Pundits and Posters

MANILA, Philippines — Vic Delotavo, celebrated 70s illustrator, political cartoonist, URIAN trophy designer, obsessive Gerry De Leon champion, outstanding movie poster designer, was not afraid to take a stand. Two months after the Ninoy Aquino assassination in 1983, his political cartoons earned a double spread in Eggie Apostol’s Mr. & Ms.

Titled I’m Furious Yellow (a reference to the proto erotic Swedish film I Am Curious Yellow), Delotavo’s cartoons spoke truth to power; hitting them in the solar plexus while making the readers more “woke” when  they began to recognize in his drawings a zanier, but always, a braver version of  themselves.

When Philippine cinema regained its bearings in the 1980s, Delotavo was the go-to artist to promote its most outstanding works. He designed the posters for Oro, Plata, Mata and Scorpio Nights, among some 400 other movies produced by Robbie Tan’s Seiko Films and Mother Lily’s Regal Entertainment.

On an unannounced visit to his own poster exhibit at the UP Vargas Museum in 2018, Delotavo explained how, even as he almost cornered the film poster market single-handedly, he would dissuade producers like Mother Lily from asking him to take over other artists’ projects. “How else would we elevate the craft if there was no competition,”  he said.

“He was a personal calligraphist, one who excelled in crafting his own fonts,” said artist Jose Tence Ruiz, that he made himself scarce when the computer-generated digital fonts proliferated.

How did this irreverent wit from Domangas, Iloilo develop his elevated visual sensibility? His older brother died early from a gunshot. Vic evaded this violent reality in the movie houses and derived many of his yearnings from the double programs they offered and became enamored of the iconic graphic artist, Saul Bass.

Some of Delotavo’s iconic movie posters. He was known for creating his own fonts by hand.

His father discouraged Vic from taking Fine Arts. In their rough and tumble neighborhood, seeking a life in the arts was taking the laughable and loathsome path of “Pintor Kulapol,” a comic strip character in Hiligaynon Magazine who was a rich heredero son who went to Europe to study Fine Arts and wound up squandering the family fortune, a career both pathetic and financially untenable. 

Vic went to the University of San Agustin in Iloilo, took up Advertising and became the art director of the Agustinian Mirror, the campus paper. He also began cartooning in a page called “Cracks in the Mirror.” Under him, it won the best campus publication nationwide.

Armed with this prize, Vic pursued Architecture at UST in Manila. Disheartened by poor grades in the higher Maths, Vic dropped out, which made his father mad. But the resilient Vic told him a 50 percent tuition scholarship awaited him as he was about to apply for the Varsitarian. He did, and no sooner did Vic as well find his way to the Art Section of the Manila Times in 1969, with a more impressive portfolio. Sunday Times magazine art director Demetrio Diego hired him immediately. Vic, along with Pablo “Adi” Baensantos, took over where Benedicto “Bencab” Cabrera left off in 1970.

Vic continued his political commentaries with “Quote in the Act” for a national newspaper, choosing other pundits’ insights but offering even more razor-sharp and horridly accurate observations of the Filipino psyche. In one cartoon, he quoted an anonymous pundit thus: Christmas is Christ’s revenge on us for the Crucifixion.

Vic Delotavo died of a heart attack on May 20.