Friday, 1 May 2015

It Was A Case Of Translating Boredom Into German

Hey, I even found a letter from one of the German Bastei Verlag editors I dealt with.  However, as what happened was not his fault but that of Egmont (I even got an apology in writing...though I would have preferred the money) I won't name him.

Why mention this?  Well, a lot of strips I wrote/drew and packaged, Bastei were interested in for either Gespenster Geschichten or  Spuk Geschichten

One day I got a fax (ooooh) asking whether I could "roughly translate the strips for the letterer who will take off any rough edges".....were they trying not to pay a translator?  Most of the comics they published were Franco-Belgian, Italian and Spanish so someone was doing the translations!

What the hell -they only wanted a rough translation and it was work.  I can laugh at that in an ironical way all these years later.

One strip was by John P. Welding who I rated as a comic artist (I would not have represented him if I hadn't). I known John produced an A4 comic -Exiles on Planet Earth. if I remember correctly.  John also drew the New Hornet revived Billy the Cat strip, mentioned previously. 

He also produced a strip for Fantagraphic Books Coffin Blood one off anthology.  I put it together and someone else took the credit (ooh, he was kind enough to mention I knew he was putting the comic together and knew a few artists in his editorial. Utter ****). 

I never heard from John again!

Pity.

But, I believe for Previews Comic, he had drawn the strip "Boredom" and it was this that Bastei wanted translating.  So, I blew up the A4 pages and roughly translated the text.  Now, of course, I'd do a far -FAR- better translation and never hand letter.  But what the heck, heh? It was just for the letterer.

Here are those badly lettered pages (I no longer have the A4s as they were returned to John) but just looking at the artwork!



All artwork (c)2015 John P. Welding

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