InsaneJournal

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Webcomic: Maliki
Sitting at home with H1N1 (no, really), I thought I'd provide some more French bande-dessinée for your enjoyment. Today you're getting a taste of one of my favourite webcomics, Maliki.



Maliki is by one of the artists working on the Wakfu TV series, which sadly isn't available in English yet. There's a few fansubs out there if you're inclined to search, and Akama says they're planning to release an English version any day now...

In any case, the webcomic concerns a somewhat elfin girl living in what I think is Paris, and doing the same job as the artist. She goes to work like everyone else, has friends, enjoys a computer game now and then, and like everyone else she has friends, cats, a supernatural, demon-hunting double and...wait, what?

So the world of Maliki is a little...different from our world. She has her cats as I said, and a Chinese girl who just sort of appeared one day, and Savage Ladybird, an incredibly powerful, but very sweet and catlike, double that resides within Maliki and can come out as a separate person. She doesn't have a mouth so can't speak, and her worldview is wonderfully simple. There's another creature like her named ElectroCute, who we learn has continued on after the human she was bound with died, plus another occasional character who I think is the daughter of Satan or something, except Satan runs a two-bit graphic design business. I'm a little fuzzy on that part.

But then, the whole strip is daily life with a somewhat off-kilter twist, as Maliki brings in spring with a paintbrush, or goes digging clams with Skeletor, or reveals what really happens to confiscated shampoo at the airport. It's great fun, and the language barrier really isn't a hindrance despite taking a few minutes to puzzle out some of the jokes.

So here's the strip that got me onto the comic in the first place, linked by the guys at Three Panel Soul:









I love the gag about her not having a mouth, so drinking really isn't an option. Her shoes are also little semi-autonomous critters in their own right, as we've seen them devour a croissant in one strip.

Translations by me, apologies if they're a little off. I'm not terribly good at it. I also had to split the image up do TinyPic could handle it, so there's a bit of a stutter at one point. Sorry about that, I couldn't find a way around it.

So for contrast, here's one of the most recent strips. Again, with my translations:





Hee! I can totally identify.