In an age where algorithms decide what we see, what we like, and what we think about ourselves, returning to our myths isn’t just cultural—it’s a form of resistance.
Drawn from the Islands, the anthology I helped co-edit with the Samahang Kartunista ng Pilipinas (SKP) gathers some of the finest Filipino cartoonists to revisit, reimagine, and redraw Philippine myths with humor, irreverence, and tenderness.
It is a book, yes—but it is also a gesture. A reaching out. A reclaiming of story and spirit. So we asked ourselves: What would happen if cartoonists drew the gods? If our myths were filtered not through colonial archives but through the playful, biting, and deeply human lens of Filipino cartoonists?
Because myth is not escapism—it is confrontation. It offers continuity in a world that feels increasingly disjointed. Our folk narratives are repositories of grief, desire, fear, and power. By telling them, and by telling them again through the visual force of comics, we ground ourselves in stories that have survived colonization, modernization, and commodification.
Mythology does not belong to the past. It is how we carry truths too big for headlines or data points. It allows us to discuss injustice, love, the supernatural, and the sacred in ways that are both intimate and expansive.
To the parents and teachers who might encounter this book, I offer this: These stories are not sanitized. They don’t come with lessons printed in bold. But they are teaching texts—and I mean that in the richest sense. They teach imagination. They teach reckoning. They teach us that myth is not frozen in time but always in negotiation with the now. Use these stories to talk to your children not just about gods and monsters, but about agency, gender, violence, care, and belief. Let them ask why Malakas is always loud, or why Maria Makiling chooses to remain in the mountains. Let them draw their own myths.
In a time of multiplying identities online—where avatars, usernames, and curated profiles threaten to pull us in every direction—it is all the more urgent to return to our stories. Not to trap ourselves in old forms, but to stay grounded. These myths carry our contradictions, our questions, and our grit. They remind us that we’ve always been many things at once: gentle and defiant, joyful and grieving, ordinary and enchanted. Knowing this, and drawing from this, gives us the strength to meet the future with clarity, complexity, and courage.
Drawn from the Islands is not a definitive account of our folklore. It is a sketch. A signal fire. A reminder that our stories are not finished—and that those stories can, and must, be drawn by us. So pick up the book. Pass it around. Draw something in the margins. That, too, is sacred.
For copies, please visit https://www.facebook.com/samahangkartunistaPH.
You may reach Chong Ardivilla at kartunistatonto@gmail.com or chonggo.bsky.social.
