--ITUTULOY!?
We really hate to do this to you, but yes, this is as far Arnold and I agreed to go with our Darna story. I thought it was just a fun idea to play around with, an idea that I've been thinking about since 1994. In fact, page 1 of this story was drawn in 1994. I drew a page 2, discarded and forgot about it, until the time came I thought it would be fun to revive it.
Arnold Arre was the only person thought to work on this, having loved working with him on a more official Mars Ravelo related project, which was LASTIK-MAN, published by Mango Comics in 2004. If you want to read more of what Arnold and I have done, please do try and find a copy of that book.
As for DARNA LIVES, these 9 pages are all there is. Since we only did it for fun and not for profit, we would nevertheless feel bad to continue doing it without any official permission.
If any of the Ravelo family would stumble on to this site and see it, and if they like what they see, we humbly ask that we be given permission to continue doing it as yes, I have a complete story already written in my mind, and yes, Arnold is able and willing to continue working on this as well.
And if there are any potential publishers out there willing to publish this as a full color book, well, let's talk!
ITUTULOY? Fingers crossed!
-Gerry Alanguilan
March 2, 2011
San Pablo City
August 16, 2012 Update!
Thank you very much for the overwhelming response to this little fan made story that Arnold Arre and I have come up with. Ever since Lastik-man (2004), Arnold and I have really enjoyed working together, and I have to be honest and say that when he first turned in pages for this Darna story, tears were in my eyes. He's just incredible. He took my story and made it come alive in ways I could never even imagine.
Arnold and I do indeed plan on working further together, but unfortunately, it won't be on Darna.
As much as we loved working on this, Darna Lives was only really intended to go this far. It's purpose was for us to show what could be done on a character like Darna. Hopefully, this could inspire future Darna creators to be more open to other possibilities and other directions that this character can reach.
But for Arnold and I, we would much rather throw our efforts to creating new characters. We have already done so on our own, but together, I think we can create so much more.
PS.
For those interested, I did create a back story to "Darna Lives" that would explain why Narda finds herself in her current situation.
At some time in the past, something happens to Darna that corrupted her and made her turn bad. Power such as Darna's, used in malevolent ways, terrified the entire country. So powerful was she that no one could stand up against her. Superheroes such as Capt. Barbell, Lastik-man, Palos, Ipo-Ipo, Lagim, Bobot the Robot, and Flash Bomba, joined forces with supervillains like Zuma, Valentina, Tikbalang, Babaing Tuod and Babaing Impakta to defeat her.
In the end, they could not kill Darna. They chose to wipe Narda's memory of Darna instead, allowing her to live her life and grow old normally.
In the meantime, the absence of Darna forces many of the heroes, including some supervillains to do the job that Darna once did: to protect the innocent and fight crime. This is why in "Darna Lives", you can see Valentina saving a group of hostages, much to the confusion of Narda. Deep in the back of her mind, she knows the truth but she can't understand what it is.
Now that Darna is back, it strikes fear in the hearts of every superhero and supervillain in the country. Is she still bad? Is the old Darna back? Well....
