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Comic books

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Cavesa
Triglot
Senior Member
Czech Republic
Joined 5024 days ago

3277 posts - 6779 votes 
Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1
Studies: Spanish, German, Italian

 
 Message 1 of 8
10 May 2015 at 2:32pm | IP Logged 
I've been looking for some comic books in German and thought it might be nice to
gather the links to comic book sources together.

EMK shared the http://www.izneo.com/ site for French comic books.

Than we all know lots of things can be found on pirate sources that are forbidden to
share on the forums.

But there are some non pirate sources as well.

My recent catch:

comicbook+
A site with public domain comic books. Many English ones but the link leads directly
to the list of comic books in other languages, which the site claims to be growing
fast. Right now, there are only 4 in German (to my slight disappointment), but there
are as well 2 in Arabic, 80 in Catalan, 26 in Dutch,214 in French, 12 in Hindi, 135 in
Italian, 1 in Philippine, 71 in Portuguese, 44 in Romanian, 2842 in Spanish.
The only downside is that you need to register.

I am now going through a dozen more links and I'll post should I find something good.
5 persons have voted this message useful



iguanamon
Pentaglot
Senior Member
Virgin Islands
Speaks: Ladino
Joined 5277 days ago

2241 posts - 6731 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French)

 
 Message 2 of 8
10 May 2015 at 4:03pm | IP Logged 
Thanks, Cavesa! This is a great find. There is more than enough content here to help a lot of people with their languages. Granted, it's not modern series, but for an easy, free and legal site this is wonderful.

Comic books are a great way to improve language skills. I have read Persepolis, Maus, Asterix and 136 issues of The Walking Dead in Portuguese. Some may look down on comic books/graphic novels as somehow not worthy or "beneath them", but they are amazingly useful for picking up colloquial language, even translated from English. "Maus" a graphic novel about the Holocaust, won a Pulitzer Prize in the US. "Persepolis" explores the Iranian Revolution through a young girl's eyes and her consequent immigration to Europe as a teenager. "The Walking Dead" of course is about zombies and how people manage to survive in a post apocalyptic world- hey, comics are also great fun and zombies are cool!

So, before dismissing comic book series out of hand as "juvenile" or "unworthy", think about how useful they are to a language-learner. Written conversational speech with visual clues from the illustrations help to provide a good way to pick up colloquial speech and speech patterns in a fun way.

I like the old late 1930's through 1950's visual style of comics and this site has plenty of that. I liken it to rock and roll of the late 1960's and 1970's. It was young, new, innovative and different than what came before. So I have registered for the site with my email address that I reserve especially for such purposes.

I will be downloading the Catalan series and some of the Portuguese ones for sure. Not that I am "studying" Catalan officially, but I seem to be learning a lot via twitter

As my contribution, the European Union has two comic books available for free pdf download from the European Social Fund iniative in most of the EU official languages. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and look for "Jump Start" and "Take Two". With so many languages available it also gives an opprtunity to utilize them as parallel texts.

For Spanish-learners/speakers there's- Lektu.com. Lektu has a wide range of modern-day comics that are available for purchase and also has some free downloads. There are many non-translated original comics in Spanish. I like the series by Andrés Palomino.

My favorite Spanish comic is the hilarious ¿Dónde está el guionista? which I bought in hardcopy from dibbuks.com. It's written by Andrés Palomino and drawn by Àlex Roca who also writes and draws cool comics in Catalan. The link I gave has a 4 page preview and there's also a video.

Of course, while you can read pdf's on a computer, a tablet makes the reading experience much more enjoyable. A tablet doesn't have to be an iPad. New android tablets in the US can be had for as little as $40 on ebay.

Again, thank you very much, Cavesa for sharing this.

Edited by iguanamon on 10 May 2015 at 6:43pm

6 persons have voted this message useful



Elenia
Diglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
lilyonlife.blog
Joined 3871 days ago

239 posts - 327 votes 
Speaks: English*, French
Studies: German, Swedish, Esperanto

 
 Message 3 of 8
10 May 2015 at 8:08pm | IP Logged 
Comixology is available in French and seems to have
quite a lot of popular titles (a lot of Marvel and DC), as well as indie titles, as far
as I can tell. I have used the iPhone app and it's a very interesting and engaging
reading experience, unlike any other platform I've used.
2 persons have voted this message useful



Cavesa
Triglot
Senior Member
Czech Republic
Joined 5024 days ago

3277 posts - 6779 votes 
Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1
Studies: Spanish, German, Italian

 
 Message 4 of 8
11 May 2015 at 1:55am | IP Logged 
After some time, I've just checked the website of the Goethe Institut and found a new (or
"new", I don't know) feature they are providing their library members with. And probably
paying members of all their libraries. E-library! When you pay your normal library fee,
you get access to the e-library as well, where you can download books and some other
media as well. And the files just get destroyed after some time, which deals with the
copy"right" issues. There are only 7 comic books for now, but the list might be growing.
Other than that, there are a few thousand books!

0.html">e-library
1 person has voted this message useful



sillygoose1
Tetraglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4651 days ago

566 posts - 814 votes 
Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French
Studies: German, Latin

 
 Message 5 of 8
11 May 2015 at 2:45am | IP Logged 
I can't add much, but for anyone learning Italian, "Leo Pulp" is a great series with a ton of colloquial language.
2 persons have voted this message useful



Chung
Diglot
Senior Member
Joined 7171 days ago

4228 posts - 8259 votes 
20 sounds
Speaks: English*, French
Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish

 
 Message 6 of 8
13 May 2015 at 6:44pm | IP Logged 
Here are some comic strips (rather than comic books) that I've used over the years.

BCMS/SC
Qolumbo (web comic that ran from 2006 to 2008 and set during Christopher Columbus' expedition)
Strip vesti (a comic magazine that's been running since 2007. The comic strips are usually found in the monthly publications in the table under "Godina" (year) and "Mesec" (month). I found "Montenegrini" by Simon Vučković and "Cane" by Goran Milenković in the monthly issue to be the best for my purposes)
Politikin Zabavnik (archive of issues of a popular young people's magazine. There's usually a comic strip of Hagar the Horrible ("Hogar" ("Хогар") in BCMS/SC) visible to unregistered users in each back issue online).

CZECH
Garfield (translations of about the first ten years' of daily strips)

FINNISH
Kiroileva siili (web comic - not all that funny but later installments can be instructive with the characters' use of Southern Ostrobothnian dialect and Helsinkian dialect/slang)
Viivi ja Wagner (strip that also appears regularly in the newspaper "Helsingin Sanomat")
Musta hevonen (web comic)
Bentonisaappaat (web comic)
Supermukula (web comic that ran from 2009 to 2014)
Oswald (web comic that ran from 2006 to 2013)

POLISH
Tori Komix (web comic that ran from 2010 to 2014)
Głosy w mojej głowie (web comic)
Galeria Andrzeja Mleczki (satirical cartoons that are better for intermediate or even advanced learners because of the cultural or political references)
Garfield ((a fan's?) translation from English)
Real Life (a fan's translation from English original)
fistaszki )a fan's translation from English of many Peanuts' cartoons)

SLOVAK
S H O O T Y - ...som Grogy (one of several web comics by Martin Šútovec)

UKRAINIAN
Огірок - переклади коміксів украïнською (fans' translations of several comics from English including Cyanide and Happiness and Dilbert)
Українські комікси (assorted comics in Ukrainian on Вконтакте)
Комікси українською мовою (assorted web comics translated from English)

I usually see an installment from the German web comic/cartoon Ruthe.de on my news feed in Facebook through one of my German friends who's a fan.
6 persons have voted this message useful



Cavesa
Triglot
Senior Member
Czech Republic
Joined 5024 days ago

3277 posts - 6779 votes 
Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1
Studies: Spanish, German, Italian

 
 Message 7 of 8
13 May 2015 at 7:54pm | IP Logged 
Chung, I wish I could just hug you now! Thanks!

for Czech learners: motolkomix.cz is an awesome and hilarious collection made by a
medicine student.
1 person has voted this message useful



Chung
Diglot
Senior Member
Joined 7171 days ago

4228 posts - 8259 votes 
20 sounds
Speaks: English*, French
Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish

 
 Message 8 of 8
13 May 2015 at 9:13pm | IP Logged 
Není zač Terézko.


1 person has voted this message useful



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