Making Space for Myth: Worldbuilding and Interconnected Narratives in Mythspace

The comics medium has long proven to be fertile ground for worldbuilding, spawning not only imaginary worlds but multiverses that have become international transmedial franchises. In the Philippines, komiks (as it is called locally) has provided the Filipino popular imagination with worlds populated by superheroes, super spies, supernatural detectives, and creatures from different Philippine mythologies. The komiks series Mythspace, written by Paolo Chikiamco and illustrated by several artist-collaborators, takes the latter concept, and launches it into outer space. Classified by its own writer as a “Filipino space opera” consisting of six loosely interconnected stories, Mythspace presents a storyworld where the creatures of Philippine lower mythologies are based on various alien species that visited the Philippines long ago. The article will examine the use of interconnected narratives as a strategy for worldbuilding in Mythspace. Drawing from both subcreation and comic studies, this article posits that interconnected narratives is a worldbuilding technique particularly well-suited to comics, and that the collaborative nature of the medium allows for a diversity of genres and visual styles that can be used by future komiks creators to develop more expansive storyworlds.

SARE, Vol. 58, Issue 1 | 2021 21 | Q u i n a calls the "hyperframe" (30), as well as the sequence of images found inside it. Karin Kukkonen, on the other hand, proposes the use of cognitive approaches in comics studies. In Contemporary Comics Storytelling, she incorporates cognitive semantics, discourse psychology, and cognitive narrative studies in crafting a new way of understanding how readers engage with comics. According to Kukkonen : [This approach] offers a new reading […] based on clues and gaps in the comics text rather than on semiotic codes. Clues and gaps elicit cognitive processes such as establishing a generic frame of reference within whose parameters we read the story, positing a mental model of the storyworld within which we imagine the events of the story, and projecting fictional minds, their moral judgments, and learning processes. (8) Kukkonen's approach is of particular interest because it touches on the creation of the comic's storyworld.
In her cognitive approach, the comics storyworld, as with its narrative, is built on the clues and gaps in the comics which lead the reader to infer the "mental model" of the storyworld.
By this, Kukkonen means that while the reader does not fully grasp the entirety of the storyworld, the clues and gaps in the narrative allow the reader to infer what the world might look like inside their head. These clues and gaps might be from within the comics, such as a snippet of dialogue or a background detail, or from paratextual materials like cover images, interviews, and promotional materials.

Komiks Storyworlds
The komiks tradition in the Philippines dates back to the 1920s, with komiks strips first appearing in magazines.
The first popular komiks strip, Kenkoy, was first published in 1929 in the pages of Liwayway magazine. Set in the real world, the strip followed the funny, light-hearted misadventures of the titular character, though others saw the strip as making fun of Filipinos who aspired to be like their then American colonial masters (Lent 37). This is not surprising given that, at the time, Filipino cartoon and comic art was largely found in news publications in the form of editorial cartoons.
The popularity of Kenkoy led to other magazine publishers commissioning komiks strips for their publication. These strips were marked by their resemblance to popular American comics strips and characters of the time such as Popeye and Bringing Up Father. These included Jose Zabala-Santos's Lukas Malakas (Popeye), Procopio Borromeo's Goyo at Kikay (Bringing Up Father) and Kulafu, written by Pedrito Reyes and drawn by Francisco Reyes (Lent 188).
First published in 1933, Kulafu was clearly inspired by the pulp hero Tarzan created by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Like Tarzan, the titular hero of Kulafu was raised by great apes in the jungle after the young Kulafu was kidnapped by a giant bird as a child and almost eaten by his captor. Instead of Africa, Kulafu was set in the jungles of the Southern Philippines before the arrival of the Spanish colonizers (Villegas). The series appeared in Liwayway magazine and ran until the start of World War II in the Pacific. It was the first komiks strip to be published in a two-page spread and in colour. Kulafu is said to have rivalled Kenkoy in popularity, but the strip was not revived immediately after the war (Villegas).
Kulafu is notable because this is the first instance of a fantastic setting in komiks. Where other contemporary strips such as Kenkoy are set in the "real world," Kulafu's distant past is a completely different world from the real jungles of the Southern Philippines. This jungle is a fantastic place filled with forgotten tribes and mythical creatures such as sirena (merfolk) and dragons (Villegas). Wolf calls Kulafu's storyworld a "secondary world" ("Ch. 4"), one that is separated by some kind of border from the "Primary World" which is a facsimile of reality.
In the case of Kulafu, by setting it in the distant past, time separates the two storyworlds.
Sadly, a complete accounting of the fantastic elements in Kulafu is impossible, given that most of the original text is either in the hands of private collectors, the creators' families, or lost to time. The same is true for most of the komiks magazines published before the 2000s, as a comprehensive archive of komiks magazines in the Philippines does not exist. The character Kulafu, in fact, is now more known for the liquor named after him, than the komiks serial in which he appeared (Villegas). the ability to summon a superpowered being, as well as the villain Valentina, who was born with a Gorgon-like head wrapped in snakes.
The same kind of storyworld is used in a lot of the superhero, supernatural, and horror stories and nobela in komiks magazines like Ravelo's own Captain Barbell (1963), about a scrawny man who transforms into a superhero using an enchanted barbell, and Jim Fernandez's Aztec (1972), which posits that an Aztec-like civilization lived in the pre-historic Philippines and entombed an immortal monster called Zuma in one of their temples. Perhaps the appeal of this kind of storyworld is in how it is able to draw in readers with the familiar setting much easier than with a completely alien, secondary world.
Many of the popular contemporary komiks titles, such as the supernatural detective thriller Trese (2005present) by Budjette Tan and KaJo Baldisimo and the Spanish-era horror aswang tale Tabi Po (2014-present) by Mervin Malonzo also utilize an overlaid world that resembles Metro Manila but is also home to creatures of Philippine lower mythologies. But these komiks series also goes into other dimensions or layers of reality (Trese) or the imaginary distant past (Tabi Po), which falls into the category of secondary worlds.

Space for Myths
Mythspace initially appeared as individual issues in ashcan format between 2012 and 2013. Written by Paolo Chikiamco and illustrated by several artist-collaborators, the series consists of six interconnected stories set in a storyworld where the creatures of Philippine lower mythologies are based on ancient aliens that visited the Philippine islands long ago. Chikiamco classifies the series as a "Filipino space opera", highlighting the rarity of the subgenre in the local context. Chikiamco had intended that the six issues they had released constituted "a first wave" and more would follow. However, there has been no news of new Mythspace stories from its creators (Chikiamco). In 2018, the existing issues were collected in a single volume by Visprint Publishing, Inc. and published under the title Mythspace Vol. 1. Once again, there is an implied continuation of the series, which has yet to happen. In this article, I will be referring to the 2018 collected edition, as this is the only edition of the series that is available commercially.
While Chikiamco wrote all six stories, each one is drawn by a different artist which lends to the distinct atmosphere of each story. The first story and, by far, the longest is titled "Lift-Off," which was drawn by artist Koi Carreon. Told in three parts, "Lift-Off" tells the story of a human teenager named Ambrosio Magkalas, or Bros as he is called by his playmates. Bros is an orphan raised by his grandmother, who used to tell him stories about interstellar creatures bearing passing resemblance to the creatures of Philippine lower mythology. Bros is bullied because of his odd beliefs and grows up as an outsider.
Following the death of his grandmother, from whom he was eventually estranged, Bros is abducted by a spaceship. His abductors, who are alien versions of a nuno, a dwarven creature (Nuno), and a manananggal, a viscera eater who can split their bodies in two, leaving behind their lower half (Tan'gal), intend to offer him as a tribute to a retiring Laho warlord (the Laho is an alien version of the bakunawa, a serpent that devours the sun).
En route to their destination, Bros meets another captive, Winter, a Tkblng shapeshifter (a tikbalang is a creature who has the head of a horse and the body of a human being), who becomes his ally. Bros defiantly takes a stand against the warlordwho offers to keep Bros as a pet instead of throwing him into slavery, which is the fate of humans in this storyworldand is seemingly killed.
Unbeknownst to everyone, a Kapre soldier named Jrakan has been watching over Bros, trying to keep him safe (a kapre is usually described as tall, lurking atop trees, and smoking a cigar). Bros survives the fatal wound because his body merges with The Legacy, a mystical artifact that imbues him with superhuman powers. Bros and Jrakan escape the vessel along with Winter and their kidnappers who were double-crossed by the Laho. The story ends with the group defeating the Laho warlord and deciding to stick together to go on adventures, i ncluding finding Bros' parents who turn out to be somewhere in the galaxy.
As a stand-alone story, "Lift-Off" is a serviceable starting point for a continuing series. There is the simple, self-contained plot that also serves the function of introducing us to the characters we will be following in the story, there is an unmotivated villain, and a good amount of action. At the same time, the story also functions as a foundation for the worldbuilding of the Mythspace storyworld. It establishes the relationship between the primary world and, in this case, the "secondary worlds" of Mythspace. Bros' Earth at first appears to be an overlaid world, where the creatures of folklore and myth turn out to be real and living alongside human beings. But by making them alien beings, it opens the narrative to secondary worlds separate from our reality, but still connected to Philippine myth and folklore.

Narrative Threads and Implications
The worldbuilding in "Lift-Off" is filtered mostly through the point-of-view of the character Bros, who has no direct experience of the larger storyworld but a somewhat limited knowledge of it through his grandmother's stories. Through Bros, we see the recognizable creatures from folk stories in their true, alien form, and thus confirming the stories his grandmother told him.
Wolf uses the term "narrative thread" to describe "a chain of events" that "revolve around a particular character, place, or even an inanimate object, giving a sense of what happens to it over time" ("Ch. 4"). He adds that readers expect that narrative threads culminate in some way to provide a sense of closure, be that in the form of a transformation or a sense of change ("Ch. 4"). Narratives are "the most common structures in a storyworld" (Wolf,"Ch.4"), because the storyworld would not exist without it. Bros' narrative thread takes him from Earth as a young outsider and into outer space as the de facto leader of a group of adventurers. The quick tran sformation he undergoes in "Lift-Off" is aided by The Legacy, a piece of ancient technology that is a mystery even to Bros' captors. The nature of The Legacy, and its creators, the ancient race called the Lewen'ri, are some of the many narrative implications found in Bros' narrative thread. There is also the mystery of the fate of his parents, as well as Jrakan's role in it. According to Gregory Steirer, narrative implications occur when "the details of a single, self-contained story gesture to additional histories, events, characters, or locations not fully developed within the story itself" (qtd in Scolari et al 8). Narrative implications serve as the clues and gaps from which we infer the larger storyworld of Mythspace.
While some of the narrative implications in "Lift-Off" are character-focused, most of them have to do with the larger storyworld of Mythspace, which we do not see in this story. There is a sense in "Lift-Off" that worldbuilding was of equal import to the writer as the storytelling. For example, in the opening page of the second part of "Lift-Off," there is an omniscient narrator, through the captions, that explains why Bros and Winter are being offered as tributes to the Laho. This is a break in the pattern established in the first part, where the pointof-view character was solely Bros. It serves worldbuilding, but not so much the story, as it is more interested in explaining the event the characters are embroiled in, rather than how the characters themselves feel or think about their predicament.
"Lift-Off" is followed by five stories: "Black Mark" drawn by Paul Quiroga, "Devourers of Light" drawn by Jules Gregorio, "Uncommon Ground" drawn by Marco Dimagiba, "Humanity" drawn by Cristina Rose Chua, and "Unfurling of Wings" drawn by Borg Sinaban. Unlike "Lift-Off," these stories appear to be self-contained stories rather than as being part of a longer, ongoing story, as each story ends definitively without the promise of more adventures to come.

Interconnected Narratives
This kind of storytelling in comics is nothing new. A lot of contemporary comics titles vary between one -shot stories and multi-part arcs that eventually come together at the end of the series. The Sandman by Neil Gaiman famously alternates between multi-part stories and a series of self -contained stories that feature the character Dream. Some of the self-contained stories serve the purpose of introducing characters or plot points that will later figure into the larger story, while other stories serve as thematic parallels that have little to do with plot.
This technique, which we might call "interconnected narratives," is used in Mythspace primarily for worldbuilding more than storytelling, as the constituent stories do not connect in any functional narrative sense.
For instance, the second story, "Black Mark," is set entirely on Dinde, the home-planet of the Nunos, where cities are built underground because of the uninhabitable surface. The story is focused on Mang, a social outcast, who is recruited by a secret organization called The Black to save an underground city from collapsing. In exchange for his services, which might lead to his death, The Black will bring to justice the politician who killed Mang's wife and child and had him stripped of his titles and cast out of Nuno society. There is no indication when Mang's narrative takes place in the general timeline established by the first story, nor is there any character or plot point in the story that connects to "Lift-Off." What it does offer is an extended look at the Nuno and their social and political system. It explains that though technologically superior, their home planet has forced them to live underground and work in personal mobile suits. The third story, "Devourers of Light" provides a temporal marker for the reader relative to the events of the first story. Set in the distant past, "Devourers of Light" focuses on a crucial historical moment in the Mythspace storyworld: the ascendancy of the Laho race as rulers of the galaxy, and the destruction of the Kapre homeworld of Oslrin.
Like "Black Mark," there is no direct narrative connection between "Devourers of Light" and "Lift-Off." It does, however, illuminate the power structures of the Mythspace storyworld, as well as clarify the social, cultural, and political connection between the creatures that constitute the United Second Races. One might even argue that "Devourers of Light" isn't so much a story, but an extended piece of exposition aimed at worldbuilding more than anything else. Even the supposed protagonist of the story, Barkarilkarilmon, does not have a character arc, and he does not need one.
The next story in the series, "Uncommon Ground," is a detective story featuring Haskra, a Kapre consulting detective working on a case for a Laho client. Haskra is hired to solve the murder of a diplomat and the theft of a religious relic that is key to a peace negotiation being hosted by the Laho. Unlike the second and third stories, where the point-of-view is largely omniscient, "Uncommon Ground" grounds its story by picking Haskra as the point-of-view character. The story also immediately plays off the historical background provided by the previous story by forcing Laho and Kapre to work together despite their races' historical relationship. "Uncommon Ground" also breaks the pattern established by the last two stories. While self-contained narratively, the character of Haskra as well as his narrative thread implies that he can come back in another story. This is not the case with Mang, who dies at the end of "Black Mark," and Barkarilkarilmon, from "Devourers of Light," whose entire narrative thread seems to have been exhausted in the story.
But perhaps the biggest change is the introduction to the storyworld of another genre, that of detective fiction. While the setting of the story is still in the intergalactic storyworld introduced in "Lift-Off," the tone, artwork, and the characters evoke a genre that is not native to science fiction. While it does not necessarily add to the storyworld in terms of details such as history and social background of races the way the first three stories did, "Uncommon Ground" expands the storyworld in terms of the fiction genres that can occupy it. It demonstrates that other genres outside of space opera such as horror, comedy, or romance, can be told within the Mythspace storyworld without breaking any narrative rules set by the earlier stories.
The penultimate story of the series, "Humanity," focuses on Marta and Danny, two humans born into slavery, who work on an asteroid as miners. Strong-willed Marta believes that the mythical ship Nalandangan, a spaceship of humans saved by the ancient race Lewen'ri, will come someday to save them. When their mining colony is seemingly abandoned by their Kataw (merfolk) slavers to die, Danny sends out a signal into space and the two are eventually picked up by the mythical ship. However, Marta soon discovers that the humans aboard the Nalandangan are no better than their alien captors. Obsessed with purity, the Nalandangan crew leaves behind the rest of the colony because they are either sick or impure. Marta chooses to go back to the colony, opting to help them out instead of living out the rest of her life in comfort, knowing she had eft people behind to die.
"Humanity" functions on multiple levels in terms of worldbuilding. It expands on the narrative implication in "Lift-Off," that humans exist among the races of the United Second Races as slaves. It explains how these humans came to be there and relates the story of the ancient Lewen'ri giving the ship Nalandangan to the humans who now occupy it. In terms of storytelling, Martha's story is a straightforward coming of age tale, another fiction genre that is introduced into the storyworld and used once again in the final Mythspace story.
"Unfurling of Wings" focuses on Ri-En, a young orphaned Tan'gal living on a space station called Tangent.
Ri-En and her two best friends, Books, a human boy, and Zu, a young Nuno, eke out a living by committing petty crimes in order to support the orphanage that took them in, as well as its ailing owner, who also happens to be a Tan'gal in the throes of a final transformation, after which he will become part of the Tan'gal hive mind and lose his independence. During one of their jobs, the trio of friends stumble onto a possible lucrative score involving Lewen'ri technology, the same technology as The Legacy. However, things do not go as planned and a showdown between Ri-En and her friends against a fellow Tan'gal leads to a shocking discovery about her own race, that joining the Tan'gal hive mind is not the end of individuality that Ri-En fears it to be.
Like most of the stories in the series, we are introduced again to a new set of characters and a new setting, this time a space station. Once again, there is no temporal or spatial marker that connects " Unfurling of Wings" to "Lift-Off" or to any of the other stories in the series. What it does tell us is that there a re not only inhabited planets in the Mythspace storyworld, but inhabited space stations where people of different races can live in relative harmony with one another. This is quite different from most of the stories in the series, where race is an issue amongst them. It is also the first story in the series to speculate not only the culture, but the biology of one of the races in the storyworld. The narrative implications of the story focus largely on the nature of the Tan'gal race, but also touch on the ground level of the Mythspace storyworld, where the ordinary citizens of the United Second Races live. Ending the series on "Unfurling of Wings" brings the series to a full circle thematically, as like "Lift-Off" it is a story about a young person discovering that there is something larger out there in the vast world for them. And like "Lift-Off" and "Uncommon Ground," Ri-En and her gang's story leaves room for more adventures to come.
Individually, the six stories that comprise Mythspace work for different reasons. They explore different themes and occupy different genres and use different modes. Some are more successful than others as stories, while others work better as expository scenes. But because they are, by design, interconnected narratives within the same series, and the clues and gaps in each story, each narrative implication tells us that these stories share the same storyworld, they inform each other whether directly or indirectly. In turn, the stories build, not an SARE, Vol. 58, Issue 1 | 2021 30 | Q u i n a overarching narrative for the series, but a very diverse storyworld that all six stories occupy, storyworlds that can sustain more stories.

Conclusion
While Mythspace as a series may be in a state of narrative stasis, with its implied larger narratives left untold, it is still a success in terms of worldbuilding. As we have seen, narrative implications or clues and gaps in a story, lead the reader to create in their minds a model, not of the larger narrative of the series, but of the storyworld itself. By utilizing interconnected narratives, Chikiamco and his collaborators have created an open -ended storyworld that is not tied to any one character or narrative thread in the series and y et is distinct enough that one wishes the creators would do more stories in it. For aspiring komiks creators and speculative fiction authors, Mythspace is an example of how to do complex worldbuilding using interconnected narratives. By focusing on individual stories rather than a larger narrative, the seemingly difficult task of creating an imaginary world becomes more manageable.