Photo-Komiks

In the early 1970s, a little after Tony Velasquez' retirement as GASI general manager, GASI experimented with a new type of komiks which would remove illustrators from komiks production: the Photo-Komiks.

Actually, even before Velasquez' retirement, he was already being pressured to launch the Photokomiks, but Velasquez relentlessly refused, since he knew that it would be unfair to illustrators, who, after all, contributed greatly to the success of the komiks industry.

At this time, komiks pages had already been dominated with showbiz gossips and pictures of movie stars, and the new GASI management thought it was a brilliant idea to put movie stars in the komiks panels as well. As it turned out, the Photokomiks was a brilliant flop, and the komiks industry, already in a bad shape, plunged deeper into its lowest depths ever.

The regular komiks readers shunned the Photokomiks, and the komikbooks which featured it-Kislap and Teens Weekly-went virtually unsold on the newsstands. After only a few issues, the Photokomiks was immediately discontinued.

Nothwithstanding Teny Henson's nice photography, I think Filipinos were not yet ready to replace their favorite illustrators with photographs.

I still believe Filipinos would not trade a Coching or Redondo art with a picture of their favorite movie stars. At least that's what quickly comes to the mind of a komiks art fanatic. Like me...