A stereotypical view of comics is that they're funny or they're about superheroes. And it's no surprise that superhero parody has become par for the course these days. Actually, Filipinos have been
producing lowbrow superhero fare for quite some time now. The power of mimicry runs deep in local popular culture. So the
Kapitan Tog mini-series by cartoonist
Freely Abrigo is in a number of ways, part of a long comic tradition. Written as a pantomime, there's nothing subtle about it. This is old-school
physical comedy that gets its jollies from the characters colliding into external objects and each other, resulting in varying degrees of pain and discomfort. The eponymous superhero's name "Tog" can be roughly translated as "head bump" (Think of it as an onomatopoeia for "thud"). That's really all the reader needs to know about him. The plot boils down to Kapitan Tog fighting a series of bad guys in a less than a competent manner. Much of the humor is contingent on how many different ways the hero manages to unnecessarily hurt himself within the span of twenty pages. Simply foiling a duo of bank robbers seems to take him halfway across the city, while smashing into every other signpost, building, and miscellaneous forms of public transportation. He's an oaf. But that's okay because he's an invulnerable oaf.
The art is what carries the comic. Abrigo is a cartoonist who honed his skills working on the
Kulas newspaper strip. He draws in a sleek bigfoot style that looks very suitable for animation. His characters all posses a high level of manic energy and a limited emotional range that alternates between the two poles of confusion and hysterical laughter. This is a very broad approach to cartoon expression: Eyes bulging out the owners' skulls, bulbous noses, massive underbites, huge lolling tongues, hunching and rotund bodies. It's all very well put together. I'm not sure how much time elapsed between issues one and two. But there does appear to be a slight artistic shift between them. The mini-comics themselves are handsomely packaged with nice production values, but their respective designs are inconsistent with each other.
Kapitan Tog is hardly essential reading. It's fluffy, carefree stuff that doesn't take itself seriously at all. But it's an entertaining enough diversion, if for no other reason than to watch Abrigo play around with the genre. With only one issue left in the series, it will be interesting to see if he can top himself and deliver a strong finish.
