Back in the late 1980s I was trying to interest various German
comic companies to take projects that I was working on. As a youngster
in Germany I saw the out-put of Bastei, Kauka, Williams and so on but
apart from Disney comics and Kauka, everything tended to be, as I later
found out, Franco-Belgian with a little British and even Spanish mixed
in. Except for the Marvel reprints (oddly, I do have a few DC reprints
but I never saw that many.
Three characters I loved, and I don’t think that is a secret to regulars of CBO, were Wastl der Superkraftlackl mit dem goldenen Herzen -aka “Jerome” , “Angus” etc.- from the Willy Vandersteen created Suske en Wiske. A, uh, German super hero created by a Nederlander.
Then there was Mykros: Die Kampfer Der Titanen by Marcel Navarro (writer) and the fabulous Jean-Yves Mitton on art. French.
This was followed by Photonik again by Navarro and the artist was another great -Cyrus Tota. So, uh, French.
Prsonally, I never understood it. Yes, kids were interested in the
funny animals and Westerns -I don’t think interest in Westerns ever faded in Germany.
Of course, this all led to my creating D-Gruppe: Deutschland’s Erste Superhelden Gruppe and
while I was talking to a Bastei editor in…1989(?) I mentioned this and
he said he had seen the strip in the TV/film/comic/fantasy fanzine Watcher ,
published by Stephen Dohr. Quite a bit of my work had seen its way
around German zinesters and the editor told me -Gerd Hammer calls you
“The Father of German super heroes!” Even to this day I have no idea
who Gerd Hammer was (possibly someone at Bastei?).
I couldn’t let that go without a pitch and the first was for,
obviously, D-Gruppe. He liked the mix of super hero, sci-fi and fantasy
that I put forward. Yes, briefly, Bastei was c0nsidering publishing a
German super hero comic!
The other pitch was for the series The Cosmic Fulcrum which I gave the rough German title of Kosmisch Stützpunkt. This was nothing really to do with the original Black Tower Cosmic Fulcrum but a new story -this became Return Of The Gods: Twilight Of The Super Heroes which ran in BT Adventure nos. 1-6. And it featured an international cast including German heroes.
Everything was underway and by the time the first issues were done
and dusted it looked all go. Then silence. I later learnt that Egmont
had bought out Bastei and cancelled a great deal and editors were told
they could not phone or write to creators -it was “wasted money” and so
it all ended!
I thought it probably worth publishing myself as a Small Press
comic but there were quite a few complications. And no one in the comic
fan community seemed interested in German super heroes…had I actually
just gone ahead and ignored the negative “arties” I might have gotten
somewhere as it seems the first adventure of D-Gruppe -The Revenge Of The Ice Queen- that had been published in Watcher was much photocopied and handed around, particularly in the then East Germany!
Of course, these days the comic would need a better translation
than I could give it. I wonder how things might have gone or developed
had eith D-Gruppe or Kosmisch Stützpunkt been published by Bastei?
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