Into 2021 With...D-Gruppe? Update

 

It may have taken from 1987 t0 2021 to complete the Invasion Earth Trilogy but it is taking longer to complete the D-Gruppe saga.

Back in the 1960swhen I created D-Gruppe while living in Dalborn, Germany I had an idea of what was supposed to happen. I loved mythology and legends and I decided that as the group started off as part super hero/part fairy tale embedded there would be an epic "ending" and I had an idea but being just a kid I did not have the experience towork out twists and turns or characterise properly.

Like a lot of kids that got into comics I produced my own in exercisae books and old receipt ledger and I wish I had some of those today.  One problem is that on another visit to Germany I saw Gruppe-X -the X-Men in German comics, My group was called Gruppe-D so to avoid any complaints I renamed them D-Gruppe -it was an absolutely genius creative move on my part and exceeded the creativeness of even Stan Lee! (if you believe that last part please send me £50/$50 PayPal donation and I'll draw you wearing a conical hat with the mystical "D" symbol on it).

Ben Dilworth inked and lettered The Revenge of the Ice Queen, whicjh was 1986? That later got published in a German TV, film, comic and Sci Fi mag. And that got me communicating with an editor at Bestei Verlag (my memory for names is awful and I'll need to look that up) and I sold him on the idea of a German super hero group as Germany had no super hero comics or characters other than American reprints and Franco-Belgian reprints. 

I did some mock-up covers, synopses of stories and so on. Ben Dilworth then vanished over to Japan in his quest to Stop All Yokai and the editor panicked but I found someone willing to ink my pencils -this was 1989 (?) and I can't even remember the man's name. But things seemed set and the publisher was happy.

Then silence.

I tried phoning but never got through. I faxed. No responses. Letters -no replies. It was laterexplained that Egmony had purchased Bastei's juvenile line which included comics. It seems that editors were not aware of this until the last minute.  So why wasn't I told? It seems that as soon as Egmont took over all communications with creatives from artists, writers etc had to stop. Simply put; the editor was not allowed to contact me to say "They killed the project" -the suspicion was that this was to stop having to pay any kill fees for work done.

That's comics, folks.

By 1992 we should have seen D-Gruppe progress through its various plotlines up to The Days of Darkness and a certain character....that would be a spoiler! Task Force Germany was slated to make a guest appearance and things evolve from that.

I want to complete the saga.  Kopfmann and those missing after chasing a UFO in Return of the Gods should be back and that would bring its own disruption to D-Gruppe that has been without its original creator/leader since 2013.

If I can get current projects out of the way then I want to see if I live long enough to complete the D-Gruppe cycle (hinted at in the end of the D-Gruppe book).

So I never give up.

End Note

Going through the D-Gruppe notes I found that in 2000 someone who was setting up a new animation studio in Germany asked if he could put together a 10 minute D-Gruppe cartoon to try to interest TV companies. Never heard anything after the initial chat.