Noting that I had created Germany's first super heroes while living as a youngster in Germany in the 1960s -Germany's first German super hero team, D-Gruppe was first published in the UK in the mid 1980s and around the same time in a German publication looking at TV, movies, pulps and comics (Watcher Magazine) and had publish/posted on lost German comics history, why I had not attempted to get deeper into the German comics scene?
Right, I have posted on this over at CBO but I knew and exchanged publications with a lot of Germany Smaller Pressers in the 1980s into the early 1990s. My collection of German Small Press publications is, I am told, "impressive". Most wanted to promote and publish German creators work -and that is how it should be. Some of these creators I also promoted in the UK and US.
http://hoopercomicart.blogspot.com/2016/01/and-myth-continues-germany-had-no.html
My involvement with Bastei Verlag has also been covered -they were to originally publish D-Gruppe before they were taken over by Egmont and cancelled everything. Interestingly, the Watcher translation misspelt the name of one of Germany's great historical monuments Externsteine with which the publisher was unfamiliar!
Oh, Lemgo the "Hexenburgerstadt" (Witch town) as well as Hermann's Denkmal have all featured in my stories.
In those days of letter writing and sending bulky packages to each other I found German Small Pressers pleasant and quite funny -these were the less "up-tight" faction because the arty crowd definitely looked down their noses as us lesser creators. When it came to the internet things went..."bad". Do not get me wrong because there were some great people on forums and comic sites but there were also the downright arschlochs.
After my mother died (she was German) my use of the language became almost non-existent so what I used to do was write dual language comments/posts. First in my rusty German followed by the same but in English. The nastiness over my German made me less willing to use it but I did get some people who not only defended my posts ("Hey, he is trying at least!") but also supported me by pointing out that I was well known in German Small Press/comics and had contributed to German Samizdat comics taken into East Germany. The nicer people also helped me get scans of rare and expensive German comics so I am always grateful to those genuine comic fans.
Being an old fart I find it difficult to understand why a lot of German comickers know their American comics but few know a lot about German comics history. Maybe it is not so glamorous but when you mention a German creator or publication from the 1930's/1940's people think you are making it up!
If I look at Comic Bits Online all time stats I see:
Germany and France, more recently the Ukraine, have always provided high views -87, 898 is quite a sizable number. So what do the stats show for this blog? Well, considering I have not been up-dating this blog as I ought to so views are lower we find:
Germany is still in fourth place when it comes to views. So German comic fans visit CBO and this blog -I have no idea about the Face Book page since they do not give that kind of insight. I even got re-acquainted with some old time zinesters of the 1980s a while back. In other words I do not need to go out of my way to attract German readers.
The idea of translating D-Gruppe into German died a quick death because my German is not up to English-German translating and the language has changed slightly over the decades to which you can add new technical or sci fi/fantasy terms I am not familiar with. "Go full colour!" someone said but I don't think he realised that pushes up the cover price.
I have plenty of German characters featured in D-Gruppe, Return of the Gods and other publications -older and newer German characters are featured in The Green Skies.
I have tried finding paying German publishers but I think my books are seen as being a little "low-brow" and, yes, I have encountered the snooty arty types ever since the 1980s and don't think they only exist in Germany!
As for attending a German comic con -the expense is too high and if I was a trader...higher!
With Yahoo closing the Yahoo Groups down the D-Gruppe/German Comics group is no more after 15 years of work. But my interest in German comics has not lessened.
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