Nestor Purugganan Redondo was a Filipinocomics artist best known for his work for DC Comics, Marvel Comics, and other American publishers in the 1970s and early 1980s. In his native country, the Philippines, he is best known for co-creating the superheroine Darna.
Redondo began his career drawing Filipino komiks serials, which were written by his brother Virgilio, including Mars Ravelo's Darna series. In 1969 and 1970 Redondo did thevfour-page serial ”Mga Kasaysayang Buhat sa Bibliya” in each issue of Superyor Komiks Magasin, which was produced by his company Nestor Redondo Publications. This company launched a program of on-the-job training for young writers and artists.
U.S. work
In the 1970s, Redondo began to do work for publishers in the United States. His earliest U.S. credit is penciling and inking the ten-page story "The King Is Dead", by writer Jack Oleck, in DC Comics' House of Mystery #194. Through the 1970s, Redondo drew dozens of such supernaturalanthology stories for DC titles including House of Secrets, The Phantom Stranger, Secrets of Sinister House, The Unexpected, Weird War Tales, and The Witching Hour. He drew six of the seven issues of Rima, the Jungle Girl, based on the heroine of a Victorian novel, as well as Swamp Thing #11–23, and DC's tabloid-sized one-shot collection of Bible stories, cover-titled The Bible but officially titled Limited Collectors' Edition #C-36. Nestor Redondo and his brother Frank Redondo often collaborated and were credited together as the "Redondo Studio", including on the Ragman series for DC. ' Rima, the Jungle Girl #6. Art by Redondo. In 1970, Redondo was approached by Vincent Fago of Pendulum Press to illustrate stories for that publisher’s new line of comic book adapting literary classics. Redondo helped Fago recruit fellow Filipino comics artists, who illustrated almost every comic Pendulum produced. From 1973–1979, Redondo illustrated many stories in the Pendulum Illustrated Classics line, including Dracula and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde adaptations reprinted by Marvel Comics three years later as Marvel Classics Comics. Other adaptations illustrated by Redondo for Pendulum included The Great Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, some Edgar Allan Poe stories, The Odyssey, and Romeo and Juliet. In addition, Redondo illustrated a Pendulum comic-book history of the American Civil War, and biographies of Madame Curie, Albert Einstein, and Abraham Lincoln. In the mid-1980s, Redondo inked the Eclipse Comics time-travel series Aztec Ace, by writer Doug Moench and pencilers Michael Hernandez and Dan Day. In 1990, he contributed to the second issue of the Marvel Comics superhero series Solarman as well as to an issue of Innovation Comics' Legends of the Stargrazers. Redondo collaborated with writer Roy Thomas on an adaptation of Robert E. Howard's Marchers of Valhalla in the mid-1990s, but the finished comic book never saw print.
Christian comics
More regularly, Redondo contributed to various Christian comics. In addition to DC Comics' 1975 one-shot collection of Bible stories, Redondo illustrated Marx, Lenin, Mao and Christ, published in 1977 by Open Doors ; Pendulum's , published in 1978; Born Again Comics #2 in 1988; and Aida-Zee, Behold 3-D, and Christian Comics & Games #0 and #1, produced in the 1990s by The Nate Butler Studio. Redondo was a panelist for the first Christian-comics panel of San Diego Comic-Con in 1992. In preparation for the First International Christian Comics Training Conference in Tagaytay, the Philippines, in January 1996, Redondo wrote On Realistic Illustration for his main teaching session, but died before he was able to deliver it personally. Redondo was living in Los Angeles County, California, at the time of his death.
Awards
In 1979, Redondo received the Inkpot Award at the San Diego Comic-Con.
