Is It Possible For Germany To Have Its Own Super Hero Comics?
(OTHER GENRES ARE AVAILABLE)
I had a very vivid dream about German comic books the other morning. I woke at 0350hrs and my creative side went into overdrive. Now I have referred to German comic books before on CBO:
The NextArt Hades Syndrome:
http://hoopercomicart.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/the-next-arthades-syndrom-6-end.html
And the Next Art series Der Engel:
http://hoopercomicart.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/nextart-der-engel.html
I even took a long -very long- look at German super heroes over more recent years:
http://hoopercomicart.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/on-german-super-heroes-and-why-i-am.html
Back in the 1980s, sadly my last visit to see my German family, I picked up loads of comic albums and even a few comics. These included....
Elefenwelt is, obviously, Elf Quest. Sumpfding is Swamp Thing (I had to get this image from the net as my scanner has decided to be..."temperamental"!) Lovely Berni Wrightson art.
The Mercenary is an international success, but not in the UK -the US?
And I almost missed this one behind some magazines (I can remember that so maybe there is hope) -"Gespenster Geschichten" screamed out at me. I did a posting on German horror comics and reprints of the UK Scream therein...
http://hoopercomicart.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/gespenster-geschichten-prasentiert.html
and...
http://hoopercomicart.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/ich-habe-spuk-gesehen-und-ich-mochte.html
Of course, the fact that the artist was Richard Corben was no draw for me!!
I also found some Mykros comics and a couple of Phantom books.....
I cannot remember whether it was in Lemgo or Detmold, though I believe Lemgo, that I saw a comic shop in a shopping area. Doors open I walked in to be greeted by a young man who said "Wir sind zu!" (we're closed) rather brusquely and waved me out after I enquired when he would be open "13 uhr!" he snapped. It was 1100hrs so was I going to wait two hours and go back to the shop of a rather rude person (and at that time in Germany shop staff were NEVER rude to a customer)? Nah. The fella was NOT a businessman because a businessman would have realised that a keen young customer meant a few Deutsch marks in the cash register!
But news stands and even the kaufhaus' (big supermarkets -what we called back then "hypermarkets") had comics. Not English language but, then, I could buy English language comics in England! A selection of Ehapa Batman und der Outsiders, Condor Verlag's Thor Jahrbuch and a few others satisfied me.
But have things changed in Germany? Have speciality stores taken all that trade?
I asked Subzero from Tales From The Kryptonian http://talesfromthekryptonian.blogspot.co.uk/ a few questions -after all, he's in Germany and it saved him thinking about Markie Post and Heather Thomas!
Can you still buy comics in places like kaufhaus'?
"... you will now probably find stuff like MICKY MAUS Taschenbücher or the comic for the new SPIDER - MAN UNLIMITED series there. But it´s been a while since I looked for comics in Kaufhaus. I guess you can also find stuff like the SIMPSON comics which are still hugely popular in Germany and other stuff that´s tied in with tv animated series like NARUTO or Spongebob. It´s been a while since I´ve been to Stuttgart City so I don´t know if they still have the small comicshop at the KARSTADT SPORT. I remember they had a signing of V FOR VENDETTA at the KARSTADT part of that mall and there were almost no people there because they didn´t promote it much. There´s another comicshop in the city of Stuttgart but I don´t go there very often because they only have German comics. But you can still find comics at some shopping malls."
Which is quite comprehensive a response! I guess it makes sense that German comic store owners would stock comics in the German language only -even if that means they lose out to all the English language comic readers -and whatever anyone tells you: there ARE a lot of them.
I then asked about news stands since this is where I used to pick up a few comics and my Oma (grand mother) used to pick up my uncle's porn and Disney comics....I really do not want to go there!
"Now as for your questions about newsstands that´s where people usually get porn - I mean comics. Here in and around Stuttgart WITTWER is a big company so there are newsstands at most subway stations where you can get comics. A particularly good one is in Bietigheim and in the train station of Stuttgart there are several.
"Most super heroes (comics) are published by PANIN but there is also stuff from Egmont on the stands. And of course the pulps I read in my youth like JOHN SINCLAIR, PROFESSOR ZAMORRA or GESPENSTER GESCHICHTEN. Last week I finally saw the PERRY RHODAN movie ( now about Perry Rhodan I could write a whole post with the various comic adaptions ) and it´s really bad. I mean, for the times it probably wasn´t a bad movie but it´s clear that the producers were not fans of the series so I´m not surprised there was never a sequel. But the germans even f***d up the JOHN SINCLAIR tv series which - at least if you look at the potential it has - is SHERLOCK meets X - FILES meets BUFFY. What a waste."
I hope Subzero does write a Perry Rhodan post. That series was allways big in books and comics -some drawn by Hans Rudi Wascher I think?
But back to Subzero's response:
"...there are still a lot of super hero comics at the newsstands and right now PANINI is publishing the MARVEL COMIC LIBRARY but only because it originates from Hachete and PANINI Europe. The germans themselves would never publish something like this. I think this was already published in the UK under the title of THE OFFICIAL MARVEL GRAPHIC NOVEL COLLECTION. The first issue were the first 6 issues of JMS´ Spider - Man run and it was 4 EUROS, the second issue was Joss Whedon and John Cassaday´s GIFTED which was 9 bucks and all others are 13 Euros. Which is a good price for a hardcover in Germany. So far I have gotten most of them even if I already have them in one form or another but I like to pimp my shelf porn The only ones I haven´t gotten so far are either stuff I already have in a collected hardcover editon like ULTIMATES 1 and 2 ( for me the series went downhill after that ) or comics that I´m sorry I ever spend money on or time to read it like DEADPOOL or AVENGERS DISASSEMBLED ( what a load of crap and the worst Hawkeye death scene EVER, just check out Chris Giarussco´s take on it in MINI MARVELS ) or Bendis SECRET WAR. Maybe one of my next posts will be about that."
And there you have German comics and super heroes all rounded up for you. I have to say I despise all the Mini Marvels stuff. There, that's my prejudice out there now!
I mentioned (check out that third link at the start of this post. Yes, I know it's a looong way back there but exercise is good for you!) Der Engel, Luft Konig, Dorn Der Morgen Stern and so on. Out of those three I think that Dorn is the most commercial. Der Engel has nothing wrong with it but Dorn is slick as all get up (whatever that means).
As I've written many times (and I do not want the respect just the money please), I created the first German super heroes -D-Gruppe- German characters, based in Germany and created while I lived on a farm Germany. Can you get any more German?
Had Ben Dilworth continued as inker on the series (oh what might have been!) then Amorph (very much a pre-Venom character -just as the black costumed, white eye-let Attacker was years before the "black Spider-man costume") would have been introduced along with Thor, Zauberrinen, Leere, Wildemann and others -some introduced in cameo during the Zeitgeist story.
Some were later adapted to be members of Task Force Germany. After many delays they are soon to see light of a printer!
There is nothing that ticks me off more than a person who says "But you cannot have super heroes outside of America -you need the huge cities. The sky-scrapers!" Utter, utter dog-dooh!
Did Perseus, Heracles, Thor, Gilgamesh, Samson, Hereward the Wake, King Arthur or any of the others who, historically, fit the bill of what we call today "super heroes" have to rely on huge cities and sky-scrapers? NO.
This is the arguement from people who, quite honestly, need to read a book and not just comics. Reading The Twelve Labours Of Hercules, Gun-fight At The OK Corral (yes -it was a book before the film), The Epic of Gilgamesh (two-thirds god and one third man), Jason and the Argonauts and mythology in general blew my mind as a youngster.
Ancient cities, ancient despots, forests and jungles, mountains and other locations providing the back-drop to these heroes and adventurers.
I had this conversation with UK editors and even with a couple at German comic companies. The guy who wanted to take the chance with D-Gruppe at Bastei was really pushing it -I get a feeling management might have said "go ahead" because they knew Egmont were about to buy them out -finishing my German comics career before it started!
I know in an email to me, Subzero did kinda say Hans Rudi Wascher http://www.lambiek.net/artists/w/wascher_hansrudi.htm was probably the reason Germany never had any super hero comics but that might be a trifle unfair. German publishers had ingrained into their heads that super heroes were "childish American creations" and the only reason Ehapa, Condor, Williams et al were publishing DC and Marvel comics was, I think, to try to make as much money as possible quickly because there appeared to be no long term plan -reprints plodded along rather as they did in the UK until a Marvel UK was formed....to issue reprints!
I tackled this attitude in the UK head-on in early 2012 and, as I don't bthink that post appeared on this site, here it is -The Improbability of the British Super Hero:
“Hmm. Don’t you understand? Think about it –we have no skyscrapers! How can you have American style super heroes in England?”
Those were the words of a Marvel UK editor (Dave White) back in the 1980s as I sat across from him having travelled from Bristol to London at his suggestion to discuss new projects. About a month later a very senior Marvel UK editor responded in the same words but adding “That is why UK comics have never had super heroes.”
Firstly, as I pointed out to Dave White, we are the UK. Britain. You think of characters for a comic as being English you are excluding Wales, Scotland and Ireland. Why?
My response to the senior editor is probably why things went a little “odd” work-wise. My first response was “So, what exactly is Marvel UK publishing? And Power Comics (Odhams) before it? And…” I went on to rattle off a very, very long list of British super characters going back to the 1940s. I think I ticked him off. Really, he should have known better though, in one respect, he was right.
British comics never had super heroes.
Before you start thinking that I’m on new medications and answering “Yes” and “No” at the same time allow me to explain.
Tim (Kelly’s Eye) Kelly travelled the world and even in time and space at one point and was totally indestructible. He was not a super hero.
Clem Macy, television news reporter had a costumed archer alter ego…The Black Archer. He was not a super hero.
Cathy had amazing cat-like abilities and wore a costume. She was not a super heroine.
William and Kathleen Grange were incredible acrobats and wore costumes as Billy the Cat and Katie The Cat. They were not super heroes.
Captain Hurricane was the UKs "super soldier" -but not a super hero!
In fact, for my graphic novel featuring many old IPC and Fleetway costumed characters, The Looking Glass, I noted several times that the characters were not super heroes. In the UK we tended to call them “costumed adventurers” or even “masked crime fighters” but not super heroes.
Some, of course, were…uh..”revived” for the Wildstorm Studios Albion mini series which had great art but, sadly, showed a lack of any real knowledge of the characters by the writers –which they admitted to. In comics you get paying work you take it!
Characters such as Adam Eterno, the focal point in the Looking Glass story had no choice and were at times almost anti-heroes. Whereas The Spider had a choice of being a master crook and then changing sides (basically all ego driven), Eterno did not. He was cursed to be taken by the mists of time from one period to another where he encountered Spanish Conquistadores, pirates, sorcerers and even modern day (well, 1970s) crooks.
Olaf (“Loopy”) Larsen a rather meek school teacher found the Viking helmet of one of his ancestors and, donning it (that’s putting it on his head) became a super strong, flying Viking hero…The Phantom Viking. There are stories of The Phantom Viking rescuing ships and much more and not a skyscraper in sight.
The great exponents of British roof-top crime-busting were, first, Billy The Cat and later Katie The Cat. Running across the rooftops and leaping the often not so great gaps between one row of terraced houses and another, the duo were the fictional ancestors of today’s urban free-style runners/jumpers –examples found here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZ0YDF9bpZ8&feature=player_embedded#!
To most people who never get to see the rooves of terraced houses they assume they are all steep and sloping. However, having on two occasions chased someone across terraced root-tops I can tell you there is plenty of room to move about (though at my age I now look back and get nauseous over that memory!).
Later, in the 1970s, William Farmer became the costumed crime-fighter known as The Leopard From Lime Street. As one Fleetway boss told me (later confirmed by artist Mike Western) “Thomson had a schoolboy who fights crooks in a costume and if Billy the Cat was popular I was sure we could do better!”
Interestingly, in the Billy The Cat series he was later to be hunted as a vigilante by authorities who did not like what he was doing. Likewise, The Leopard was also hunted down at one point. In fact, a number of British comic crime-fighters found themselves not just ducking the crooks out for revenge but also the very side they were fighting for!
Towns, cities, villages, countryside, coastal locations –all featured in some very fun stories that endure in the memory to this day. And not a bloody skyscraper in sight!
When UK creators were recruited to save the ailing US comic companies such as DC in the 1980s (I was at those UK comic art conventions watching how desperate they were to recruit British talent –and in some cases introduced both parties to each other) the idea of outlawing super heroes and tracking them down so they could be arrested was a new concept. In the UK we’d been doing that since the 1940s ( thanks to the creators who churned out material for publishers such as Gerald Swan)!
The mistake in the minds of publishers is that they equate costumed crime-fighters with skyscrapers and the United States. Despite the long history of such characters in the UK going back to the Boys Papers of the 1900-1930s.
What it says, really, is “This is just a job. I don’t care about comics history.”
D. C. Thomson (may they be forever cursed in the hallowed halls of British Comics Hell) have enough characters to produce good costumed-crime-fighter comics. The same applied to IPC who appear to have now taken the stance (a letter to me from senior management dated 19th July, 2011) “We were once publishing comics but that was over 30 years ago and have no further interest in comics.” Of course, had a rich stable of characters.
I have no doubt at all that a good “super hero” comics could work in the UK but so few Independent Comics writers/publishers seem to be able to produce an obscenities free scriptthat does not also include over the top violence and rape –the “Millar-Ennis-Morrison Legacy (MEML).”
But let’s mention, I really must, two shining examples of British “Super Heroes” by British creators that have excellent plotting, story and action without having to resort to the MEML.
The first is, naturally, Paul Grist’s Jack Staff. Okay, he’s never accepted my offer to interview him in the last decade but I’ll not hold that against him! When I first saw Jack Staff I thought “**** that anatomy is really off!” I bought a copy. I’m a comics bitch, I just can’t help it.
I read through issue 1 and do you know what? I..I..deep breath…I enjoyed it! There it’s out now! The anatomy did not put me off and, as the manager of Forbidden Planet (Bristol) said “It doesn’t make a blind bit of difference –it’s so enjoyable!” With references to old British TV comedy series and so much more each issue of Jack Staff was a must read. There was, I must point out here, a major flaw in each issue. There were not enough pages!
And while Grist takes a break from Jack Staff he came up with a new series –Mud-Man (which should not be confused with my German character Schlamm Mann –mud-man!). Lovely stuff but, again, the major fault of not enough pages but maybe that is why this works: it is almost episodic like old British weekly strips…but with more pages…okay. Grist wins.
Then we have, and I have to say this on bended knees and in very humble tone…Nigel Dobbyn. When someone told me that he was drawing Billy The Cat I remember thinking to myself “I wonder whether his art style is any different than when he was drawing for Super Adventure Stories?” (a 1980s comic zine). I opened up the comic and a big thought balloon appeared above my head in which was written in bold Comic Sans “WOW!”
The style and colouring I had not seen outside of European comics (say Cyrus Tota’s work on Photonik). After that I never missed an issue and I made a point of grabbing The Beano Annual as soon as it appeared in shops. But with this incredible talent working for them did Thomson take advantage? No, they did something ensuring he would not work on new strips for them. The story can be found here:
http://www.comicbitsonline.com/2010/12/12/nigel-dobbynbilly-the-cat-and-d-c-thomson/
You want to see how good Dobbyn is? Visit his website which has great art on show including Billy The Cat colour pages:
http://www.nigeldobbyn.com/
Dobbyn even re-introduced (with help from scripter Kev F. Sutherland, of course) General Jumbo but as The General. In fact, you go over those issues and I can see why so many people were telling me that they only bought copies for Billy The Cat. I could drool on and wax lyrical for hours about Dobbyn’s style and colouring.
Now here is the real kicker. Two talents such as Grist and Dobbyn whom any UK publisher (I know –“Who??”) should be fighting, spitting and kicking to get their hands on but are they? Nope. And while Grist publishes his books via Image Comics you have to wonder why Marvel or DC have not tried to get him on a title? Could it be his style is just not understandable by people in US Comics such as Joe “I’ll sell that for a Dollar” Quesada or Dan “I’ve had another brilliant idea on how to destroy DC” Didio? What of Dobbyn, then?
I know that if as a publisher I had the money I’d be employing both full time!!
I need to stop mentioning Dobbyn now as my knees hurt (a lot) and it’s hard typing from this position.
What both creators have shown is that there really do not have to be skyscrapers for a “super hero.” There is enough car crime, drug crime…violent crime of most types going on in the UK and believe it or not none involve a single skyscraper. Incredible, isn’t it?
Also, the UK is rich in legends, myths, fairy tales and much more that are just crying out to be included in storylines. The reason the Americans and other comic readers world-wide like UK strips is because they are uniquely British. In India, particularly in Southern India, The Steel Claw, Robot Archie, The Spider and many others are still very popular in reprint form over 35 years since they last appeared in print here.
Of course, now that the Evil Empire (Disney) has extended its stranglehold on Marvel (Panini) UK nothing new from the UK is allowed –though why doesn’t Panini with all its international branches pull in some new characters/books of their own? Oh. Its cheaper tp publish reprint material, isn’t it? I can be so silly!
Black Tower Comics has published a wide range of comics and the costumed crime-fighters (or even non-costumed in the case of Krakos) are the most popular.
So the market is there but where are the moneymen, the backers needed to help revive the corpse that is British comics so that it can proudly boast an industry once more that takes advantage of talents such as Grist, Dobbyn and Jon Haward?
However improbable British super heroes might seem to sum I can tell you they are not. There is a history going back 80 years and even longer if you include the Penny Dreadfuls of the Victorian era.
Here endeth the sermon.
The same sort of arguement can be made for Germany. It was once said that Germany had no comics during the Second World War -yet, thanks to historians, we know that is not true.
Mykros, Photonik -even Wastl- were Franco-Belgian creations. But they had fairly decent print runs.
Germany has mountains, ancient forests, seas and coastlines, towns and cities and you can add a great deal in the way of fairy tales, myth, legend and so on into that mix -even the odd "true" tale of Germans using Robot Soldiers at the end of the Second World War...
Heck, they even have a place called Hollental -Hell's Valley! Tales of hairy wildmen...it goes on and some of the costumes and tales they are derived from for the Narri Narro are inspirational/ I used to watch the festival broadcasts when the old UK satellite TV had access to German TV http://www.boloji.com/index.cfm?md=Content&sd=Articles&ArticleID=10705
The only thing stopping German super hero comics is the limitation of the mind of the German publishers -both large and small. I do get some rather insulting replies from German Independent Comic publishers for daring to suggest a comic of this genre. But, as Subzero writes: "...don´t get frustrated by German independents who don´t like super heroes. Their vision is somewhat limited and it´s not their fault."
All of this was swimming in my mind from one dream. Yes, as in the UK, the idea of a German super hero comic is very viable. I mean, the amount of interest in super heroes is at an all-time high -thanks mainly to movies and some TV shows. If a publisher cannot see this then that publisher deserves to go out of business because they are lousy businessmen.
Yes, Germany, you can have comic books featuring German super heroes in Germany. You just need the publisher.
(OTHER GENRES ARE AVAILABLE)
I had a very vivid dream about German comic books the other morning. I woke at 0350hrs and my creative side went into overdrive. Now I have referred to German comic books before on CBO:
The NextArt Hades Syndrome:
http://hoopercomicart.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/the-next-arthades-syndrom-6-end.html
And the Next Art series Der Engel:
http://hoopercomicart.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/nextart-der-engel.html
I even took a long -very long- look at German super heroes over more recent years:
http://hoopercomicart.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/on-german-super-heroes-and-why-i-am.html
Back in the 1980s, sadly my last visit to see my German family, I picked up loads of comic albums and even a few comics. These included....
Elefenwelt is, obviously, Elf Quest. Sumpfding is Swamp Thing (I had to get this image from the net as my scanner has decided to be..."temperamental"!) Lovely Berni Wrightson art.
The Mercenary is an international success, but not in the UK -the US?
And I almost missed this one behind some magazines (I can remember that so maybe there is hope) -"Gespenster Geschichten" screamed out at me. I did a posting on German horror comics and reprints of the UK Scream therein...
http://hoopercomicart.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/gespenster-geschichten-prasentiert.html
and...
http://hoopercomicart.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/ich-habe-spuk-gesehen-und-ich-mochte.html
Of course, the fact that the artist was Richard Corben was no draw for me!!
I also found some Mykros comics and a couple of Phantom books.....
I cannot remember whether it was in Lemgo or Detmold, though I believe Lemgo, that I saw a comic shop in a shopping area. Doors open I walked in to be greeted by a young man who said "Wir sind zu!" (we're closed) rather brusquely and waved me out after I enquired when he would be open "13 uhr!" he snapped. It was 1100hrs so was I going to wait two hours and go back to the shop of a rather rude person (and at that time in Germany shop staff were NEVER rude to a customer)? Nah. The fella was NOT a businessman because a businessman would have realised that a keen young customer meant a few Deutsch marks in the cash register!
But news stands and even the kaufhaus' (big supermarkets -what we called back then "hypermarkets") had comics. Not English language but, then, I could buy English language comics in England! A selection of Ehapa Batman und der Outsiders, Condor Verlag's Thor Jahrbuch and a few others satisfied me.
But have things changed in Germany? Have speciality stores taken all that trade?
I asked Subzero from Tales From The Kryptonian http://talesfromthekryptonian.blogspot.co.uk/ a few questions -after all, he's in Germany and it saved him thinking about Markie Post and Heather Thomas!
Can you still buy comics in places like kaufhaus'?
"... you will now probably find stuff like MICKY MAUS Taschenbücher or the comic for the new SPIDER - MAN UNLIMITED series there. But it´s been a while since I looked for comics in Kaufhaus. I guess you can also find stuff like the SIMPSON comics which are still hugely popular in Germany and other stuff that´s tied in with tv animated series like NARUTO or Spongebob. It´s been a while since I´ve been to Stuttgart City so I don´t know if they still have the small comicshop at the KARSTADT SPORT. I remember they had a signing of V FOR VENDETTA at the KARSTADT part of that mall and there were almost no people there because they didn´t promote it much. There´s another comicshop in the city of Stuttgart but I don´t go there very often because they only have German comics. But you can still find comics at some shopping malls."
Which is quite comprehensive a response! I guess it makes sense that German comic store owners would stock comics in the German language only -even if that means they lose out to all the English language comic readers -and whatever anyone tells you: there ARE a lot of them.
I then asked about news stands since this is where I used to pick up a few comics and my Oma (grand mother) used to pick up my uncle's porn and Disney comics....I really do not want to go there!
"Now as for your questions about newsstands that´s where people usually get porn - I mean comics. Here in and around Stuttgart WITTWER is a big company so there are newsstands at most subway stations where you can get comics. A particularly good one is in Bietigheim and in the train station of Stuttgart there are several.
"Most super heroes (comics) are published by PANIN but there is also stuff from Egmont on the stands. And of course the pulps I read in my youth like JOHN SINCLAIR, PROFESSOR ZAMORRA or GESPENSTER GESCHICHTEN. Last week I finally saw the PERRY RHODAN movie ( now about Perry Rhodan I could write a whole post with the various comic adaptions ) and it´s really bad. I mean, for the times it probably wasn´t a bad movie but it´s clear that the producers were not fans of the series so I´m not surprised there was never a sequel. But the germans even f***d up the JOHN SINCLAIR tv series which - at least if you look at the potential it has - is SHERLOCK meets X - FILES meets BUFFY. What a waste."
I hope Subzero does write a Perry Rhodan post. That series was allways big in books and comics -some drawn by Hans Rudi Wascher I think?
But back to Subzero's response:
"...there are still a lot of super hero comics at the newsstands and right now PANINI is publishing the MARVEL COMIC LIBRARY but only because it originates from Hachete and PANINI Europe. The germans themselves would never publish something like this. I think this was already published in the UK under the title of THE OFFICIAL MARVEL GRAPHIC NOVEL COLLECTION. The first issue were the first 6 issues of JMS´ Spider - Man run and it was 4 EUROS, the second issue was Joss Whedon and John Cassaday´s GIFTED which was 9 bucks and all others are 13 Euros. Which is a good price for a hardcover in Germany. So far I have gotten most of them even if I already have them in one form or another but I like to pimp my shelf porn The only ones I haven´t gotten so far are either stuff I already have in a collected hardcover editon like ULTIMATES 1 and 2 ( for me the series went downhill after that ) or comics that I´m sorry I ever spend money on or time to read it like DEADPOOL or AVENGERS DISASSEMBLED ( what a load of crap and the worst Hawkeye death scene EVER, just check out Chris Giarussco´s take on it in MINI MARVELS ) or Bendis SECRET WAR. Maybe one of my next posts will be about that."
And there you have German comics and super heroes all rounded up for you. I have to say I despise all the Mini Marvels stuff. There, that's my prejudice out there now!
I mentioned (check out that third link at the start of this post. Yes, I know it's a looong way back there but exercise is good for you!) Der Engel, Luft Konig, Dorn Der Morgen Stern and so on. Out of those three I think that Dorn is the most commercial. Der Engel has nothing wrong with it but Dorn is slick as all get up (whatever that means).
As I've written many times (and I do not want the respect just the money please), I created the first German super heroes -D-Gruppe- German characters, based in Germany and created while I lived on a farm Germany. Can you get any more German?Had Ben Dilworth continued as inker on the series (oh what might have been!) then Amorph (very much a pre-Venom character -just as the black costumed, white eye-let Attacker was years before the "black Spider-man costume") would have been introduced along with Thor, Zauberrinen, Leere, Wildemann and others -some introduced in cameo during the Zeitgeist story.
Some were later adapted to be members of Task Force Germany. After many delays they are soon to see light of a printer!
There is nothing that ticks me off more than a person who says "But you cannot have super heroes outside of America -you need the huge cities. The sky-scrapers!" Utter, utter dog-dooh!
Did Perseus, Heracles, Thor, Gilgamesh, Samson, Hereward the Wake, King Arthur or any of the others who, historically, fit the bill of what we call today "super heroes" have to rely on huge cities and sky-scrapers? NO. This is the arguement from people who, quite honestly, need to read a book and not just comics. Reading The Twelve Labours Of Hercules, Gun-fight At The OK Corral (yes -it was a book before the film), The Epic of Gilgamesh (two-thirds god and one third man), Jason and the Argonauts and mythology in general blew my mind as a youngster.
Ancient cities, ancient despots, forests and jungles, mountains and other locations providing the back-drop to these heroes and adventurers.
I had this conversation with UK editors and even with a couple at German comic companies. The guy who wanted to take the chance with D-Gruppe at Bastei was really pushing it -I get a feeling management might have said "go ahead" because they knew Egmont were about to buy them out -finishing my German comics career before it started!
I know in an email to me, Subzero did kinda say Hans Rudi Wascher http://www.lambiek.net/artists/w/wascher_hansrudi.htm was probably the reason Germany never had any super hero comics but that might be a trifle unfair. German publishers had ingrained into their heads that super heroes were "childish American creations" and the only reason Ehapa, Condor, Williams et al were publishing DC and Marvel comics was, I think, to try to make as much money as possible quickly because there appeared to be no long term plan -reprints plodded along rather as they did in the UK until a Marvel UK was formed....to issue reprints!
I tackled this attitude in the UK head-on in early 2012 and, as I don't bthink that post appeared on this site, here it is -The Improbability of the British Super Hero:
“Hmm. Don’t you understand? Think about it –we have no skyscrapers! How can you have American style super heroes in England?”
Those were the words of a Marvel UK editor (Dave White) back in the 1980s as I sat across from him having travelled from Bristol to London at his suggestion to discuss new projects. About a month later a very senior Marvel UK editor responded in the same words but adding “That is why UK comics have never had super heroes.”
Firstly, as I pointed out to Dave White, we are the UK. Britain. You think of characters for a comic as being English you are excluding Wales, Scotland and Ireland. Why?
My response to the senior editor is probably why things went a little “odd” work-wise. My first response was “So, what exactly is Marvel UK publishing? And Power Comics (Odhams) before it? And…” I went on to rattle off a very, very long list of British super characters going back to the 1940s. I think I ticked him off. Really, he should have known better though, in one respect, he was right.
British comics never had super heroes.
Before you start thinking that I’m on new medications and answering “Yes” and “No” at the same time allow me to explain.
Tim (Kelly’s Eye) Kelly travelled the world and even in time and space at one point and was totally indestructible. He was not a super hero.
Clem Macy, television news reporter had a costumed archer alter ego…The Black Archer. He was not a super hero.
Cathy had amazing cat-like abilities and wore a costume. She was not a super heroine.
William and Kathleen Grange were incredible acrobats and wore costumes as Billy the Cat and Katie The Cat. They were not super heroes.
Captain Hurricane was the UKs "super soldier" -but not a super hero!
In fact, for my graphic novel featuring many old IPC and Fleetway costumed characters, The Looking Glass, I noted several times that the characters were not super heroes. In the UK we tended to call them “costumed adventurers” or even “masked crime fighters” but not super heroes.
Some, of course, were…uh..”revived” for the Wildstorm Studios Albion mini series which had great art but, sadly, showed a lack of any real knowledge of the characters by the writers –which they admitted to. In comics you get paying work you take it!
Characters such as Adam Eterno, the focal point in the Looking Glass story had no choice and were at times almost anti-heroes. Whereas The Spider had a choice of being a master crook and then changing sides (basically all ego driven), Eterno did not. He was cursed to be taken by the mists of time from one period to another where he encountered Spanish Conquistadores, pirates, sorcerers and even modern day (well, 1970s) crooks.
Olaf (“Loopy”) Larsen a rather meek school teacher found the Viking helmet of one of his ancestors and, donning it (that’s putting it on his head) became a super strong, flying Viking hero…The Phantom Viking. There are stories of The Phantom Viking rescuing ships and much more and not a skyscraper in sight.
The great exponents of British roof-top crime-busting were, first, Billy The Cat and later Katie The Cat. Running across the rooftops and leaping the often not so great gaps between one row of terraced houses and another, the duo were the fictional ancestors of today’s urban free-style runners/jumpers –examples found here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZ0YDF9bpZ8&feature=player_embedded#!
To most people who never get to see the rooves of terraced houses they assume they are all steep and sloping. However, having on two occasions chased someone across terraced root-tops I can tell you there is plenty of room to move about (though at my age I now look back and get nauseous over that memory!).
Later, in the 1970s, William Farmer became the costumed crime-fighter known as The Leopard From Lime Street. As one Fleetway boss told me (later confirmed by artist Mike Western) “Thomson had a schoolboy who fights crooks in a costume and if Billy the Cat was popular I was sure we could do better!”
Yes, that is The Leopard From Lime Street reprinted in French -as were many other UK comic strip heroes!
Interestingly, in the Billy The Cat series he was later to be hunted as a vigilante by authorities who did not like what he was doing. Likewise, The Leopard was also hunted down at one point. In fact, a number of British comic crime-fighters found themselves not just ducking the crooks out for revenge but also the very side they were fighting for!
Towns, cities, villages, countryside, coastal locations –all featured in some very fun stories that endure in the memory to this day. And not a bloody skyscraper in sight!
When UK creators were recruited to save the ailing US comic companies such as DC in the 1980s (I was at those UK comic art conventions watching how desperate they were to recruit British talent –and in some cases introduced both parties to each other) the idea of outlawing super heroes and tracking them down so they could be arrested was a new concept. In the UK we’d been doing that since the 1940s ( thanks to the creators who churned out material for publishers such as Gerald Swan)!
The mistake in the minds of publishers is that they equate costumed crime-fighters with skyscrapers and the United States. Despite the long history of such characters in the UK going back to the Boys Papers of the 1900-1930s.
What it says, really, is “This is just a job. I don’t care about comics history.”
D. C. Thomson (may they be forever cursed in the hallowed halls of British Comics Hell) have enough characters to produce good costumed-crime-fighter comics. The same applied to IPC who appear to have now taken the stance (a letter to me from senior management dated 19th July, 2011) “We were once publishing comics but that was over 30 years ago and have no further interest in comics.” Of course, had a rich stable of characters.
I have no doubt at all that a good “super hero” comics could work in the UK but so few Independent Comics writers/publishers seem to be able to produce an obscenities free scriptthat does not also include over the top violence and rape –the “Millar-Ennis-Morrison Legacy (MEML).”
But let’s mention, I really must, two shining examples of British “Super Heroes” by British creators that have excellent plotting, story and action without having to resort to the MEML.
The first is, naturally, Paul Grist’s Jack Staff. Okay, he’s never accepted my offer to interview him in the last decade but I’ll not hold that against him! When I first saw Jack Staff I thought “**** that anatomy is really off!” I bought a copy. I’m a comics bitch, I just can’t help it.
I read through issue 1 and do you know what? I..I..deep breath…I enjoyed it! There it’s out now! The anatomy did not put me off and, as the manager of Forbidden Planet (Bristol) said “It doesn’t make a blind bit of difference –it’s so enjoyable!” With references to old British TV comedy series and so much more each issue of Jack Staff was a must read. There was, I must point out here, a major flaw in each issue. There were not enough pages!
And while Grist takes a break from Jack Staff he came up with a new series –Mud-Man (which should not be confused with my German character Schlamm Mann –mud-man!). Lovely stuff but, again, the major fault of not enough pages but maybe that is why this works: it is almost episodic like old British weekly strips…but with more pages…okay. Grist wins.
Then we have, and I have to say this on bended knees and in very humble tone…Nigel Dobbyn. When someone told me that he was drawing Billy The Cat I remember thinking to myself “I wonder whether his art style is any different than when he was drawing for Super Adventure Stories?” (a 1980s comic zine). I opened up the comic and a big thought balloon appeared above my head in which was written in bold Comic Sans “WOW!”
The style and colouring I had not seen outside of European comics (say Cyrus Tota’s work on Photonik). After that I never missed an issue and I made a point of grabbing The Beano Annual as soon as it appeared in shops. But with this incredible talent working for them did Thomson take advantage? No, they did something ensuring he would not work on new strips for them. The story can be found here:
http://www.comicbitsonline.com/2010/12/12/nigel-dobbynbilly-the-cat-and-d-c-thomson/
You want to see how good Dobbyn is? Visit his website which has great art on show including Billy The Cat colour pages:
http://www.nigeldobbyn.com/
Dobbyn even re-introduced (with help from scripter Kev F. Sutherland, of course) General Jumbo but as The General. In fact, you go over those issues and I can see why so many people were telling me that they only bought copies for Billy The Cat. I could drool on and wax lyrical for hours about Dobbyn’s style and colouring.
Now here is the real kicker. Two talents such as Grist and Dobbyn whom any UK publisher (I know –“Who??”) should be fighting, spitting and kicking to get their hands on but are they? Nope. And while Grist publishes his books via Image Comics you have to wonder why Marvel or DC have not tried to get him on a title? Could it be his style is just not understandable by people in US Comics such as Joe “I’ll sell that for a Dollar” Quesada or Dan “I’ve had another brilliant idea on how to destroy DC” Didio? What of Dobbyn, then?
I know that if as a publisher I had the money I’d be employing both full time!!
I need to stop mentioning Dobbyn now as my knees hurt (a lot) and it’s hard typing from this position.
What both creators have shown is that there really do not have to be skyscrapers for a “super hero.” There is enough car crime, drug crime…violent crime of most types going on in the UK and believe it or not none involve a single skyscraper. Incredible, isn’t it?
Also, the UK is rich in legends, myths, fairy tales and much more that are just crying out to be included in storylines. The reason the Americans and other comic readers world-wide like UK strips is because they are uniquely British. In India, particularly in Southern India, The Steel Claw, Robot Archie, The Spider and many others are still very popular in reprint form over 35 years since they last appeared in print here.
Of course, now that the Evil Empire (Disney) has extended its stranglehold on Marvel (Panini) UK nothing new from the UK is allowed –though why doesn’t Panini with all its international branches pull in some new characters/books of their own? Oh. Its cheaper tp publish reprint material, isn’t it? I can be so silly!
Black Tower Comics has published a wide range of comics and the costumed crime-fighters (or even non-costumed in the case of Krakos) are the most popular.
So the market is there but where are the moneymen, the backers needed to help revive the corpse that is British comics so that it can proudly boast an industry once more that takes advantage of talents such as Grist, Dobbyn and Jon Haward?
However improbable British super heroes might seem to sum I can tell you they are not. There is a history going back 80 years and even longer if you include the Penny Dreadfuls of the Victorian era.
Here endeth the sermon.
The same sort of arguement can be made for Germany. It was once said that Germany had no comics during the Second World War -yet, thanks to historians, we know that is not true.
Mykros, Photonik -even Wastl- were Franco-Belgian creations. But they had fairly decent print runs.
Germany has mountains, ancient forests, seas and coastlines, towns and cities and you can add a great deal in the way of fairy tales, myth, legend and so on into that mix -even the odd "true" tale of Germans using Robot Soldiers at the end of the Second World War...
Heck, they even have a place called Hollental -Hell's Valley! Tales of hairy wildmen...it goes on and some of the costumes and tales they are derived from for the Narri Narro are inspirational/ I used to watch the festival broadcasts when the old UK satellite TV had access to German TV http://www.boloji.com/index.cfm?md=Content&sd=Articles&ArticleID=10705
The only thing stopping German super hero comics is the limitation of the mind of the German publishers -both large and small. I do get some rather insulting replies from German Independent Comic publishers for daring to suggest a comic of this genre. But, as Subzero writes: "...don´t get frustrated by German independents who don´t like super heroes. Their vision is somewhat limited and it´s not their fault."
All of this was swimming in my mind from one dream. Yes, as in the UK, the idea of a German super hero comic is very viable. I mean, the amount of interest in super heroes is at an all-time high -thanks mainly to movies and some TV shows. If a publisher cannot see this then that publisher deserves to go out of business because they are lousy businessmen.
Yes, Germany, you can have comic books featuring German super heroes in Germany. You just need the publisher.
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