[ greyweed ] -- and the bored shall inherit the earth...

I just finished reading the fifth issue- titled "A Little Known Murder in Studio 4 -of Alamat Comic's Trese. And it's definitely another winner for the Tan-Baldisimo team-up.

Previous issues have dealt with malevolent characters directly from our local mythologies, this one is no different. Alexandra Trese investigates the case of a young movie star- Heather Evangelista -at the brink of stardom who is found murdered at the studio where she was filming her latest movie. Snooping around the vicinity for evidence, Captain Guerrero and Trese comes across chocnut (!) and what appears to a child's shirt with some sort of reddish powder around it. Also, her Best Actress award is missing.

Trese seeks advice from the Nuno (now living under a manhole in Balete Drive, as showed in Trese #1: At the Instersection of Balete and 13th Street) who tastes the chocnut found in the crime scene and finds that it's overflowing with pain and despair. Finally, our detective decides to give ageing ex-actress Nova Aurora a visit- the movie Heather was making was about her, after all, and they have been meeting for some time now so that Heather could study her.

Trese and the Kambal must fight their way past an angered group of Laman Lupas to finally get to the truth. It's a fun yet simple journey that is mixes 70s crime storytelling with local ancient folklore; remarkable forensics tweaked to the mystical side.

Although my favorites are still Our Secret Constellation and Rules of the Race), the 5th ish still definitely packs a punch and grabs you by the neck for the trip. At this very moment, the Trese books are not yet available at ComicQuest and I'm not pretty sure when they'll be back, but I will definitely wait so I could buy all issues.

And at P30.00 an ish, there's seriously no reason why you shouldn't buy yourselves copies.