“Our Secret Constellation” from TRESE’s first volume, “Murder on Balete Drive” presents the study’s first cultural icon, Darna, an iconic superhero created by comic artist Mars Ravelo and Nestor Redondo in 1950. In “Our Secret Constellation,” Darna and her apprentice Ding is presented through the character Nida Vargas, a disabled woman in a wheelchair and is usually accompanied by her younger brother, Daniel Vargas who possesses the nickname Ding. Other notable characters present in the story are Paquito Diaz and Max Alvarado, with names Paquito Daza and Max Alva, the two are part of a group called the Black Knights that have committed a crime against Nida Vargas and from their heinous act the story moves forth into the main conflict. The story begins in a nightclub called the Diabolical run by Trese, and where the first member of the Black Knights, Rodney Rodriguez, is murdered. The murderer is seen to be a powerful being, a man with a black figure whose eyes and mouth are the only visible facial feature and flies with his bare body exposed and only a loincloth to cover his private area. Trese immediately presumes the motive behind Rodriguez’s death is of revenge, since the Black Knights raped Nida Vargas and has been arrested and found guilty of the act but because of a “legal technicality,” as Capt. Guererro …show more content…
Trese’s speculation was correct, since the mysterious being was actually Manuel (Ding) who used Nida’s stone to inflict revenge on her sister’s rapists. In an attempt to stop Ding from his mission, he gets wounded by Trese and her bodyguards and dies in the end. Out of despair over the loss of her brother, Nida ascends to the heavens, subtly hinting as a suicide act since she disappears from their