The art and agony of coming of age in Randy Valiente’s ‘Sining Killing’
In Randy Valiente’s graphic novel “Sining Killing,” twentysomething Karl Lenin is a server at a small restaurant. Young and magnificently unprepared for the long littleness of life, he’s just one of the many blue collar workers in the sprawl of Manila.
His mother’s been dead for a decade and he’s the breadwinner, the only one who supports his alcoholic, invalid father—allegedly shot on the knee by a soldier long ago.
One day, he realizes that a mysterious neighbor has moved in next door. There are strange noises at night coming from that house, sounding like things breaking, and sometimes very loud music.
When Karl finds the stranger sketching illustrations at his open door, curiosity drives him to approach the man, whose name is Tao, and gets to know him through what are at first simple and harmless conversations about art and life.
“The artist’s world is an extreme one,” says the mysterious Tao, as if he were a guru dropping a Zen maxim. “When you’re poor, you’re really at rock bottom. But when you hit it big, money is made hand over fist.”
After some time, revelations and confessions come pouring out from Tao that turn the young man’s world upside down. Karl doesn’t know it yet, but everything he knows will soon be in shambles. Out of that chaos emerges hope of escape from his condition of soul-destroying, gut-aching poverty. What price must he pay for such a game-changer to be within his grasp?
From an ordinary slice-of-life jumping point, Valiente’s book transforms into a coming of age for a young man, a sharp reproach of government and military corruption, and a denunciation of the worst excesses of ideological warfare by the local Communist movement.
Plotted by a delicate hand, the story unfolds with suspense and a good clip of pace. It’s also quite a heavy read. Serious subjects are tackled like knives thrown at a revolving circus target. First it’s just one blade, then a barrage of knives are suddenly in the attack.
Complex tale
“There are things in this life that we have to approach with kindness, and compassion, and humanity,” wrote Valiente, about trying to present all the sides of this complex tale of a young man realizing the world was a much stranger, crueler place than he first thought.
Valiente confessed that this story about a young man with complicated circumstances he could barely comprehend was already in his archives for more than 10 years. Then the pandemic hit and he finally had enough time to lay it out the way he saw fit.
“As you know, comic books are considered to be ‘low,’ if not literature for geeks and weirdos,” wrote Valiente.
“So I have this idea to challenge and make the content heavy and get away from the usual komiks that I’m doing for almost 30 years… The challenge was how to piece all the concepts together. I needed time for it to be ready.”
Valiente’s been a stalwart of the komiks scene since the 1990s. His writings and illustrations have become the stuff of international publications and US titles like “The Twilight Zone,” “Vampirella,” and “Army of Darkness.”
He received The Great Filipino Graphic Novel award at Comicon Asia 2018 for his comic “Wala Nang Tao Sa Maynila” and a Gawad Tanglaw Award in 2019 for his persistent promotion of Filipino komiks. “Sining Killing” was also on prominent display at this year’s Philippine International Comics Festival.
“I came from the old komiks publications. The Aliwan and Hiwaga komiks from the past.”
For the most part Valiente’s art is studied, elegant, and highly concise on “Sining.” Yet at the drop of a hat, he can also fill a page with maximalist details that can make the eye bleed. Like the gorgeous cover.
Structured and streamlined
The comics is structured and streamlined, the paneling make the story proceed as if it was a storyboard for a film. Everything is done in monochrome and an aquamarine shade of green—denoting focus points of interest or joy for the young protagonist. In fact, it argues itself into a movie adaptation with excellent first-person characterization of Karl Lenin, his taciturn drunkard father, and the mysterious Tao.
“There was a consideration for this to be adaptable into film,” agreed Valiente. “So in my mind, the material should be film-ready.”
On the pages, it feels like Valiente had quite a few personal demons to exorcise, too.
“I was exposed to the [Communist] movement when I was in college, that’s why this book is personal for me,” he said.
In the dedication page of “Sining Killing” are the names of Valiente’s friends and classmates from the 1990s. All of them die in the mountains serving as activists and cadres, he claimed.
“Almost 30 years have passed and I still haven’t resolved in my head what happened to them,” he said. “It hurt… We were all just kids then. When I came across the book “To Suffer Thy Comrades” by Robert Garcia, naluha ako (I shed a tear). I felt it. Ganito tayo kababaw for an ideology. Ganito tayo kahayup.”
That ending may be provocative—enough to foster heated debate depending on your political leaning—but to me it was entirely apt, a result of masterful characterization.
Red-tagged
Reception to the comics was a surprise as well when it was released by Komiket Inc in 2023, with some opinions downright hateful. Valiente was red-tagged because of the book.
“Because of that, a lot of people became interested in the book!” he said. “I wasn’t expecting it. When my publisher posted some few pages of the book, it was the scene about NPAs in the mountains. The book is almost 250 pages, by the way, so that portion is not even 10 pages of the entire book, but those pages triggered the pro-government and accused me as a rebel, even a devil. They tagged PNP, NTF-ELCAC on the post. It was like they were reporting me: look out for this author, pakawala ito ng mga left!”
All highly ironic since the story contained a direct and clearly scathing repudiation of the sins of the local Communist movement.
“You know what’s funny? During the book launch, some of my friends who are really left-leaning, dropped by and bought the book without knowing that I am not praising the ideology,” said Valiente. “In fact, guguluhin ko ang pinaniniwalaan ninyo (I will mess with your beliefs). That time, I was thinking, don’t buy it, it’s a trap for you, guys!
He maintains he wasn’t affected by the vile comments though. Especially since the people who were inciting hate obviously hadn’t read the comic book at all. How could he be supporting the very people he was criticizing?
What also inspired Valiente to finish the story was the political climate during the Duterte administration’s pandemic months. Everyone was sitting at home in quarantine isolation, divided, and taking out their frustrations on social media.
Explained Valiente, “You know, people are crazy with their politics [that time] so I thought, sige guluhin pa natin lalo! What I mean by ‘guluhin pa natin lalo’ is to give people the different sides of the coins—both the government and the movement—na yung pinaniniwalaan or pinagtatanggol nila ay hindi (that what they believe in or what they fight for is not) ‘absolute truth’. It reflects on the characters in the story—there are contradictions, there are biases.”
Tying Karl Lenin and the rest of the characters, their crimes and sins into an elegant gestalt of literary storytelling, hardboiled noir, and a sprawling essay on the hazards of political zealotry is nothing short of a comics treat that only a veteran komikero like Valiente could pull off.
What he wanted at the core of it all was “to dive into art, to tell the story of an artist and his struggles and realizations.” It was the whole reason “Sining” was on the title.
“As a constant traveler…I realized na ang existence ng tao ay hindi puwedeng ilagay sa kahon (that a person’s existence cannot be put in a box),” Valiente said.
Follow Randy Valiente at https://randyvaliente.carrd.co/. “Sining Killing” is available at Komiket https://www.komiket.com/
