The Panday (Filipino for smith) is a fictional Philippine comics character created by writer Carlo J. Caparas and artist Steve Gan. His stories were first serialized in the comic series Ang Panday ("The Smith") in Pilipino Komiks during the late 1970s. The character, whose real name is Flavio, became a Philippine pop culture icon since it was adapted to film (Ang Panday) in 1980 with Fernando Poe Jr. portraying Flavio and Max Alvarado as his archenemy Lizardo. The film spawned three direct sequels, as well as multiple other more loosely connected films and television series including an animated version. Publication history In the 1970s, Carlo J. Caparas was thinking of a new comics adventure novel due to the wishes of his publisher Don Ramon Roces and then later he came up with a legendary folk hero named the Panday. He patterned the character to look like Fernando Poe Jr. as he instructed the artist and co-creator Steve Gan to draw the Panday's face similar to Poe's. Upon making the character, Caparas already conceived in his mind that Poe would be the Panday even before the character was still yet to be portrayed by Poe in film. The character along with its look, villains and powers also drew inspiration from Philippine history and culture. Their creation first appeared in Pilipino Komiks in 1979 as the comic serial Ang Panday. It sold hundreds of thousands copies every week during its run in the 1980s. In the 1980s, the character was later serialized in Liwayway magazine entitled Dugo ng Panday and then as a comic strip in the People's Journal tabloid entitled Hiwaga ng Panday. The first comic stories do not contain fantastical elements and the Panday is just an ordinary blacksmith named Flavio who fights criminals by using his sledgehammer and a branding iron, marking enemies with a "X" akin to Zorro's Z. He has no superpowers and no supernatural weapons. In the later stories, influenced by the first movie adaptation (which incorporated the Zorro-style mark in its first half), the Panday possesses a dagger that turns magically into a sword which he forged from a mystical meteorite. Caparas got the idea of the meteorite from his childhood where he and his playmates would find these kinds of rocks and break them open, revealing sparkling minerals that seem magical. In 2005, an Ovaltine sponsored comics series was released about the character. The