Germanys FIRST Super Hero Team -D-Gruppe...And I'm Their Daddy!

Jeeeez! The hits counter is sky-rocketing.

Anyway, I mentioned Chris Dohr publishing D-Gruppe -"Rache Der Eis Konigin"/"Revenge of the Ice Queen"- in his film/tv/comic/pulps mag Watcher. It was in 1989. And WHY he hand lettered the strip -that mess has NOTHING to do with me!

And I realise this is not the earlier German language version.  That one I think may have come from East Germany (nice little photocopied deal we had going on back then) and I have no copy. Bastei did but that's probably gone!

So here's a bit of a re-post +!
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D-Gruppe In Watcher nr.2

Watcher Das Internationale magazin fuer Phantastik was a photocopied fanzine of sorts published by Chris Dohr from Trier, in Germany.  It covered movies -such as The Fly (original), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Willow, the TV series UFO as well as fantasy literature and comics.

There were some great single illoes by American Dave Fontaine, from Attleboro-where is he now?? The third issue of Watcher contained a lengthy strip by David Stepheson (from the UK -another “Where is he now!?”) The Master Of Mengerheim (a strip originally published in Black Tower Previews Comic.

But earlier in 1989, Chris published the first story featuring D-Gruppe -Rache Der Eis Konigin. By 1989 “Gruppe D” as it was title in the magazine, was a well known strip in Germany amongst fans. Helge “Herod” Korda had already parodied it in a mini comic titled D-Suppe (“D-Soup”) which I no longer have sadly.

I was not very impressed by the way the strip was presented (crooked printing on some pages) but where I had a big problem was…the translation.  Ice Queen is feminine so it should have been “Die” rather than “Der” (?). I was also surprised that the name of a German national monument such as Externsteinen was miss-spelt as “Externen Steinen”!

Although I was not too keen on this German version I was surprised to learn that it had been copied and distributed to comic fans in East Germany where there was a strong underground zine scene.

But what the heck -here, unedited, is the story from Watcher. Herod -if you see this PLEASE tell me you still have a copy of “D-Suppe”!!!

And............

Germany’s First Ever Super Heroes….

Yes, as I believe I may have chronicled at some point on CBO, back in the 1960s, as a kid, I was living in Germany. Mykros, Fotonik and Wastl were the only super types in comics and they were Franco Belgian creations of  by (Mikros) Marcel Navarro (writer) and the fabulous Jean-Yves Mitton on art, (Photonik) again by Navarro and the artist was another great -Cyrus and, lastly, (Wastl) by Willy Vandersteen -all detailed here:

http://www.comicbitsonline.com/2012/05/06/ich-bin-ein-komicker-i-really-am-running-out-of-titles/

So, just like I created my own British heroes so I set about creating German heroes. It, again, is all outlined in this interview somewhere:

http://www.comicbitsonline.com/2011/06/27/the-terry-hooper-interview-by-phil-latter/

Above: The mock up (dummy) cover for D-Gruppe 1 by Ben R. Dilworth

Below: Ben Dilworth D-Gruppe page.

all art & characters (c)2013 Terry Hooper-Scharf/Ben R. Dilworth/BTC&B

D-Gruppe was recently a 4 issue series and had a 2012 Annual. Some of the characters appeared in cameos in other Black Tower books and were seen more recently in the mega big Return Of The Gods: Twilight Of The Super Heroes –some D-Gruppe members vanishing in their craft as they pursued a UFO…and what happened, well that story has yet to be told!

 

Ben R. Dilworth -who collaborated by inking my pencils superbly in the first officially published D-Gruppe story, The Revenge Of the Ice Queen, is back on board and his inks look superb.

But who is publishing this new book? Ahh, you might think Black Tower and you could be right though we also hope to get a German publisher on board…but it’s all very “ssshh!”

D-Gruppe In Space ….sound interesting?

We’ll see.