Palos

Origin

 
As a child in Macau Giancarlo Caranzo’s mother is killed by a thief known only as Palos “Eel,” and he vows to do anything necessary to find him and take revenge.

Taken in by his mother’s friend Alessandro he does this by training to become not just a thief and safe cracker himself, but also an acrobat and martial artists.

When he begins his career in crime tries to attract his “inspirations” attention by also taking the alias of Palos.

The new Palos however is not truly into committing crime and so only robs from villains and true thieves, seeing to it that the money gets back to the victims, as well as performing other good deeds.

Eventually he earns the name Palos on his own merits because like an eel is he is hard to catch, and if caught impossible to hold onto.

As time goes by he comes to the attention of, and joins a spy network know as Neptune, working for them he discovers the truth about the death of his mother, who his real father is, and the identity of the original Palos all of which are  far different from what he has believed since a child.

He also begins to find that what he has been told about Neptune is also a lie.

 Palos: thief/hero in the night

Created by writer Virgilio and artist Nestor Redondo in 1961 the Eel started out in the anthology komik Tagalog Klasiks in 1961 as a simple thief with a heart of gold, his run done he was replaced by other story lines such as another Virgilio / Redondo creation, masked vigilante Gagamba “Spider,” both of whom prove so popular that several movies are made about both.

Eight years later Redondo starts his own komiks company called Aries and gives the duo komiks dedicated to their adventures (a rare event for comics in the Philippines where such magazines are usually anthologies.) it’s in Palos Komiks that his story becomes more complicated. More films are made with one showing the two facing off against each other.

Running for a little less than a two years the Eel disappears again, however it seems he’s to slippery for oblivion as he has recently returned again as a super-spy in a new television series in the Philippines starting in 2008.
 
Whether his sometimes adversary Gagamba will also return remains to be seen.