Spotlight: Alfredo Alcala
- halohalohq
- Feb 28
- 2 min read
Updated: Mar 26
By Rachel McAlpine
Alfredo "Pidong" Alcala was born in 1925, and started his artistic career drawing pictures for his classmates. This artistic practice, combined with an extraordinary memory for detail, helped him create maps of enemy camps and facilities that he handed over to the Allied forces during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines in WWII.
After the war, Alcala dropped out of school to focus on perfecting his skills with pencil and ink. In 1948, he got his big break when Bituin Komiks hired him to create a short comic story just after his 23rd birthday, and soon he was working with Ace Publications, the biggest comic publisher in the Philippines at the time.
In the early 1960s, he teamed up with other artists to create their own company, CRAF publications (a portmanteau of the artists' last initials). It was there he created Voltar, a comic that would make him a household name. Published in 1963, it showed the full breadth of Alcala's talent and expertise, mixing action with art, and became a huge success, eventually catching the eye of Joe Orlando, an editor at DC Comics.
Alcala had worked nonstop on comics in many different styles, and was quite confident in his abilities. He famously told DC Comics that he could complete 40 pages of art per week (with full artwork and lettering); no one believed him, since 10 would have been impressive for DC's quickest artists at the time, but Alcala quickly proved he was up to the challenge. One of his first big projects in the U.S. was The Savage Sword of Conan for Curtis Magazines. His attention to detail was incredible, especially considering how quickly he worked. His ink-heavy style helped set a dark, mysterious mood for horror comics, which quickly became his forte with titles like Ghosts, Unexpected, Weird War Tales, and House of Secrets.
In 1988, Alcala worked on Hellblazer, one of DC's most popular comics. His inking gave the story depth and lent intensity to the characters and scenes. Branching out, Alcala worked for almost every comic publisher in the American comic book business; he worked on Swamp Thing, Destroyer Duck, Man-Thing, El Diablo, as well as iconic characters like Batman, Conan, and The Hulk. And he didn't stop with comics--he also worked in the animation industry for major studios in Los Angeles.
Alfredo Alcala passed away in 2000, but his artwork continues to inspire new generations of artists both in the Philippines and around the world. An in-depth look at Alcala's method and thought process was published posthumously in Secret Teachings of a Comic Book Master: The Art of Alfredo Alcala.