up a few Filipino Komiks to take with him. James and I
were simply excited to find more back issues of Ghost Rider and Wild Dog. The
bargain bins were smaller, only three rows, but we commenced with our ritual
anyway, thumbing through back issues, flip flip flip, until we each had our
stack of comics to choose from. Tito Fermin surprised us by taking both piles
and paying for them, more than 30 comics each and, as we walked out of the
store suffused with happiness and gratitude, I silently calculated that he'd
spent over 500 pesos on comics, which was a huge amount at the time, at least
to me.

And then lunch at
Nilda's Restaurant, where we ate mushroom burgers while Tito Fermin quizzed us
on our love of superheroes. A lengthy discourse ensued on the extended line-up
of the X-Men, the convolutions of Peter Parker's life, the rogues gallery of
Batman, how Hulk was too boring, how the Legion of Superheroes had too many
members, how the Fantastic Four had too few, how Superman and Captain America
were outdated; and more besides. He shared stories of his meetings with various
comics' creators during conventions; of the long argument on the art of
cartooning that he'd had with Gary Groth; the drink he had shared with
long-time Spider-Man editor Tom Brevoort; and the time he had managed to
procure a sketch of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman from Jim Lee.

The last one fired
me up. There we were, sitting in a restaurant in the Philippines eating
mushroom burgers—and we were right next to a man who had actually shaken hands
with Jim Lee. Jim Lee! The phenomenal artist's artist, the person who'd
redesigned all the X-Men costumes, the comic creator that I dreamt of one day
becoming. Tito Fermin laughed at my ebullition and promised that the next time
he met Jim Lee, he would ask for a signed sketch and post it to me.

As we made our way
back to Lolo Doming's house, our uncle began to relate the difficulties he'd
been having with his latest project. Echo Comics was intent on adding another
superhero title to their monthly line-up, and they were looking to Tito Fermin
to deliver it. This was his concept: a superhero that policed the multiversal
continuum, spinning from dimension to dimension in an eternal struggle with the
Forces of Chaos.

"Spin-Man!" James
interrupted.

Tito Fermin stopped
and gave my brother a profound look. "Spin-Man?"

"Spin-Man. I don't
know. I just thought of it. Do you have a name already?"

"Spin-Man," my uncle
said, enunciating the syllables slowly, as if he were tasting them. "Spin-Man
is a good name. I was thinking of calling him Omni-Man, but Spin-Man sounds
much better. Would you mind if I called him that?"