# Nonoy Marcelo

Severino “Nonoy” Santos Marcelo CA (January 22, 1939 – October 22, 2002) was a Filipino cartoonist, animator and filmmaker. He is best known for creating comic strips that lampooned lifestyles in Filipino youths including Plain Folks and Tisoy, the latter which was adapted into two films and a television series as a screenwriter. He is also an animation and sound director in films. He was joined by National Media Production Center to evade censorship from politics at large, learned that the government blacklisted fellow cartoonists.
Publicly viewed as a political cartoonist for his irreverent, biting political satires and social commentaries in cartoons provided on various Philippine issues that assumed to criticize the repressive regime infusing his projects with signature subversive humor in the midst of martial law administered by the Philippines' tenth president Ferdinand Marcos Sr., led to his subject of the character Ikabod Bubwit (literally "Ikabod the Small Rodent" or "Ikabod the Small Mouse" in Tagalog) in the comic strip Ikabod, until the president was overthrown by People Power Revolution in 1986.
Aside from political cartoons, he frequently tasked by the government in invitation to join the New Society Movement as a filmmaker to direct propaganda films for the Marcos administration, including Da Real Makoy (1977) and Tadhana (1978), at the time which collaborated with close friend and producing partner Imee Marcos.
Upon his legacy, Marcelo is widely noted one of the greatest and most influential figures in the Philippines, particularly his pioneering recognition of modern cartooning and first foray into animation, the latter admired by students for his influence on animation which led to become future animators creating their original and outsourcing works in the Philippine animation industry starting in the 1980s.

## Early life

Marcelo was born in Malabon, Metro Manila, Philippines on January 22, 1939, to David Marcelo, a war hero and an assistant dean of Far Eastern University (FEU) and Rita Santos, an FEU English professor. He was a prodigy.

## Career
### Before Marcos's administration (1948–1966)
#### Likmuan ng mga Pighati sa Paligid-ligid

At the age of nine, he had a published book to his credit, a comic book entitled Likmuan ng mga Pighati sa Paligid-ligid (English: Seat of Sorrows All Around). He once admitted in an interview with the Diliman Review, drawing was already in his veins since he was a child.

#### Plain Folks

He created the comic strips Plain Folks, which appeared in the Daily Mirror during the early 1960s, and Tisoy in 1963 for the Manila Times, which tells about the lifestyle of young Filipinos. His main character, Tisoy (slang for "mestizo"), and cast members such as Aling Otik, Maribubut, Caligula, Tatang, Tikyo and Kinse, soon became established in Philippine pop culture.

#### Tisoy

Marcelo developed Tisoy in 1963, which lampooned Filipino lifestyles to youths. His characters Aling Otik, her grandson Kinse and his cat Myawok, among others, romped through the comic strip. Alfredo Roces, a former dean of FEU, was his model for the main character.

### Marcos's administration (1966–1986)
#### Tisoy adaptations

Tisoy adapted three times during the Marcos administration: a 1968 television miniseries and its 1969 television film featuring Jimmy Morato and Pilar Pilapil, and a 1977 theatrical film directed by Ishmael Bernal, starring Christopher de Leon and Charo Santos.

#### Da Real Makoy

A 1977 half-hour propaganda documentary film about the former president and dictator Ferdinand Marcos during a trip to Ilocos.

#### Ikabod

Ikabod ran from the late 1970s to 2002. It was a satirical strip that re-cast the Philippines as a nation called Dagalandia. The strip humorously depicted the socio-political woes of ordinary Filipinos, as represented by the tailless Everymouse hero, Ikabod - who became as iconic in his own way as that other popular cartoon rodent, Mickey Mouse. Marcelo often used the strip to caricature political figures from Ferdinand Marcos and Corazon Aquino to Joseph Estrada and Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, re-imagining them as mice.

#### Tadhana

He was collaborated again with Imee to participate the project adapted from Ferdinand's novel into an 54-minute adult animated film titled Tadhana (1978), which originally conceived as a television pilot due to a lengthy process.

#### The Adventures of Lam-Ang and Annie Batungbakal

In 1979, The Adventures of Lam-Ang was produced a one-hour animated feature based on Biag ni Lam-ang, a Philippine epic poem. At the same year, Marcelo served as animation director for a seven-minute opening scene in Nora Aunor's Annie Batungbakal.

### After Marcos's administration (1986–2000)
#### Mighty Pens

He was featured in Time for its cover story Mighty Pens, published on September 12, 1988, for his bold commentaries on the current socio-political state of the country through his comic strips, making him the only Asian cartoonist.

#### Bayaning 3rd World

In 1999, Marcelo made his final work as an animator in Noli and Fili parts of the film. According to film director Mike De Leon, the original script of the film was meant to include several animation sequences from Marcelo, which he did studies but the animation proved to be an impractical idea.

## Personal life
### Education

Marcelo graduated the Institute of Arts and Sciences from FEU with an AB English degree. He took a course in advance animation from the School of Visual Arts in New York in 1971 and a filmmaking course from the New School for Social Research in 1972, soon became a cartoonist in an American magazine cover The Advocate at the same year.
Marcelo was appointed the title of Senior Lecturer in Film Animation at the UP College of Fine Arts by a chairwoman of Department of Visual Communication, Margarita Revilla Simpliciano, during the deanship of National Artist Napoleon V. Abueva.

### Death

Nonoy Marcelo died at the Chinese General Hospital in Manila on October 22, 2002, at the age of 63. He died of sepsis due to complications from his diabetes. He was survived by his five children: Dario, Sarita, Ninoy, Rajah and Jinoy; Dario was an editor and co-author of a memoir Huling Ptyk: Da Art of Nonoy Marcelo about his late father's history, collaborated with his father's friend Pandy Aviado.

## Filmography
### Films

| Year | Title | Director | Writer | Animator | Editor | Notes |
| 1969 | Tisoy | No | Yes | No | No | |
| 1977 | Da Real Makoy | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Documentary film; directorial debut |
| 1977 | Tisoy! | No | Yes | No | No | |
| 1978 | Tadhana | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| 1979 | Biag ni Lam-ang | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| 1979 | Annie Batungbakal | No | No | Yes | No | |
| 2000 | Bayaning 3rd World | No | No | Yes | No | Noli / Fili |

### Television series

| Year | Title | Director | Writer | Animator | Notes | Ref. |
| 1968 | Tisoy | No | Yes | No | | |
| 1980s | Poptech Series | Yes | Yes | Yes | 4 episodes | |

## Legacy

After the People Power Revolution, Marcelo was given the Catholic Mass Media Award for the Best Comic Strip in 1986 for Ikabod and in 1988 for both Ikabod and Aling Otik. In 1998, Marcelo received the Cultural Center of the Philippines' Centennial Artist Award, the only cartoonist to be honored; cited him by CCP for excellence in the visual arts and for helping define national identity by taking a stand on political and social issues.
In 2002, the Patnubay Award for Visual Arts given by the City of Manila. Eighteen years after his death, he has been nominated for the Order of the National Artist in the Visual Arts category.
In 2008, Marcelo was posthumously honored the Lifetime Achievement Award by members of Animahenasyon, an annual animation film festival in the Philippines.