Tan says that it really was good timing that he was hanging out with comic geeks. He and his friends always hid their comics under the table during recess, and nothing’s really changed except only now, he’s allowed to read them anywhere. The X-Men issues 188 and 189 given by a friend were the first comic books Tan laid his eyes on. With these paranormal experiences in his childhood, add to these some crazy stories from relatives and yayas from the provinces, Tan grew up with an open eye for the weird. “Really?, they’re Catholic?” Tan scoffs. The manggagamot also instructed them to offer food to the duwendes and leave their door open so that they could pray to the Virgin Mary statue in their garden.

The manggagamot told them that there were two opposing tribes of duwendes fighting inside their house – the white tribe, which brings good luck when it wins, and the black tribe, which brings otherwise. He takes a sip of water and retells how his mother called to their house a manggagamot who performed a tawas (a ritual wherein the form of molten wax dropped on a basin full of water is interpreted) to get to the bottom of the weird things happening in the house. Luck, tawas, and duwende warsīeside the window overlooking the nightlife of BGC, Tan reminisces about his childhood in Quezon City where his family lived in the middle of a war – a duwende war. Read on to know how Tan got an eye for the weird and became one of the biggest writers in the Philippine comic book industry. “Ad man by day, comic book man by night,” says comic book writer Budjette Tan’s Instagram account, and this is no easy job for any man. In a part of Taguig City, beside the hustle and bustle of High Street where night-dwellers bask in the company of fellow night-dwellers and the sheer hope of a good time, is a quaint building where a hero quietly watches over the city while sipping from a Batman cup.

Wasted by gerry alanguilan