Monthly Archives: December 2010

There are times I wish I wasn’t inept when it comes to learning foreign languages, especially as my GPA in high school and college suffered because of the education system’s insistence that children take several years of language studies to “round out” the person. My grades in these courses would take a parabolic curve downward, starting with a low C and ending in grades that cannot be depicted even through Euclidean mathematics. Luckily for me, most webcomics are either in English or are translated at some point into English to help expand readership. This is fortunately the case with Maliki the webcomic, a quaint little comic in French that shows what I assume to be a fictionalized depiction of the cartoonist’s life, along with her cats and whatever else manages to catch her fancy.

Unfortunately, only a fraction of the nearly 300 comics in the French archives have been translated into English (just about ten percent, in fact). This is a shame because from the handful of comics I’ve scanned in the French archives (mind you with me having barely any idea of what’s being said seeing that French is one of several languages I was unable to learn), there are definite signs that there’s actual storylines to be had (along with a most amusing flash animation of the cartoonist watching Peter Jackson’s King Kong; despite my not knowing what was being said, I was able to match the background sound effects with the movie itself… and understand Maliki’s reactions to the movie even if I had little idea of what’s being said).

Needless to say, this leaves me with a dilemma. Much like the German webcomic She !s Me, I’m left with an incomplete picture of what’s going on here. While the English-language section has nearly reached the critical mass I consider the point when a comic is viable, it would appear that the strips chosen for translation were done so to showcase those strips the cartoonist considers her favorites or the most humorous rather than those that help paint a picture to better showcase what Maliki is about. So we get little things like rants against chain letters (among other topics) and childhood anecdotes and of course the inevitable cat-related hijinks (which can be rather imaginatively depicted, as that last link demonstrates).

According to her website, the cartoonist has actually managed to print three French-language compilations of her comics. It seems the cartoonist hopes to build enough of an English readership to do the same in the various English-speaking nations (I’m not going to be arrogant enough to assume her plans are solely for the U.S., seeing that Britain is almost the skip of a stone away north of Normandy). And I will admit there is a bit of potential here; the comic is well-drawn, imaginative, and considerable charm. For any of my readers who can read French, I definitely recommend this comic; for those of us who (for one reason or another) never learned French, the English language translations are quaint, but the comic itself may seem confusing until more pieces (especially the earlier comics that lay Maliki’s foundation) are translated.