GB: You sound like you speak from experience.
Gerry A.: Yes I do, actually. I've had my share of those. I mean, you wouldn't think it, looking at me.  I write about bad people in this story. If I write about all kinds of people here for the sake of equality, for the sake of being "politically correct", then it would divert from the story I am trying to tell, and that is BAD storytelling.

GB: Ok, let's talk about Erap.
Gerry A. What about him?
GB: Well, you just killed him in issue #6!
Gerry A.: Who says it's Erap? I wasn't writing about him. I was writing about a corrupt mayor. No names were named, nor were any insinuations made. I admit that there is a certain likeness, but it really didn't occur to me when I was drawing it. Erap was no longer a mayor when I did it, and he wasn't even president. Still, who da thunk it huh? Erap becoming President. I didn't vote for him. I voted for Fred Lim. I was seriously disappointed when he lost and Erap won. But for better and for worse, Erap is president for the next 6 years. I was willing to give him a chance, I was willing to see what he could do. But MAN, he has screwed up totally at every opportunity.  And there is no indication that things are going to get better. I wish he would just go, but basing on what he has been saying, he has no intention of going anywhere. I'm for impeachment. People are so pissed off that they're in a lynching mood. But that's just wrong. I hope they do manage to get him out, but I hope they do it legally.

GB: Hope you don't take this the wrong way, man, but what happened to that issue anyway? You art for the whole of #6 really sucked!
Gerry A.:  Gah! Yeah, a number of other people pointed that out to me as well, including Budjette Tan, Alamat Comics Editor In Chief. At that time, late 95 or so, I was already working as an inker for Whilce Portacio. I was inking Roy Martinez on Grifter #10 I think, for Wildstorm. I had so little free time so whenever I had some, I worked furiously on Wasted. And the rush shows, unfortunately. At this time I was also writing and drawing Dead Heart #1, which I took a lot more time on drawing.

GB: Really? What made you work on it, when you were not finished doing Wasted?
Gerry A. I don't know. All I remember was this burning need to do it while I still had very strong emotional connection with the story. And to be honest, at this time, all I wanted was to finish Wasted quickly. It had gone on for far too long already. I do realize that the art was really bad for #6. I briefly entertained the thought of actually redrawing it, specially for the PULP serialization, but I changed my mind.

GB: My favorite part of Wasted is definitely issue #4. Strangely enough, nobody got killed! Tell me how that issue came about.
Gerry A.: The story for that issue was something unexpected for me. If you remember the next issue blurb for #3, you would see that I was planning to write about a corrupt cop. But right before I actually started doing #4, I was invited to a cousin's wedding. At my state of mind then, I wasn't too hot about weddings, about people living happily ever after, or of love altogether.  Plus, I realized that at the end of #3, I  felt that I had spent enough time giving vent to those things that annoy me and there was this fear that I would be stuck doing this thing for a while. I mean, you can't imagine how many requests I had to have this person or that person killed in Wasted!  I needed to put some direction to the story.  So that's how that issue came about. To be honest, that was my favorite issue too! This is where you really get to see why Eric is doing what he is doing.  He's unhappy, and he just wants to share it with other people. he.he.   I was sick for a couple of days after finishing it.

GB: You seem to get sick a lot working on this comic.
Gerry A.: I actually did. As I mentioned somewhere in the book, doing each issue was so emotionally exhausting that I just literally collapse mentally and physically. And it's not because of the art either. I do recognize the fact that Wasted isn't very good art wise overall. My focus was on the story. I had invested so much emotion to writing it that I was literally "wasted" after every issue. Perhaps that's another reason why it took so long to finish it.
 

Artwork for LAKAN

GB: The art. When I first saw #1, I thought the art sucked. Specially after I had seen you do intricately detailed art for Lakan. it grew on me though.  You said that your focus on Wasted was the story. What made you choose to draw it in that kind of style? Gerry A.: Well, there's your answer right there. I wanted a style that was very simple because I wanted to be able to draw it really quickly. I wanted to write that story and finish it right away. Drawing comics really takes a long time. On average, it takes around a day to finish a fully illustrated page. If it took me that long to finish each issue of Wasted, I might not have been able to finish it at all because a lot of the emotional steam that drove me to do it would have been used up in drawing, when I needed it for writing. GB: What happened to LAKAN by the way? Gerry A: It's a shame that it never came out. It was being written, planned and drawn long before any Alamat title ever came out. This was in 1992. Whilce Portacio came home and did a mini convention. Since there was an art contest, it attracted a lot of artists