PETALING JAYA, Sept 24 — Malaysian cartoonist Ernest Ng Thye Sern has been tickling people with his webcomics titled Covidball Z on the nation’s pandemic situation.

Now, the content creator has upped his game by publishing a comic book titled Covidball Z that features Malaysia’s Covid-19 scenes and famous personalities such as Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah and his efficient ways of combating the pandemic.

According to Ng, 34, he started the Covid-19 webcomics edition and also animated motion comics just before the movement control order (MCO) was put in place.

"But for the comic book version, I only started it much later after my fans encouraged me to create a more detailed and elaborated book using the same name.

"And most of the scenes in the comic book are exactly the same with the webcomics published on my social media accounts, but there are new additions to the books that have not been published on my website yet,” he told Malay Mail.

The 34-year-old also said that he wanted to create something funny and yet relevant to users so he thoroughly did his research first and re-read the news to understand what was happening.

"Because the Covid-19 situation was such big news when it was first announced together with the implementation of the MCO, I thought of creating Covid-19 themed webcomics alongside other current news.

"And I had to make sure I translated what I knew about the news into a simple format so that readers are able to understand the Covid-19 situation in the country.

"In terms of my characters, I chose the first person in my mind after reading a particular news and I continued polishing that idea as I sketched the characters and their persona.”

He was also glad to get good feedback from his readers saying that they enjoyed reading the webcomics and found it easy to understand.

The content creator also confessed that initially he was sceptical about interpreting news and then translating it into webcomics as he was afraid of what people’s views were about it.

"But social media users liked the idea and its humour elements, and that made me glad.

"And that was when some of my fans told me that they wanted me to create the comic book so that the book would be like their Sejarah book narrating the country’s pandemic situation in the country.”

Ng ventured into his comic creation full-time in 2013 but has been actively sketching comics since he was five years old.

Among his other comic books include Bro Don’t Like That La Bro: Here Comes The Bros, My Bad Bromance, The Brofessionals, Back To School, Back To School 2: Second Class.

Today is the first day of the release of Covidball Z, and the book is priced at RM19.90 with 112 pages and has 11 chapters.

Those keen on buying can surf over to https://bit.ly/3COVIDBALLZ-FB.