About
Bong Redila is a Filipino American illustrator and author based in Miami, Florida. A self-taught artist, Redila embarked on his illustration career in the early 90s in Guam, serving as a graphic artist and editorial cartoonist for a local newspaper. In the early 2000s, he delved into writing and illustrating short stories set in a fictional town named Meläg, where phantasmagoric and peculiar events consistently unfold.
These stories were later compiled and published in the Philippines by Anino Comics/Adarna House, garnering multiple accolades, including the Philippine National Book Awards for Best Graphic Literature, the National Children's Book Awards for Best Reads for Kids, and Komikon's Best Graphic Novel. Redila's work was also nominated for the prestigious Madrigal-Gonzalez First Book Award.
In 2022, Meläg was published in English by Fantagraphics.
A follow- up, Meläg II Balikbayan was published in the Philippines by Anino Comics earlier prt of 2023.
In addition to his Meläg series, Redila contributed the comics introduction to the third volume of E.C. Segar’s Popeye Sundays, The Sea Hag & Alice the Goon, published by Fantagraphics.
He then created an online series called Borderline. A single-panel comics Meläg spin off, Borderline is a collection of surreal and whimsical images accompanied by a short line of caption or text. The aim of this project is to draw the reader into the fictional town and push and encourage them to expand their imagination and complete their own story on each page.