Dollicious

This blog is for Disney comics, but we may also use it to celebrate the accomplishments of its readers, yeah? It's what Christmas is all about.

Well, yes. So, as you may know, and if you didn't you do now, our own Pan Milius, aka, Maciek Kur, is a comics creator in his own right. Polish comics may not tend to get a lot of international attention (although, of course, The Witcher is Polish, so it's not like there's no crossover), but he's rocking them. His flagship series, and I think the only one to be localized into English, is Dollicious, which we will discuss today. For context, quite some time ago, he got his publisher to send me complementary copies to review, and DAMN did I ever flake out on him (admit it: you thought I'd never get to it.  So did I, kind of). There are various reasons, but really, there's no dang excuse. So here we are!

So the concept behind Dollicious is that there are people called Delipals, in a city named Alacart, all named after various foods, and they live in a sort of food-themed society and do slice-of-life kind of things. While I was poking around while writing this, I came across the suggestion that actually, the characters are the personifications of their names; I feel like it's difficult to get that from the actual text, but it's a cool idea and would put things in a different perspective.

...and, as you can see, all the characters are girls and women. Older women (no one's especially old) are the "older sisters" of the girls they take care of. It's not that the male gender doesn't exist; a few pets receive male pronouns (and if this is a commentary on the relative importance of men, I am down for it!). This point isn't addressed or anything; it's just how it IS (and there are few if any sapphic undertones). I think it's a good thing, really. Have you SEEN what men have been getting up to lately?

We also have to give it up for Meago's art: anime-inflected but not TOO much so (to me, a little of that goes a long way), cute without ever being cloying, and appropriately energetic for the hijinx going on. It would be a little unwieldy to include interior images here, but the covers perfectly convey it.

...but what, precisely, happens here? The concept is not the same as the plot. Well...it's actually a little hard to describe. The main character (if there is one, and that's a big if) would have to be Ramen, the one making an okay symbol on the first cover. The stories mostly though not always take place around her Pasta Restaurant--cooking contests, concerts, comedy, vacations, et al.  But the fact is, it's not super-easy to talk about specific characters, because there are A LOT of them. Seriously, LOOK at 'em all--Maciek is constantly adding new ones, and while there is some effort made to differentiate them, that feels very secondary to the stories themselves, and I'd be kind of surprised if anyone remembered more than a handful. That's not really even a criticism; the stories work fine as it is. But it's definitely noticeable.

The stories vary; some of them are purely self-contained page-long gags and some are loose, longer plots. It must be said that they're aimed at a somewhat younger demographic than me; the amazon descriptions say 7-12, and that sounds about right. Not that I didn't enjoy them! I especially appreciated the occasional wordless stories. There's an eight-page silent story in the first book, in particular, which is really charming and definitely my favorite thing in the series. I will absolutely read more of these, if they're published in English, which unfortunately seems a little iffy at this time. Be that as it may, check 'em out if you like that kind of thing!