Hi All !

Just a quick note to let you know of what’s  happening right now in the BabelComics underground.

Moon Town’s readers must have made out my reuse of Triple Bee’s favorite punch line (© Steve ) in the title. This is what mind contamination looks like. I’ve been spending some time with news-DJ Triple Bee lately, in the translation process, as you will soon see for yourselves. Steve Ogden is about to publish the next 10  Luna Ville French episodes. Steve made it absolutely clear that he wanted the French version to be as true to the original as possible. As you’ve all noticed, Moon Town readers, Steve gives a lot of attention to speech bubbles in his comics. They really blend into the pages, they are part of the Moon Town look’n feel. And as French is more verbose than English, Steve has to rework almost every single one of them !  And by the way, on August the 30st, the temporary Moon Town hiatus will be over and the Moon Town main storyline will resume with a load of new strips !! Can’t wait !

The French version of  Légende de Bill, will be available soon. The forty first episodes have been translated, but David is in the process of switching hosts for Legend Of Bill, moving  to  Th3rdWorldStudio which will also handle the printed versions of LOB. As you can guess, this adds a lot of  additional work on an already over-busied author !! So,  readers, if you please, go check out the pre-orders for The Legend of Bill Collection 1 – Artist Edition ! Grab your copy. There’s unpublished stuff inside you wont find anywhere else on the web.

More news on Astray3, By Moon Alone, and Dead Heaven very soon !

Hi all !

As more and more of what we’ve got in store is about to be released online, I re-designed some parts of this portal. The main addition is the “Strip posts”.
Each time a member of BabelComics posts a new translated strip on his own site, a post is automatically generated here on Babel, to give you another chance to go read it as soon as it becomes available. These posts only consist of a lowres screen capture of the strip, linking directly to the original sites. You won’t read it here, but you’re always one click away from your updated strips !

Of course, you can use the RSS feed (top menu) to be informed of each update, but for those of you who don’t like using them, you now have an alternative : come back here every day. As things get rolling on Babel, there should even be more than one update a day.

This was Cathbad, radio Babel.

Hi all !

Steve Ogden has made available on his website the ten new translated strips of the Luna Ville (Moon Town) saga !  And you can subscribe to the French Moon Town RRS FEED.

Now French readers can read it through, right to the Cliffhanger on strip 20. We’ll be working on the translation of the next ten strips very soon, but in the meantime, let me share with you the kind of discussions we have with Steve during the translation process.

Steve, as readers might have noticed, makes up quite a lot of expressions. People in Moon Town talk about “Beats and Deets” when referring to the latest news, people who’re “all business” are told to “wait a tick”, and most of all, when not following a beacon vector, they “Break Lane”.

Breaking Lane is the title of the fisrt Moon Town chapter, so we had better get it right. Here’s a short excerpt of the kind of discussions we have, late at night :
Cathbad :

Translator alert !* *Sorry, captain, this entry was not programmed into  my database … *;) What does “break lane” *exactly* mean ? To get out of the trajectory (sortie de trajectoire)? To slow down before halting ? Need your help. This one and the next temporarily use a mix of the two but I’ll redo them after you tell me

Steve :

OK. Sorry about this – this is a made-up phrase. It means to leave the route you’re supposed to follow. You know those little satellite things that line the approach vector to Moon Town? You’re supposed to follow that route. Leaving it means you are “breaking lane”.Here is the dictionary entery from the Moon Town comic, oddly -
Breaking Lane – [brey⋅king leyn] (v.). Deviating from the prescribed route; straying from the expected road; going off the beaten path; zigging where others may zag; taking the path less traveled.

“It is TLS airspace entry protocol that all craft adhere to the approach vector lane markings. As manual control has been determined by the TLS to be so unreliable as to be unsafe, breaking lane is not recommended.”
- from the TerraLuna Security Agency field manual.

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I’ve just finished listening to my Moon Town rendez vous tonight, and wow, this episode was especially sweet to our ears, my precious

Not only because Steve Ogden probably has the most sexiest voice in all Maryland’s wine country (says my wife), not only because  Steve speaks of characters as you always wished your literature teachers would (but seldom did), not only because of the excellent music by Tim Larkin in the background, but… because he speaks of us !

Steve gives us a good five minutes of praises, for Mirlikovir’s work on Oghme Comics and mine on Babel, and let’s indulge into some auto-satisfaction here for a minute, that sure feels good. Thank you Steve.

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We’re making progress in our translation of our members’ archives, and as you might probably have already noticed, there already are ten Moon Town (Luna Ville) episodes available in French on Steve Ogden’s Blog. Steve has written some very nice words about his introduction into the French subculture, and even speaks some French in the comments.

“Here are the first ten Moon Town strips in French! My good friends over at Oghme Comics have done a bang-up job translating these (…)”

Go check it out !

And thanks for your support to BabelComics promotion Steve, you rock

We also did some ‘test drive’ with David Reddick on Legend of Bill (Légende de Bill), and he too wrote some awesome introduction. You can reach the samples here :

“The fine folks at Oghme Comics have done it again!(…)”

“A big hand to Oghme Comics for putting the currect LoB into French! Thanks, guys!!(…)”

Much more to come soon and thank you, David !

Last but nor least, we’re working with Hai on the first 30 pages or so of his excellent By Moon Alone (Par la Lune). We’re honing our practice on the fly, and this collaborative work is getting more and more exciting, as I’m allowed to dwelve into the story to the deepest level.

Check this blog soon for some update.

See you all,

Cathbad

Welcome to Babelcomics !

Yet another webcomic portal ? Yes, yet another. Only this one has its specificities.

Why the French ? Why them ? Why ??

(Napoleon was French, they kiss like snakes and their burgundi wine is outrageously expensive !)

We’re two French webcomicers, bravely hiding behind the pen names of Cathbad and Mirlikovir, authors of the CucuC / Cuchulainn tandem. You might even have heard of it. You might also know that Comics, in France, are huge. They sell as well as novels, and often are to be found on the front displays of general book stores. Only here we don’t call them comics, but “Bandes Dessinées”. Français Oblige

The number of new Bandes Dessinées published every single month in France and Belgium is amazing, by comparison to the number of inhabitants of French speaking countries. Yet, webcomics have not yet become here the phenomenon they are in the UK/US, Australia, New Zealand, and I’m not even talking about online Manga.

Wel like webcomics, and often find ourselves in the following situation. A friend of ours suffers from a Comics addiction and… wants to read more online comics. We can redirect them to an Anonymous Webcomicoholic Therapy Group, ooooor… we can also find ourselves answering :  “go check **my favorite webcomic here**, it totally rocks”.

Just before we add : “ah,… erh… yes, it’s in English”. Then our friend  visits the website,  looks at the art, and comes back to us with statements like “man, now I’m real pissed ! I want to read this, when will it be translated to French ?”. We look at them with mild uncompromising expressions, aaaand…

They join the local Therapy Group.  Help us save them.

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