A brief history of eskrima (Filipino martial arts) in comics
[NOTE: This article features updated text that originally appeared on TheGeeksverse.com.]
As a lifelong comics reader and fan of combat sports, one of the developments in popular media that I’ve found quite intriguing in recent years is just how prominent depictions of the Filipino martial art eskrima have become in comics, films, video games, and television outside the Philippines.
But what exactly is eskrima?
Eskrima (from the Spanish term for fencing, esgrima), alternatively spelled as escrima and known by other names such as arnis, kali, or the more generic FMA (Filipino Martial Arts) is a catch-all term for the traditional martial arts of the Philippines, which place an emphasis on stick-fighting and the use of bladed weapons alongside unarmed combat techniques. The historical origin of the martial art and even the etymology of its various names is a matter of contentious debate in certain circles, with regional biases and the usual distortions of fact and outright fabrications that accompany the oral history of traditional martial arts adding to the confusion. Growing in acceptance, though, is the hypothesis that eskrima is a syncretic fighting system based on indigenous Filipino armed and unarmed fighting techniques fortified with influences from Spain, Indonesia, and Southern China.
As a “living” martial art however, eskrima is subject to on-going evolution and adaptation, its various schools absorbing elements from diverse sources, its descendant arts responding to pressures both practical and theoretical. As such, any reasonably accurate definition of eskrima is bound to be in a constant state of flux and what could be said to be true of the art in the past and today may not necessarily be so in the future.
Besides being a component of the current public school physical education curriculum in the Philippines (where it is referred to as arnis), principles and concepts drawn from eskrima have found their way to the programs of instruction taught at the FLETC, the US Border Patrol Academy, and the US Army Combatives School. It is also a popular stylistic base for action cinema fight choreography, with films such as Blade 2, 300, The Book of Eli, and the Bourne trilogy all featuring eskrima-inspired sequences.
One of the earliest references to the Filipino martial arts in a mainstream American comic book can be found in Marvel Comics’ G.I. Joe Order of Battle #2 (January, 1987), where the dossier written by Larry Hama for the character Torpedo states that he is an expert in the use of the balisong, a knife associated with the Philippines’ martial arts.
An in-story reference to the Filipino martial arts would appear three years later in a back-up feature (“Punisher’s Fighting Techniques”) in The Punisher Annual #3 (June, 1990):
The feature, written by self-defense instructor Roger Salick with art by Mark “TEX” Texeira, shows the Punisher neutralizing his assailant—incidentally armed with a balisong—with a highly stylized (if somewhat inaccurate) depiction of an eskrima trapping/disarming move called gunting (“scissors” in Filipino and Indonesian/Malay).
Various comics superheroes have appeared over the years equipped with weapons and fighting styles coincidentally reminiscent of the doble baston forms of eskrima—Marvel’s Daredevil, Shang-Chi, and Night Thrasher among them—but technically, the first mainstream comics character to be explicitly acknowledged by its creator as an eskrima practitioner is Grail, from Whilce Portacio‘s action-horror series Wetworks that began publication under the Image Comics banner in 1994:
Later that same year, DC writer-editor Scott Peterson and artist Brian Stelfreeze found themselves with an interesting quandary: how to present the then-paraplegic Barbara Gordon (a.k.a. Oracle) in Showcase ’94 as a more action-oriented character. As Peterson recalled in an August 2011 post on the DC Women Kicking Ass blog:
… we talked to Kelley Puckett, a black belt, about what kind of fighting techniques someone in [Barbara Gordon’s] situation could master. ‘Escrima,’ he said. A Filipino martial art, one of the features of escrima is using sticks to fight, sticks which rely more on speed than sheer strength—although we figured her arms were probably stronger than ever by now. So an escrima master she quickly became.
Following the events of the “Prodigal” storyline in the Batman comic book, Nightwing (a.k.a. Dick Grayson, the original Robin) got a costume and design makeover in a self-titled 1995 miniseries. While the series’ interiors were illustrated by Greg Land, the new costume and prop designs were created by Stelfreeze who, taking a cue from his experience redesigning Barbara Gordon for Showcase ’94, gave Nightwing eskrima sticks as well:
The incorporation of eskrima as a permanent fixture of the character’s design is all the more impressive given how resistant the superhero comics genre can be to significant and lasting change.
Eskrima would become something of the trademark martial art of the extended “Bat-family” over the years: Stephanie Brown wielded eskrima sticks during her stint as Batgirl; ex-Robin Jason Todd, in the guise of the villain/anti-hero the Red Hood, has taken to wielding a kris, a knife associated with the eskrima variants originating in the island of Mindanao as well as the related Indonesian martial art of silat (although some have proposed that Todd’s weapon is based on the “flame dagger” of medieval Europe); and the “New 52″ Earth-Two version of Batman uses paired eskrima sticks as his preferred melee weapons.
The depiction of eskrima in comics is not limited to the superhero genre. In a brief online conversation I had with Arvid Nelson a few years ago, the writer revealed that the knife-fight scenes in his alternate history graphic novel Zero Killer (published by Dark Horse) were staged and choreographed based on his knowledge of arnis.
Nor is the depiction of eskrima in comics outside of the Philippines limited to Western publications. Rinka Urushiba—the platinum-haired protagonist of Hajime Segawa’s Tokyo ESP manga—is explicitly described as an eskrima adept, using twin collapsible batons as her weapons of choice.
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