Pugad Baboy Archives

Article taken from PMJunior Homepage

Pol Medina Jr. : It's A Swine's World
by Cecilia Quiambao
Originally appeared in Preferences Magazine : June 1993

The world stands on its head in a village called Pugad Baboy: the family dog doles out words of wisdom and practical advice to the love-lorn letter writers. He quaffs beer, trades acerbic barbs, and talks politics with his master - a mammoth, tub of lard of a chef whose favourite dish is dog stew.

In the four short years of its existence, the mostly plump characters that populate the bottom section of the Philippine Daily Inquirer newspaper's cartoons page skyrocketed to fame and have made the comic strip the most popular home-grown one ever.

Hundreds of thousands of Filipinos, a notably funny race, make it a point to begin their day with a peek at the latest riotous escapades of the strip's characters, whom many consider as trenchant sketches of the national character.

There is the chef Adagulfo Sungcal, he with the arid pate and leviathan gut obscenely spilling over boxing shorts as he presides over the affairs of his household. He calls his wife Honey-cured, for really, she looks like one whole piece of ham.

The teenage daughter weighs 250 pounds, but is heroically named Tiny. Her suitor is called Bab, a refugee from the Woodstock Era with his bell-bottoms, open vest and peace medallion.

Then there is Brosia, Dagul's wisecracking maid whose day never seems to be complete if she doesn't get under somebody's skin -- preferably Dagul's.

Ideas percolate as Dagul toasts the spirits with Tomas Sabaybunot, a tough-talking, straight-shooting air force sargeant who is henpecked by a dominating wife. Like many Filipinos, they buy their drink on credit at the Chinese corner store. When the place was hit by a fire, they puposely delayed calling the firemen until after the blaze had razed their IOU sheets.

Then there is Polgas himself, the mongrel in many guises who transcends his canine existence by behaving like a human, and sometimes as a superman (superdog?) character.

The humour is gritty and fresh, and speaks the language of the streets. It's part satire, poking fun at politicians and policemen, and draws canny sketches of the common Filipino foibles and misadventures. Its popularity is attributed to its enduring capacity to capture the Filipino psyche.

The comic strip sets down a "lively sense of the ridiculous oddball type of lunacy that tears down all the pretensions, stupidities, and illusions of the powers that be, and with a warm sense of humanity that restores some semblance of sanity" to the beleaguered country, said Hilarion Henares Jr, a satirist who recently quits his job to become President Fidel Ramos' adviser on national affairs.

But who is the wacky cartoonist who is tickling our funnybone?

If it hadn't been for the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's "human waves" across the desert and Saddam Hussein's Scud missles, Pol medina Jr wouldn't have taken his current course, and the world would have had one good cartoonist less. Strange but true, but the comic strip traced its origins to the Iran-Iraq War.

PM Jr, as the strip is signed, was an architect down on his luck, having spent or misspent practically all his earnings from a two-year stint as an overseas contract worker in northern Iraq, when in 1988 he pulled out from among his files a sheaf of line drawing and doodles executed during the long and lonely nights and other periods of his exile and decided, what the heck, to try out his luck on the Manila Bulletin cartoon page.

By a quirky chance of luck, he got lost in the maze called Intramuros, the walled confines of the old manila and when he tried to ask for directions, a bystander gave him the wrong one. He ended up on the portals of the rival Philippine Daily Inquirer, whose chief artist took one look at the drawings and couldn't let go of them. The rest is history.

"Fat runs through our family," says Medina, explaining why most of his characters are in the pin