On National Super Heroes, German 1940s War Comics and a moan..

It has not been a good day so far -and it's only 14:18 hrs (UK time).

Last night was pain and, as usual, a very rough night so when I woke this morning I was not feeling the best.  Heavy rain. Sod it, it's half-a-mile to Sainsbury's so to wake myself I head off there but add an extra mile plus by diverting up the road to the B&M store.

Get back, do some tidying up and...my sister tells me the Virgin Media TV box (NEVER sign up to VM!!!!) is not working.  Do all the checks.  Call them up: "You may have to wait up to one minute" -no problem. Ten minutes later I am screaming at the blaring Maroon 5 song and other crap -none played in full otherwise they might have to pay. Call again.  Same thing but, fifteen minutes later 'Trevor', with a barely understandable Indian accent speaks to me.  After checks he tells me that the box, which my sister got about three years ago from VM is "completely obsolete.  You will not be able to get all the services paid for".  So, sis has to wait until Wednesday or Thursday for "a more modern box" to arrive.

Then I sit down and see an email about my CBO German super heroes post.  Apparently, "Betaraay78" thinks "this is a joke, right?  There aint never been no German super hero comics -I studied all this when I got into comics back in 2010".  Well, I think "Betaraay78" missed a few grammar lessons and really needs to learn how to use a search engine.  Also "how come I cant find no info on you in comics?"  At this point I decided that maybe he ought to change his pseudonym to "Dickhead78"?

My response?  I simply wrote: "You are a MORON. Go away"  I thought that was far more subdued than what I was going to write which I would have needed a LOT of asterisks for to repeat on CBO!

It's similar to the -STILL???- maintained argument by US and UK comic know-it-alls that "Nazi Germany was totally against comics" and so none appeared from the 1930s until early 1950s. Complete rubbish.  On CBO I even posted this to prove this was just very -VERY- bad research on the, uh, 'experts' part:

Yes, Germany HAD War Time (1939-45) Comics

It is very interesting.  ”What is?” you ask.  Well, let me tell you.

For years my German grand-father told me there were comic strips in Germany during the 1939-1945 war. Oh, but all those comic ‘experts’ (X=The Unknown and Spurt is a drip under pressure) who are into the Bandes Dessinee chuckled at my stupidity: “Don’t you know? The Germans hated comics -they were banned. Silly boy.”

One might wonder  WHY the country that gave us Max and Moritz (oh, just google them) would ban what could be useful propaganda tools -the Americans and Brits used comics for “Hun” and “Nip” bashing…uh, almost 70 years later they still do but it’s more liberal “can’t cut the string” between comics and Nazis that outright, often racist,propaganda.

I was even sure that, while at Kleine Marpe school in Germany I had seen a German war comic from the 1940s -found in someones barn but quickly confiscated (Gaarrgh!). But then…

JF Ptak Science Books  made a quick post on 7th November, 2011 http://longstreet.typepad.com/thesciencebookstore/2011/11/wwii-german-comics-propaganda.html

The Bilderbogen vom Krieg–some examples of propaganda aimed at German children, efforts to convince them of the winning of the war, evidently a universal attempt….

Source:  Deutschsprachige Comics und Romanhefte vor 1945 here

“Famany der fliegende Mensch” (1937) according to Puj Claus:"Famany -The Flying Man probably only appeared in the 1937 run of "Gazebo"- the hero using all means to fight against the criminal underworld in the U.S..

I know that it's highly unlikely but one day I would love to see a synopsis of this serial -and WHY all the aircraft after one man!

 

Ooh, now don’t those look to you like war comics…from the Second World War period to boot.

The site in question is run by the same person who runs the Dideldum childrens comic page. It’s interesting but shows the utter stupidity of German law -Hitler has to have his face obscured as does any swastika.  These are HISTORICAL publications but cannot be shown for fear of the law (yet Nazi thugs get together to celebrate Hitler’s birthday!!).

http://home.arcor.de/hitlerjugendzeitung2/index.htm

I need to go over the site more but I believe the owner Herr Claus is the person who discovered these.  He is invaluable to German comics history!

Yes, the Germans did exactly what the Allied Countries did both comic strip, cartoon and pin-up wise. There really was not that much difference –but Germany mainly forgot its War time comics.

Now, of course, our beloved comic ‘experts’ will start announcing their “new discovery” with no credit to anyone else.

One expects this.

 

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The reaction from the "comic elite" when I sent out links to all of this? Not...one...single...word...in...response!

But, I do know from past experience, that a lot of American comic fans do not accept that these comics ARE comics for the simple reason that "the USA had super hero comics so why didn't Germany if it had comics then?" I have no idea as to how I ought to reply politely to that.  If it is sequential art then it is a comic strip.  No word balloons but words being called out -and the picture panels with text under them are typical of early UK and American comics.

A comic is a comic.  Word.

Why no super heroes? Oh lords! That could take hours of debate and I simply do not have the time nor energy (nor interest) to debate Nazi philosophy.  Accept it -they just did not have super heroes -but if they had they would have been fighting the Allies and "Captain Germany" #1 would have shown him delivering a left hook to Roosevelt's jaw.  Allied heroes would be villains. 

Of course, even if some were ridiculous, we still love those US Golden Age Nazi villains and the crap they spouted.  Talking to German publishers in Germany in the 1980s I raised a point made to me by comickers in the UK.  There had only, in the 1980s, been one pirated (illegal) comic featuring Judge Dredd in German -why? He was big in the UK, US and German comickers had referenced 2000 AD so he was not obscure?  I got the same response from everyone:  "In Germany's recent history we had jack-booted fascists who were judge, jury and executioner and Germany is certainly not ready for one as an anti-hero yet!"

The point was made.  Dredd was, and still is (?), basically, a fascist and the story that ALWAYS sticks in the mind of someone who read it was "Letter From a Democrat": The martyrdom of Hester Hyman" -a seven page (if I remember rightly) story from 2000 AD #460. That was 1986.  Even now it still clings to my mind.

Marvel and DC have had German characters but mostly villains, arrogant -but some minor heroes such as Vormund

But rather like Captain Britain, all tend to be molded in the "American view of Europe and Europeans" as Archie Goodwin once put it to me. Oddly, at a UK Comic Art Convention in the 1980s I was talking to Jerry Ordway and he mentioned how Americans tended to have a 1930s-1940s Hollywood idea of Europe -even if they had visited it!  One of my brother, Peter's, friends from Canada was shocked back in the late 1970s -all the men were NOT wearing bowler hats and carrying brollies, there were no pea-souper fogs -he was flummoxed (especially since we had tarmac roads and pavements not cobblestones!

 If you just imagine German characters are all just arrogant, blond-haired, blue-eyed, muscle bound neo-Nazi types well, you've probably been reading American comics. And if you think it true that "Germans don't have a sense of humour" then, buddy, YOU are brain dead and you probably DO believe that Hitler ran around screaming about...well, having one testicle...really being a woman....having daily contact with extraterrestrials (that might be true?) and "really loved animals".  And there ain't no racism in the United States.

Belgium, Netherlands, Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine -where ever- can all have their own heroes and refer back to folklore, legend and so on for ideas.  I once put together (back in the late 1980s)  a 20 pages comic featuring Belgian super heroes -who will be popping up in The Green Skies if I ever finish it.  But I did a LOT of background research and added in things I had seen in Belgium...which is actually a nice country.

The importance is that you DO NOT think "How would Stan and Jack do this?" No no no no no no! Get your character, build up the background -where was he/she born, go to school and what are those places like -landmarks and so on.  Local myths or legends?  And so on. Gerd Hamer used to do a lot of comic writing in the 1980s to 1993 (where is he now??) and in a piece looking at the possibility of super heroes in German comics (he had seen and read the D-Gruppe material) said it was "possible but we need someone like the father of European super heroes, Mr Hooper, to make characters born of their location".  

Heh. "father of European super heroes"....but also villains -right??

We "old farts", who look at comics from the UK and Germany of the 1930s-1950s, and no one is really interested.  It is not "radical" or "socio-political" or "hardcore" enough.  Of course, to 95% if it "ain't got no super heroes it ain't worth crap!"   The UK Golden Age books had some negative feedback (from people who had NEVER purchased a copy but went by contents list) because the books contained humour, action and adventure and they would only buy IF it was wholly UK super hero material!!!

We really do need far more historians in comics you know!

So, bad day for me, bread rolls smell like they might be getting too "browned" so I'm out of here.  If you are from any country and have links to old comics or comic history sites from your country PLEASE leave a comment and link.

Thank you. 

ps. No, I have no idea WHY part of the text is highlighted in white -nothing I can do about it!