Carlos Vergara

Visconde Carlo San Juan Vergara or simply known as Carlo Vergara (born January 25, 1971) is a Filipino graphic designer and illustrator best known for creating the comic book character Zsazsa Zaturnnah. Vergara is also a theatre performer and published playwright. The son of a tax lawyer and an English teacher, Vergara began to draw even before he started school. He considered drawing as a hobby, and did not want it to be part of his profession. Though he had been accepted in the College of Architecture at the University of the Philippines, he opted to take Marketing Management at the De La Salle University (DLSU), and graduated in 1990.

It was during his stay at DLSU when he won his first literary award from the university's annual awards for literature--Solitude bagged third place in the English poetry category. He was also an art staff of a university news publication The La Sallian. A few years after graduating, Vergara joined the university's theater organization, the Harlequin Theater Guild, where he acted in productions of Shirley Jackson's The Lottery, Susan Glaspell's Trifles, Agatha Christie's Towards Zero, and Wilfrido Ma. Guerrero's Forever.

Beginning in 1993, Vergara spent almost a decade working in public relations and corporate communications as a staff writer, photographer, graphic designer, and on occasion, special events host. It was during this time when he began to take serious interest in graphic design.

Though drawing had always been his hobby, Vergara never attempted to tackle a full-blown comics project until mid-1993. Flashpoint was a comics series he co-created with friends from DLSU, and was published by Straight Lines International. After four issues, Flashpoint was discontinued, and Vergara stopped drawing comics for a few years. He, however, became a member of Alamat, an informal group of comics creators and enthusiasts.

In 1994, he auditioned for a part in the New Voice Company production of the Asian premiere of Tony Kushner's Angels in America. He bagged a part, alternating the role of Louis Ironson with Philippine theater veteran Bart Guingona. Though reviews to his professional debut were mostly lukewarm to negative, Vergara continued his acting training with the New Voice Company. He subsequently performed in the independently produced productions of David Gobeil Taylor's Waiting for Homo and Anton Chekhov's The Boor. It was during these years when he had feature articles published in the now defunct Cutting Edge magazine and The Manila Times.

In 1999, he went back to the De La Salle University to teach a website design course for a term. During this period, he collaborated with writer David Hontiveros on an independent comic book, Pantheon, marking Vergara's return as an artist to the comics medium.