Pugad Baboy (literally, "swine's nest" in Tagalog) is a comic strip created by Filipino cartoonist Apolonio "Pol" Medina, Jr. The strip is about a Manila community of mostly obese people – "fat as pigs" (baboy is Tagalog for pig).
It started appearing in the Philippine Daily Inquirer on May 18, 1988, and was published exclusively in the Inquirer line of newspapers (Broadsheet Inquirer and its free concise sister tabloid called Inquirer Libre and tabloids Bandera and Tumbok.) Its popularity has spawned numerous compilations, a live-action television series, and merchandise such as T-shirts and figurines.
The strip not only showcases domestic life; occasionally, it features adventure, drama, and pure spoof sequences. More often, the strip mirrors the general sentiment of the Filipino people on relevant topics such as corruption in the government as well as Filipino pop culture. In this respect, the strip has been likened to Garry Trudeau's Doonesbury.Quiambao, Cecilia (1993). "Pol Medina Jr. : It's A Swine's World." Originally appeared in Preferences Magazine Accessed on August 5, 2007 Sometimes, political satire is woven into some ordinary strips and adventure stories.
History
Medina conceived the strip while working under contract in Iraq in 1986.pugad baboy eight On May 18, 1988, he pitched his strips to the Philippine Daily Inquirer. His strip, named after a friend's piggery in Bulacan, was accepted on the spot.Pugad Baboy X
Medina originally spelled "Pugad-Baboy" with a hyphen in the strip itself, though not in the title.
For many years, the strip was exclusively a black-and-white daily. A full-color Sunday strip in the same paper debuted on October 3, 2004. The full-colored strips ended their run sometime in 2009. Before the tabloid Inquirer Libre debuted, the strip appeared exclusively in the Inquirer broadsheet.
In a strip published in September 2006, Medina commented on online life substituting for physical contact. He mentioned Wikipedia as one of the alternatives to library visits, the other being Google.
The Inquirer decided to discontinue carrying Pugad Baboy in its comics section beginning June 5, 2013, after a strip for the June 4 edition reportedly lambasted hypocrisy among Christians against homosexuals when certain sectarian schools condone such students among their ranks. The newspaper later clarified that the cartoonist was not actually fired and the strip would just be suspended from publication until an internal investigation had been carried out. However, Medina officially resigned from the paper on June 7, 2013. Online news website Rappler later hired him, with the strip being published as a webcomic on the site starting June 17, 2013. The new version offers readers alternative punchlines with the respective voting options.
Its final strip on Rappler, depicting a portal, appeared on March 1, 2018. The strip returned to print media with its first appearance in the Philippine Star and its sister publications, Pilipino Star Ngayon and Pang-Masa, on March 5, 2018.Post from Pilipino Star Ngayon Facebook page. March 5, 2018. Retrieved March 9, 2018.
Characters
The Sungcals
The Sungcal family reflects aspects of traditional and stereotypical families, with a housewife and an overseas contract worker as members, with a domestic helper to supplement. "Sungkal" is a Tagalog word for the term "digging a hole with a (pig's) snout".
Dagul (Adagulfo Sungcal Jr.), often referred to with the title Mang (Mister) – i.e. Mang Dagul – The patriarch of the family. He works as a chef in a five-star hotel where he specializes in unorthodox dishes. He is often shown at home, usually voicing out on the state of affairs in the Philippines. He is also highly xenophobic. Over the years, he studies different martial arts like karate, arnis and aikido (like Medina), and he also dabbles in tennis and golf. He calls his wife "Honeycured." "Dagul" is Filipino slang for someone or something big. At the end of The Returnee story arc, the Tangaras lend Dagul money so he can quit his job and start his own small restaurant in his house's front yard. Debbie (Debra Anne Sungcal) – The matriarch of the family, a loving traditional housewife and mother. Her recurring traits include a love for bargain shopping, indecision regarding actual purchases (sometimes on purpose), and complaining about decisions she lets Dagul make (much to Dagul's annoyance and regret). Also, she extremely highly dislikes any honest opinion Dagul gives her about her figure and/or clothes she wears or tries on – to the point of throwing him out of the house, despite her demanding honest opinions in the first place. She is also the constant victim of disgusting table conversations between her husband, Polgas and sometimes with Utoy. She calls her husband "Sweet Ham." Kules (Hercules Sungcal) – The eldest son, a building engineer in Saudi Arabia. When not working, he reads letters from pen pals, goes on blind dates (usually with funny consequences), hangs out with his friend 'Adre (short for compadre; see below), or thinks about the events back in the Philippines. Much like Kules, Medina was formerly a contract worker in Saudi Arabia. The origin of his name is often mistaken to be that of the legendary Greek hero of the same name, when in fact, he is named after the Lockheed C-130 Hercules aircraft. After marrying Mandana, Kules resigned from his overseas job and returned to Pugad Baboy for good, sporting longer hair. Tiny (Cristina Sungcal) – The teenage daughter. Her name is not only an obvious misnomer, but also a testament to her vanity and denial regarding her size. She asserts herself as sexy and repeatedly insists that her waistline is 28 inches (the last time this was true was when she was 9 or 10 years old). She does commit herself to diets that often end in failure. Her cooking leaves much to be desired by her family, and is sometimes inedible (in one strip, she naively uses papaya soap in place of the fruit). She studies in the University of Santo Tomas, where Medina graduated in 1983 with a degree in architecture. There, she takes up mass communication, a course the university does not actually offer. She is currently being courted by Brando, whose name is always mistaken by Bab and Dagul, and Tiny correcting them all the time. But in the beginning she allowed herself to be courted by Bab, and this happened only for a short period of time. She also is a cosplaying enthusiast. Utoy (Adagulfo Sungcal III) – The youngest son. Intelligent and musically talented (playing the saxophone), he behaves much like other children his age. Medina initially depicted him as a clueless infant, but he later aged him to about eight years old probably to give a child's insight on current events (eight is also the age of most of the child characters in this strip). Despite his youth, he claims Jolen as his girlfriend. In a "Boy Scout" story arc, Medina gives him an absurdly versatile Swiss Army Knife (apart from the usual tools, his knife comes equipped with such things as a refrigerator, a Nintendo video game console complete with television, and an all-terrain vehicle).Pugad Baboy 3 The tool returns in Pugad Baboy 25 with a mini-sniper rifle that fires foam pellets. Mandana (Mandana Ahmadi-Sungcal) – Kules' wife, and a spy of Iranian origin. Known as the "most hated by the Muslims who give Islam a bad name," Mandana amassed a huge amount of fortune from collecting bounties of famous terrorists. Among her modus operandi is to convince wives of terrorists to betray them and become her informant. How and when she fell in love with Kules is unknown, but she ordered her partner Amir to offer Kules dowries to marry her. When a group of Islamists kidnapped Kules and ordered Mandana to bomb the US Embassy in exchange for her fiancé's life, she did not hesitate and obliged. She was assumed killed in action - Kules shot her to save the embassy, though the boat she was piloting still destroyed it. However, it was later revealed that she faked her death in order to deceive the Muslim extremists on her trail, and that what Kules shot was a dummy. It was heavily implied that non-terrorist casualties in the embassy destruction were faked also in order to throw off the Muslim extremists. She re-emerged and reunited with Kules after five years, marrying in a civil ceremony in Tagaytay. She can finally speak Tagalog fluently, as seen in the March 21, 2016, strip here and as of January 25, 2018 here, she's pregnant with her and Kules' first child. She gave birth to a girl, while Kules was away. Zara (Lazara Armaiti Sungcal) – Kules and Mandana's infant daughter. She took a lot from her Iranian heritage and her mother's temperament. She never once cried since her birth, something that Mandana claimed she got from her while admitting that her first time crying was when she shot her father who forcefully arranged her to marry an old man.
Polgas Polgas (derived from the Spanish and Tagalog pulgas for "flea") is the Sungcals' anthropomorphic family dog. Notable for his human characteristics such as speech, optional bipedalism, use of clothing and general behavior, he is called ang asong hindi (the dog who isn't) in material outside the strip proper because of his human characteristics. He acts as an extra member of the Sungcals and is his master Dagul's drinking buddy. However, he still behaves like a typical dog when he chooses to, though usually when he takes a bite out of people or leaks on them, most often Dagul.
Polgas was initially a normal dog which walked on all fours, albeit one who wore shirts and undershirts like Dagul.Pugad Baboy One (The Very Best of Pugad Baboy) Medina eventually gave him the ability to talk, followed by other human characteristics like a more humanlike physique. Originally, Brosia, a former ventriloquist, supplied Polgas's voice, but Medina was so dissatisfied with the idea that he abandoned it completely. Medina later explained in a 1995 spin-off graphic novel entitled Pirata that Polgas developed human characteristics due to his master's exotic version of bibingka (rice cake) and exposure to radiation emitted by television sets. Apparently, the combination had a teratogenic effect on him, somewhat similar to the mutation of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.Pirata
Medina eventually developed the character into a "man (dog) of action", humorously saving the human characters from danger during story arcs,The Best of Pugad Baboy and later a full-fledged action hero involved with more serious activities. Polgas became a deep penetration agent of a fictional military division called the Organized Canine Bureau (OCB). This organization spoofs the TV series Wiseguy, which features a fictional branch of the FBI called the Organized Crime Bureau, responsible for the protagonist Vinnie Terranova's activities.
Medina's OCB was originally formed to combat the pilfering of stray dogs being sold in Metro Manila for their meat. Wisedog's second mission took place in Baguio, where the selling and eating of dog meat is an illegal industry. (See The Baguio Connection). Polgas's original call sign in the OCB was Wisedog (a homage to Wiseguy). Later, he changed his call sign to Dobermaxx after he and some other residents of Pugad Baboy were accidentally sent to and returned from the year 2078. Subsequently, he is sometimes referred to as "Agent Delta" or simply "Delta".Kinse!
As an agent, Polgas was issued with a prototype garapata (tick) gun, which shoots droplets of tick sweat that causes itching that lasts for six months. Later, he was issued a tiny surveillance robot flea named "Gary"Pugad Baboy 4 and ballistic arnis sticks. After his first mission, he was issued a customized Porsche 959, the Thunderdog. As a result, from his adventure in 2078, he acquired a technologically advanced garapata gun.Pugad Baboy 5 Later he also acquired the Thunderpuppy, a Harley Davidson V-Rod motorcycle.