Nonoy Marcelo

Severino “Nonoy” Santos Marcelo CA (January 22, 1939 – October 22, 2002) was a Filipino cartoonist, animator and filmmaker. He is best known for creating comic strips that lampooned lifestyles in Filipino youths including Plain Folks and Tisoy, the latter which was adapted into two films and a television series as a screenwriter. He is also an animation and sound director in films. He was joined by National Media Production Center to evade censorship from politics at large, learned that the government blacklisted fellow cartoonists.

Publicly viewed as a political cartoonist for his irreverent, biting political satires and social commentaries in cartoons provided on various Philippine issues that assumed to criticize the repressive regime infusing his projects with signature subversive humor in the midst of martial law administered by the Philippines' tenth president Ferdinand Marcos Sr., led to his subject of the character Ikabod Bubwit (literally "Ikabod the Small Rodent" or "Ikabod the Small Mouse" in Tagalog) in the comic strip Ikabod, until the president was overthrown by People Power Revolution in 1986.

Aside from political cartoons, he frequently tasked by the government in invitation to join the New Society Movement as a filmmaker to direct propaganda films for the Marcos administration, including Da Real Makoy (1977) and Tadhana (1978), at the time which collaborated with close friend and producing partner Imee Marcos.

Upon his legacy, Marcelo is widely noted one of the greatest and most influential figures in the Philippines, particularly his pioneering recognition of modern cartooning and first foray into animation, the latter admired by students for his influence on animation which led to become future animators creating their original and outsourcing works in the Philippine animation industry starting in the 1980s.