Sunday, January 26, 2020

IKABOD Da Ninjah!

It's 2020.  Welcome to the Year of the Rat.


Created by the late cartoonist Nonoy Marcelo (January 22, 1939-October 22, 2002), Ikabod was a long-running comic strip that ran from 1978 until the author's passing in 2002.  A satire on Philippine society and politics, it was named for its main protagonist, Ikabod Bubwit ("Ikabod the Small Rat"), who lived in the nation of Dagalandia, a rodent-populated stand-in for the Philippines.  The strip was also spun-off into a comic book series published by Rat Race Publishing Corporation (D.C. Robert Publishing).  It initially ran from 1988 to 1990, followed by a second run from 2000 to 2002.

Just as other anthropomorphic comic strip characters had their own heroic alter egos, such as Garfield as the Caped Avenger or our very own Polgas as secret agent Dobermaxx, Ikabod would occasionally go into action as a swashbuckling ninja.  In this excerpt from issue 13 of the comic book, he takes on an army of rebel--or rather ratbel soldiers in a parody of the 1989 coup d'etat attempt.






You can purchase digital copies of the comic book series at the official website Ikabod.com.