when he found his father's diary and read about the death of Gerry's uncle Dennis. The new format turned the story into one about Alanguilan, his parents, and his "fears of losing them as they get older." The original opening scene was a human attacking a chicken before being revealed as a film production. Alanguilan believed the scene was too much of a gimmick and moved it to the middle of the book. Although a comic book about sentient chickens could have been fantasy or science fiction, he decided to make it an outright drama. The storyline eventually became too serious for a title as silly as Ultimate Chicken Story, so he changed it to Elmer. The story was fully planned when he began work on the first issue, and he wrote it in English because he wanted an international audience. He began drawing the comic book in early 2005 with traditional art tools such as Mongol pencils and brushes. He took great care while illustrating Elmer because he felt his earlier work, Wasted, was poorly drawn. To devote time to completing the comic book, he had to quit his job working for US comic companies. As a result, the period between 2006 and 2008 was one of the most financially difficult times of his life. Publication Alanguilan did not expect Elmer to be as successful as it later became, but he knew it was good enough to pay for professional printing. He self-published it in the Philippines between 2006 and 2008 as a four-issue miniseries under the name "Komikero Publishing." The second and third issues had twice as many pages as a standard comic book. In 2006, he sent copies of the first issue to online columnists, reviewers, retailers, and industry insiders to let people know it existed. This self-promotion led the book to get good reviews from well-known writers like Steven Grant and Neil Gaiman and a widely read interview with Tom Spurgeon on "The Comics Reporter." The Spurgeon interview led the entertainment megastore Forbidden Planet to order copies directly from Alanguilan and promote it with special offers. After the series was complete, Alanguilan offered all four issues in a special box set release, followed by a Filipino edition trade paperback in 2009. When the first edition of the Filipino collection was about to sell out in 2011, National Book Store offered to finance and print a second