This is being re-posted because of trouble-makers else where.
I had to try to find some dates for a piece I'm writing on
D-Gruppe. I really had to try to remember
the rough date for creating the characters that went on to form
D-Gruppe.
Well, I know we lived on the farm in Dalborn, which is a tiny village
stuck between Detmold, Blomberg and Lemgo, in the mid 1960s. Germans
are/were bigger on traditional folk tales than, say the English, and if
you've ever seen the Narri Narro festival you'll know what I mean! But
our monochrome TV (which I can only remember as being more brownish and
white) was filled with faery tales and so I learnt of Rumpelstiltskin
and the Singing Ringing Tree, Beauty and the Beast and so on.
I quite liked "dwarves". I hate that term these days even though people
who I knew who were classed as such used the term. But I did wonder
why they
always seemed to be portrayed as crafty or evil? Now, I can't even
remember which TV show or story it was but I watched this blond-haired
small person and he was quite acrobatic and clever. That image always
stuck with me and that, in the late 1960s, was the concept of the
character who became Klaud von Happe -Kopfmann. Leader of D-Gruppe.
Now, as I've posted before on CBO (and probably here somewhere!), the first super hero to hit German comics was
Superman in
the early 1950s. Baron Munchhausen was a fantastical character and I
saw a few versions of the story in picture books. But not a super hero.
Later Batman and the other DC heroes and those of Marvel -and briefly
Archie comics- hit the shelves. There were also a lot of Franco-Belgian
comics and in these Wastl (or "Jerome" in Suske und Wiske) was the
nearest thing to a costumed super hero and later still Mykros joined the
ranks (I've posted a good few times on Mykros on CBO
http://hoopercomicart.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/jean-yves-mitton-photonik-meand-not.html but no actual homegrown super heroes.
On the old Droster farm I had to entertain myself and so I began drawing
and the un-named D-Gruppe composed of a mixed bag of characters and
were based in the nearby forest. Today, of course, they are still based
in the state of Lippe. And do I wish I'd kept those early efforts but
that was out of my hands.
So I can place Kopfmann and the initial spark of creating D-Gruppe as the late 1960s and early 1970s.
I soon found that in the UK no one was interested in German characters (I should have thought that through). So when did the
published D-Gruppe appear?
Well, I produced a "trash can" comic in 1983. I sent it out to some
Small Pressers in Germany and I know copies even got to East Germany and
I know that because I got some of the smuggled out East German comics!
The first printed glimpse of D-Gruppe was around 1984 and then in an
issue of Zine Zone in which it was announced the first officially
published story -Revenge of the Ice Queen- was to be printed in my
Previews Comic -a favourite amongst comic professionals at the time. So 1985/86.
Around the same time I decided that the evil, semi deformed, psychotic
"Soviets" and Chinese who were still featuring in Marvel and DC comics
really needed more realistic counterparts! I knew Chinese people and
some Russians. They were not inhuman monsters waiting to destroy
democracy. So Red Star Squadron and the PRC Phoenix Team clashed but
then cooperated on the Soviet-Sino border against...
The Evil of The Salamander...actually the title of the strip which was later reprinted in
Black Tower Adventure vol.
2 nos 1-3. Which got a lot of us laughing because some idiot, I can't
even remember his name, wrote in a fanzine that I was glorify Communism
and that I must be "a commie"! It was funny because no British person
seriously ran around Commie bashing in the 1980s.
It was a mad period of creativity because, before Task Force Justice League there was
Task Force Europe -Belgian,
French, Spanish, Luxembourg and other countries providing heroes for
the team and so I pretty much had Europe covered!
Watcher Das Internationale magazin fuer Phantastik was
a photocopied fanzine of sorts published by Chris Dohr from Trier, in
Germany. It covered movies -such as
The Fly (original),
The Texas
Chainsaw Massacre,
Willow, the TV series
UFO as well as fantasy
literature and comics.
There were some great single illoes by American Dave Fontaine, from
Attleboro who even did a couple D-Gruppe illoes -where is he now?? The
third issue of
Watcher contained a lengthy strip by David Stepheson (from the UK -another “Where is he now!?”)
The Master Of Mengerheim (a strip originally published in
Black Tower Previews Comic.
But earlier in 1989, Chris published the first story featuring
D-Gruppe –
Rache Der Eis Konigin.
By 1989 “Gruppe D” as it was titled in the magazine, was a well known
strip in Germany amongst fans. Helge “Herod” Korda had already parodied
it in a mini comic titled
D-Suppe (“D-Soup”) which I no longer have sadly. Helge, of course, was creator of the parody
Heroes From The Lost Lagoon comic strip and later comic album.
I was not very impressed by the way the strip was presented by
Watcher (crooked
printing on some pages) but where I had a big problem was…the
translation. Ice Queen is feminine so it should have been “Die” rather
than “Der” (?). I was also surprised that the name of a German national
monument such as Externsteine was miss-spelt as “Externen Steinen”!
Although I was not too keen on this German version I was surprised to
learn that it had been copied and distributed to comic fans in East
Germany where there was a strong underground zine scene.
But what the heck -here, unedited, is the story from Watcher. Helge
"Herod" Korda -if you see this PLEASE tell me you still have a copy of
“D-Suppe”!!!
It was interesting to see the rather nasty responses to D-Gruppe on some
German comic forums. "Super heroes" was a dirty word and "They have no
place in German comics...to be fair neither did German creations because
most things being published were Franco-Belgian and even British! But
there was some support and getting that was good.
I've covered the whole history on CBO so I'll not go into that here.
However, it shocked me to realise D-Gruppe has been with me nearly 50
years! Bloody hell.
But the team has not only featured in its own comic, trade but also in
Return of the Gods: Twilight of the Super Heroes and the up-coming
Green Skies. And Stransky & Labbat have featured their ow darker, parallel Earth versions in their EP 667 strips.
I guess D-Gruppe were Germany's first and so far longest running team of super heroes!
