“Bakit ba ang hihilig nating kabataan sa mga kuwento nila Batman at Voltes V, na gawa naman ng mga banyaga? Mahalin naman natin ang sariling atin, sina Darna, Lastikman at Captain Barbell!”

-A Quote from Some Reproduced Essay, from Some Random Grade School Textbook Whose Name I Cannot Be Bothered to Even Try to Remember (Though I Can Guarantee That It’s Reproduced Here Relatively Accurately)

I apologize for the somewhat vague and extremely lengthy quote source. See, that bit of brilliant child-propaganda has been stuck in my head since I first read it in bad old Xavier Grade School way back when dinosaurs still roamed the earth.

Every time I think of that 32-word sack of shit, I get pissed off. Severely.

The first time around, I was pissed because, well, come on man, this school book was attempting to talk shit about two of the greatest heroes of my young life. The Dark Knight and the Ultraelectromagnetic Machine were not characters you wanted to mess with, if you wanted to stay on the good side of Mr. Kenneth G. Yu, Professional Grade School Smartass.

I knew who Darna, Lastikman and Captain Barbell were, but I didn’t really care. All I knew was that some arse was trying to use them to one-up the two fictional beings I worshipped more than GOD, all in the name of trying teach kids to be nationalistic.

Today, I am still a proud Batman fan, and an extremely unapologetic Voltes V fan. (Back when I was a kid, I nearly kicked some other kid’s ass because he reviewed Voltes V, and claimed it was “shallow, and derivative.” If any of you try to tell me the same today? It will no longer be “nearly.” Trust me. I. Will. Kick. Your. Ass.)

But when I come back to thinking about that quote, I get pissed for a different reason. I understand, now, that the essay itself was just some sad, lame textbook writer trying to call attention to his crass attempt to trick children into loving the sariling atin, by putting down two famous foreign characters.

Normally, I can forgive that. Folks gotta eat, y’know? Sure, this poor dude was making his money by selling crappy arguments to parents who couldn’t say “no,” and children who didn’t know any better, but what the hell, right? I prefer to leave the creation of anti-shitty-schoolbook-tirades  to the true textbook crusaders.

The more I think about it, though, the more that quote bothers me. See, it’s in the logic of the thing.

First of all, what exactly is wrong about enjoying a character that does not have origins in your native culture? Good fictional characters are effective, in part, because of their ability to tell stories that are universally appealing; hating a foreign character that has thus ingrained itself in your country’s consciousness just because he’s so effective is nothing but straight-up jealousy.

If it’s such a sin to love hearing stories about Batman, just because your own country didn’t cook him up, then I’m afraid that many, many people around the world are guilty as all hell, and have concretized their guilt in the squadrillions of dollars spent on the character over the years. I would argue, in fact, that both the Batman character and the stories written around him have a number of aspects that are extremely resonant with the Philippine culture and condition. (These include the fight against societal corruption, and the triumph of the oppressed but cunning underdog, but I’ll probably save further discussion on this for another day.)

Voltes V is an even more interesting matter. In his case, I’d argue that Voltes V has become more of a Philippine idea than a Japanese one. The Voltes V episodes that Filipinos grew up with was redubbed into English and our native language, from the original Japanese. When we hear the characters of the story speak in our head, we hear them speak in either Filipino, or English. When we refer to the humanoid characters by name, we say the Filipinized “Steve, Big Bert, Little John, Mark and Jamie,” and not the original “Kenichi, Daijiro, Hiyoshi, Ippei, and Megumi.” We love the story because it talks to us about our freedom, our fight against invasion and oppression.

We love the story even though the Japanese don’t. Funnily enough, the Philippines is one of the only places where Voltes V is still remembered in the popular consciousness. In Japan, he’s long-forgotten, buried under a bajillion metric tons other of giant-robots-beating-the-metal-crap-out-of-one-another. The only thing non-Filipino about the character, in my mind, is where he was originally thought up. The rest is pretty much ours.

But the real killer comes in the second sentence of the quote, when Sir Shitty-Textbook-Writer starts name-dropping Darna, Lastikman and Captain Barbell. These are his arguments for the sariling atin. By his logic, these characters are what we should be reading about, instead of badasses like Batman and Voltes V.

This is highly, and I say, even painfully counterintuitive.

Let’s start with the least painful. Darna is, quite obviously, is a Filipino Wonder Woman pastiche. You have the flowing black hair, the star motif, the golden headdress, and the impractically skimpy costume. You also have the powers of flight, super-strength, speed, and relative invulnerability. Some would even argue that you have the vaguely fetish/bondage overtones, what with both Wonder Woman and Darna getting tied up by villains in so many of their stories (the difference, of course, is that Wonder Woman grew out of this somewhat; if modern Darna covers are to be believed, Darna has grown into this, and not the other way around). But I say that Darna is pastiche and not shameless freaking rip-off because at least some of the character mechanics are different. For one thing, there’s that weird stone she has to swallow. For another, there’s the lack of background in Greek mythology, replaced by vaguely Superman-like references to aliens and other such fluff. For another, Darna seems to have none of the heavy-handed feminist message written into the original Wonder Woman character.

So, OK, maybe Darna is not so bad. Maybe Darna, we can let slide.

The other two, however, are a different story.

So, Lastikman. Here, I do certainly call shameless freaking ripoff. In fact, had the internet existed at the time of Lastikman’s creation, Mars Ravelo may very well have been slapped with a rather large copyright infringement case by our friends over at DC. If they actually managed to give enough of a damn, anyway.

Dude, seriously. Lastikman. Add a P. Change the “k” to a “c”.

OH HAI there American-made DC comics hero who also happens to have stretchy powers, goggles, and an annoyingly comedic attitude. To explain further would be to risk having this post degenerate into a messy, useless litany of expletives, so I’ll just stop right here. And move on to the next sad motherfucker on the list.

Captain Barbell. He’s a small, thin lampayatot dude who lifts a magic barbell, which turns him into a half-naked, circus performer-lookin’ dude with super-strength, flight and invulnerability. He also needs to hold on to the barbell while superheroing apparently.

Now, concept-wise, Captain Barbell is a little harder to trace to the original American hero he was mercilessly ripped off from. Super-strength, flight and invulnerability started, of course, with the original superhero, Superman. Since then, however, nearly everyone and his dog gets to have some level of strength, flight and invulnerability, as long as they exist in a superhero comic. Most heroes in such world presumably wish that they don’t get strength, flight and invulnerability when they jump into that stewing vat of chemicals, or take that weird green-glowy serum, or irradiate a pet so that they can have it bite them, if only to avoid inevitable comparisons to the Big Blue Boy Scout. So, our half-naked “sariling atin” hero gets off free on that count.

The need to use a magical artifact to transform, and to hold on to that artifact nearly constantly, as both power-source and weapon may draw comparisons to the Marvel character Thor, but I’m not sure that this is intentional.

No, this is what I’m relatively sure is intentional: let’s play the letter-switchy game again.

Captain Barbell. Change the first “B” to an M. Change the second “b” to a v. Drop the last “l.”

For those of you who are not familiar with the character, he’s the DC character who wears red and yellow, smiles a lot, and yells SHAZAM! to transform.

“Transform from what?,” you ask, expecting the worst.

From a small, scrawny, little kid.

At least this Captain Marvel doesn’t fight crime bare-chested.

Does the transition from “Marvel” to “Barbell” sound like it’s gone beyond shameless ripoff, and directly into shamelessly weak parody? The name “Captain Barbell” belongs in an issue of Mad Magazine, not in a children’s textbook.

Now, I almost want to apologize to Mars Ravelo. I, of course, don’t know the guy, but I’m sure he was just a normal dude, trying to make something that Filipinos could enjoy when he came up with the three characters discussed here. And, to be fair, I’ll say that, sure, he made people happy. He told them stories they liked. He tried to teach kids that we need heroes, and that everyone needs to break out and just kick some bad-guy ass once in a while. Fair enough.

But who I really wanna tear apart here is Sir Shitty-Textbook.

“Children shouldn’t love what is made by other countries. Children should love Philippine-made things. Even if said Philippine-made things are actually shameless copies of things made by other countries. This is the way to become nationalistic.”

That is the kind of back-asswards logic you are trucking.

That is the kind of blatant, unforgivable bullshit you are feeding to our children.