I was asked by someone -not on this blog obviously as no one ever comments or asks questions here- about the art for D-Gruppe and why it changed from the first story.
Well, the Revenge of the Ice Queen story was pencilled by me and on a visit to Bristol Ben Dilworth took a fancy to the pages "I'll ink those" he said as he put the pages into his bag. On his next visit a month later the pages were all inked and how could I not love them? The style was just so right for the story and it was what attracted an editor at Bastei Verlag in Germany.
Sadly, the Big Fella (that's him to the left) moved to Osaka in Japan and that left me with the art chores. The pencils were fine but then health issues kicked in and I just ploughed through inking the pages and although people liked the pages I see every single flaw. Other artists have tried to draw the series but most give up as they complained about no skyscrapers and the lack of super steroid physiques -all the characters are perfectly regular builds. Mr Dilworth has created a few D-Gruppe strips over recent years -as you'll have seen on this blog.
The Osaka Giant has two styles and one is a very loose style but is still full of energy and works with the stories he writes. The other style is solid black and white and when he uses that I don't think any b&w artist comes near to his quality.
My style has developed into almost an old British weekly comic strip one; Dilworth is a 100% better artist than I will ever be so I do what I do which is a serious style with a few cartoony aspects that do not look too over the top cartoony as I don't like that style. Every time I take a break of a few weeks from drawing the style changes slightly but that is my problem!
I ought to remind people that Izzy Iskander Islam drew Rotkappchen and John Erasmus drew Deutsch Michael and both are excellent -these pages can be found on this blog.
So in response to the original question the art is not the same as the genius of Mr Dilworth is not drawing it!
