2021: The Year of D-Gruppe!

Yesterday, I came across one of the rough pages for the D-Gruppe: Lost In Space comic. The date stamp reads 2011. Wow. Nine years ago. That is how far back I am on the work. I was going for a 1970s Space 1999 feel (the first series not 2nd!)

I know what the story is now and how the team will get back to Earth. There are lots of ramifications when Klaus Von Happe (aka Kopfmann) the person who set up D-Gruppe sees what has been going on. 

There was the short Narri Narro strip in which the team encounters a witch in Lemgo.  That will need to be changed and adapted.

The Days of Terror storyline has been waiting since 1987. The fella at Bastei Verlag loved D-Gruppe and what might have been -Days of Terror would have been a comic album or, at best, a trade.

I have two projects that I need to finish, as noted before, I think that, barring any paying publisher wanting to employ me (so we're safe), 2021 will be the year I concentrate solely on D-Gruppe. The team has been with me a very long time so I want to go out having left something more substantial to make them remembered

Sad to think that the D-Gruppe animated series fell at the last hurdle. Back in 1998 I was talking to a

German animator and it was all fun and buddy-buddy and lots of roughs for the project.  Then came: "Oh, you'll need to sign over character copyright in caseany merchandise comes out of this". My response involved a word beginning with "f" and the word"off".  I knew the studio had talked to merchandising companies and also a toy maker and I saw -it came to me by, ahem, accident- the material they were sending out which bigged up D-Gruppe as the big commercial project for 2000 (animation etc takes alot of time).  

So I lost The Paranormals animated series (as previously noted) and D-Gruppe in thesame time frame all because I would not give up full copyright to my characters. Did a lot of 54mm toy figure designs for both.

All of that plus working 'for' Fantagraphics and being ripped off for £5000 (payments) by a Fleetway/Egmont editor who suddenly left the company...should have put me off but I really am stupid.  :-/

The question arises: in the German language or English? Well, my German is not good enough to do a quality translation (there have been more than a few bad translations thrown at German comic fans in the past!) and as there is no paying publisher I think we will find these are going to be English language projects

Black and white. I would love it to all be in colour but the time and expense involved is too prohibitive and a colour book wouldtake until 2022 to complete and I don't have a lot of  years to waste anymore! :-)

So, current projects to finish and then 2021: The Year ofD-Gruppe!