Edgar Tadeo

Some people were asking how I broke in comic industry… It was around 1996 when I stopped college, I was a computer science student in Central Colleges of the Philippines. I was planning to shift course from Comp-Sci to Fine Arts…but it was summer when my friend asked me to visit this small summer art class in Quezon City called Comics & Concepts. The instructors there saw my artwork and he was impressed and he asked me if I tried submitting work to Whilce Portacio (I wasn’t a student in Comics & Concepts by the way.). So I asked if he can help me out and we went to Whilce’s secretary which was Lani Perez to submit my sample drawings. I submitted some of my best (at the time) artworks (pinups and sequencial arts) to Whilce. I didn’t have a phone so I just left my neighbor’s phone number incase they’ll call and leave message. So after couple of months I got a call while having dinner. I was so happy and ran home quickly after the call. My Mom was pregnant that month and the nex day when I was about to go, early morning my Mom woke me up because she was about to have her baby. After taking care of Mom I went to Whilce’s condo to do some tests. I was a bit nervous when he gave me his sample pencils to ink on. So he gave me some tools like quills, pens, and brushes and I started inking. So after second try of his sample pencils, I finally got what he wanted. Whilce liked it. Then I got home and waited for weeks of so, then I got another call. One of Whilce’s assistant Day Cabuhat called me and she said I passed and they wanted me to assist Gerry Alanguilan some inking in Grifter #10, Roy Allan Martines was doing the pencils and Whilce was doing the layouts and some inking. I had a great week assisting Gerry and Roy. So later on we became close friends. :) Few months later Leinil Francis Yu did some samples of pencils and Whilce liked it…and he thought Nil and I would be a great team together so Whilce sent Nil’s sample when he attended San Diego Comic Con…I think it was around 1996 or ’97. So later on we were asked to do some pinups and sample pages. After that we got the title Wolverine #113. We were excited and nervous on the first issue, and we were worried to get late. It was really hard coz for the first time we were slow coz we wanted our first book to be a kick-ass. Luckily, it was OK. So we got the regular series. After I inked over Nil’s pencils, I thought of quitting for a while. Because we were getting more late. I asked Nil to send the pages directly to Marvel so it won’t get delayed incase he’s a day late. So I felt sad coz I left my friend on the air and we were supposed to be a great team together…so I apologized to Nil. Anyways…I didn’t have work so I was asked by Whilce again to join his new studio called Avalon Studios, with co-founder Brian Haberlin (not sure tho. :P ). Whilce thought I’d do some inking under Gabriel Rearte‘s pencils. We did a limited series of Jinn and it went well…but unfortunately it didn’t had a regular. While inking Jinn, I was also asked to ink Wicked #6 and X-Force #106. I couldn’t believe myself I was inking three books all at the same time, and I didn’t even have any ink assistant. I survived though. Later after finishing last issue of Jinn, a month after that, I was asked by Whilce and Brian to do a tryout of computer coloring. Good thing I was upgrading my computer with the help of my friend. So I accepted their offer and I colored issues of Iron Man, which was issue #142.

Source : auteur