other filipino comic writers artists and graphic designers that have kept their roots in capsulated in their work with the power of social media we are now hearing of more stories and work like the picture artist bobby who recently announced an upcoming short for pixar animation studios to feature two filipino american characters and a comic book with a filipino american superhero who uses a scream of the national sport and martial art of the philippines also known as are nice i rachelle ocampo and joined with my co host jenny fear and christina pastore to dive deeper into this comic book world first we have ramon hill who is a comic book writer and a publisher of story arc media and founder and organizer of diversity comic con ramon has written for dynamite entertainment bleeding cool the beat source point press we are also happy to have miss maria paz bardot a graphic designer art director book publisher film director producer and fashion designer maria is a creative professional who has worked in multiple industries such as comics like d c comics and marvel which i feel like that we've heard of before publishing like penguin and quark show computer gaming roleplaying and advertising she made an award winning documentary film about comic book legend geoffrey catherine jones called better things and is currently developing her own travel fashion line called form and function so my first question is why do you think representation is important in your field well i think representation is important in any field but more so with comic books because for decades now there have been many filipinos who have been creators primarily artists but they are behind the scenes but they're not on the pages so you have filipinos who are really good filipinos advocate of diversity especially asian american awareness or in america where to be an american issues and so there versity comic con was a way for me to combine my love for comic books and my personal mission of raising awareness for the for the asian american community just to follow through on rochelle's question so we are there are lots of us behind the scenes so why is there no filipino kong no filipino superhero well other than dark not because she's the only one people who create are not really the ones who are are credited on the forefront and it's been an ongoing thing well primarily another reason could be to a lot of the creators i mean it's not just a job for them it's also work so they probably it's not just work it's something that they love to do so they really don't push hard as well for credits or sometimes even money which is probably not a good thing but i think lately because of the successes so far a lot of different movies books and all that stuff i think the trend now is for people to be a lot more credit and be presented by you know but by their works and all compensated  internet anybody could publish anything so back then you know the publishers had control over what content one web went out nowadays anybody who can draw and write can publish a comic book and so i think that's why you see more diversity you know i think it's also because of the audience then don't worry that much immigrants who would watch i guess they various characters as opposed to now that you know the u s has become like more diverse than it was thirty years ago and also because of you know online opportunities people hear more about different cultures and different countries and different stories so after a while when you get tired of the same old same old then you're like oh wow there's actually comic books and comic the and we the clear right then and then we are now we have of course because i read the comics are actually very big and asia but i think the philippines has a little bit of a head start because of the american occupation so a lot of comic books how does that influence comic books were a very very cheap way to entertain the soldiers during world war two you know that's when captain america came out in support those were the babies that's when we first got really popular and they were easy way to entertain the soldiers you have to bring a project or anything just send them these magazines these comic books and i think that filtered down to the filipinos and sourced since then the philippines has a very thriving comic book industry from ever since world war two the rest of asia have also have it but i think it really really got its start in the philippines i remember growing up a long time ago as a kid they had just comics philippines and not necessarily superhero i mean why did it take this long so you're saying that it started from the war how did it how did we even get it in the film or do you mean they hear you're saying that like did did the war bring as i think american soldiers exposed to philippine filipinos to the american comic books and you know the philippines are very good at adapting things whether it's music or t v or film or comic books and we started making our own and the entire entire generations of a really really good comic book artist so good that d c comics back in the seventy's went to the philippines and the crew to the bunch of artists and brought them to new york to work here for less money  yeah but these guys really made a mark on the american comic book industry and unfortunately people outside of comics don't really aren't really aware of them as much i should be like that and it's a whole new world for me to understand this comic book i guess universe well talk about opportunity maria how did you get into d c what was your history with them i actually used to work in playing games that's usually where i worked a lot in that industry and i used to go to all these comic book conventions because i would hire artists illustrators for projects so i would go to you crack which was in london i would go to san diego comic con back then which was very it was still the big you know now is still the biggest comic book convention and along the way i would meet other people from other company yes and i met people from d c and one of them was karen berger and so every time i go to a convention she was there especially in london so we sort of became kind of a convention hello hi friends and then i want point i went to new york and i said you know i said ok this is probably the place that i would want to move to and so i sent my resume to karen berger at these economics and she she hired me she didn't hire me but she hired she told somebody else in the she recommended me  characters and then they have rules they create a world they have characters and then they live this character us a game and it's yes it's like computer games but in paper and reading the day the actually i've always because our i'm on the art and so i don't really write but i've always done art since i was a child and i'm always i guess i could consider myself very lucky that everything i do if it's making things and doing anything creative i am always doing that so i've always loved everything i've done like you know i mean very lucky i'm in an industry that's very creative driven and i didn't very big i would think the very big collection it was a new product called underground for me for games back in chicago a while back so it's there it's their biggest product it's their first big major role playing game back then so i art directed that one so i would think that was it but you know it's it's very underground went underground or at the time i did this because i also had a design company at the time and all my outsourcing was i was doing to the philippines so much of it was intentional but it was just natural for me to to hire people in the pretty good we have some good reviews on amazon i've had several i've had several people you know if you go to my website you can see all these press reviews all these links from from from you know people in the why do we need superheroes what is the body of the nation for that white well actually i think superheroes mostly people young people are into superheroes and i think it is the superheroes  what you're proud of proud of but i don't know what i did was i don't know if i'm if there's anything that i'm actually can say for me it's like all work you know it's like that one it's like you start with the one you're lot of different things see you know so i i mean you try to start something new you give it the best you can like when i was doing it's a role playing game so what was how did you get to be your did so that other companies you know there's another company that hired me to do a comic book for them like a former what is it about maria oh i mean anything that makes you think that this is the line right now because i guess i jumped into another industry i love doing things i've never done before yes but people are after you've done one thing you know it's all the same process it's all the same process you have your deadlines of your production you have to your to do list you have to hire people who will help you who are good at what they do and then you have your launch date your final deadline and you have your budget and you have all that so you know you just have to actually do it  idea it starts with a lot of there's a lot of media saying otherwise rob a miss you how to make that the million idea millions of ideas turn into one because that's the one you need for it to become a working for the different publishers and i would travel like crazy and i needed certain things that i couldn't find anywhere to make my travel efficient and this is one of so i said well design my own travel line you know i figured if nobody will buy it at least i have all the samples and i can use them in my travels so one of the is a i call it the accent bag this is like sort of like you're to go out have fun bags sometimes when you travel you usually bring the practical bags  you can it becomes like you can fold it and throw it in your suitcase and not worry about the leather or to occupy too much space or to eat too much because sometimes we bring so many bags you know that usually it's deci nothing right there i just wanted to put all that efficient things that i've collected while i was traveling and i said ok i want to do my own version off and then put it in one place so people who need help when they travel and they want to travel light a lot of the things i'm very passionate about which is education telling stories and diversity how many students attend every city we had about four hundred people and we had about forty seven  and what their budgets are because there's a lot of small startup companies in comics that don't have the budget but would love the work so when there are bigger companies in my film i've met i interviewed one of the bigger supposedly and he said something about i mean at his caliber and he's standing as a well known artist a big company was still trying to you know stiff him over bunch of stuff and this is also a very known what's one piece of advice that you'd like to share for future comic writers or up and coming artists that are trying to just start in general right well coming from a productive duction background and being the art director who hires artist i would say that they have you know i mean i don't do that anymore i don't x no no but but deadlines ok if i have to say anything i don't really you know talent it matters a lot but as an art director and someone who has to put stuff together i would rather work with someone who gets their work to me on time because that's very important and that's a