Saturday Secret : lost Task Force Germany

Since Today is Terry Hooper´s birthday I think it´s time to finally post the original pages to that Task Force Germany story we never finished.

I lost the script since then so I´m not really sure what´s happening on the pages and my memory is not that good. I think Der Wilde Man - who as the name implies was some kind of wild man living out in the woods - was always stealing food from Thor, which would explain the flying hammer.

Since the pages are not inked I have posted them as big as I can without bleeding too much into the stuff on the left side. But you can open them in a new window to really appreciate the detailed artwork of my brother.

I also thought I had lost these copies but when I came back home from the rehab clinic in Bad Rappenau I was going through my old mails and luckily found them. Here´s the second page, a beautiful splash of Thor´s house and as you can see the story was titled THE SORCERER LIVES !

 
Here we have a meeting of Zauberin with Le Corbbeau accompanied by his secretary. I´m not sure if they were supposed to know each other yet but I think Le Corbbeau is trying to get Zauberin to join Team Germany. 

Le Corbbeau looks a lot like me back in those days and I´m not sure how much of that was in the script and how much of that was just my brother being lazy and using me as a convenient model since I was always around.

Here we have Zauberin flying to Thor´s house, which judging from the statue of Herman - or Arminius how he is called in latin - is right in the Teutoburger Forrest ( southwest to Dettmold ) where the historic battle where the Germans defeated the Romans in took place. I mean, if you have a story in Germany why not use its history ? I think the Teutoburger Forrest was supposed to play a bigger part in the series story later on.   

It seems Thor is not in a good mood when Zauberin visits because Wilde Mann has again stolen food from him ( and he might have a hangover ). But when he hears that Zauberin is also looking for Wilde Mann he tells her that she is welcome to try her luck in getting him out of the forrest.

This is the first version of this page in which Zauberin gets Wilde Mann to follow her out of the forrest. I think he´s smelling her or something like a wild animal would do with unfamiliar animals or persons. It´s not sexist.

The final version of page seven. I think it was changed because Wilde Mann appears really suddenly and the storytelling is a bit clearer with this.

Zauberin comes out of the forrest with Wilde Mann behind but Thor is still pissed that he always steals his food and insults him, raising his hammer.

The last panel was constructed with the computer and copied on the page.

Thor and Wilde Mann fight but Zauberin is angry and " lays the hammer down " so to speak. Most of this page was also done with copy, paste.

With the fight between Thor and Wilde Mann finished their ride arrives.

The next member of Task Force Germany makes his first appearance. You can still see the construction lines on this and the following two pages.

Die Leere helps out the local police force which seems to have some kind of a mexican standoff with the local mobster organization. Leere suddenly appears behind a gangster but because I´m not entirely sure what his powers were ( maybe teleportation ? ) he might have been just that good.

The next page sees Die Leere surrounded by the gangsters. They point their guns at him but instead of shooting him they decide to charge him.

Somehow Die Leere scares the gangsters to death, the gangsters give themselves up to the police and Die Leere and Zauberin exit our story.

Meanwhile Amorph has a confrontation with Turk - I´m calling him Turk since that might be the name we chose for him - the half human, half robot gangsters and his pumped up bodyguards. Or better his henchmen.

Amorph wastes the bodyguards / henchmen in really inventive ways before going after big man Turk himself. Who waits behind a desk.

Interlude :  a young couple - or a young man and a young woman who travel together but who are not a couple - are exploring a castle when suddenly they see something strange and get naked. Oh, wait, they don´t get naked. It just looks like they are getting their clothes off. Bummer.

Okay, they ARE a young couple and they ARE exploring a castle when they see a shadowy figure and then are hit with a blinding light. After which they still might get naked. Who knows ? Because these are all the pages.

But wait, there´s more. I also found some sketches which I am including here since I will probably not do another post on this. The first sketch is of Le Corbbeau and his - let´s say gifted - secretaries. I didn´t mind him looking like me as long as he was surrounded by hot babes. At least it was a more favorable depiction than in Robi and Toni Greis´ LUNA series.
 

A character study for Die Leere or The Emptiness in english. As you can guess by the name he was not invisible but there was just an emptiness where his body was. Not sure if you can show the difference in a comic.

Another sketch of Die Leere.

A character study of Thor, the god of thunder who was more like the Thor from the german mythology complete with red hair. I can understand that when Jack Kirby came up with his version of Thor he gave him blonde hair because that´s what americans associate with nordic men in general but in the original stories he had red hair. And if things got ugly having red hair Disney could not sue because their Thor really looked different.

Another sketch of Thor.

Another character study, this time of Amorph. I´m not sure if he was supposed to be a villain or another member of Task Force Germany.

Detail shot from the gangster in the background from the sketch.

Another character study. I don´t know if his name was Turk or if he was a turk. He has robot parts or robot armor and he´s definitely a bad guy.

Our last Thor sketch. As you can see the handle on the hammer is much larger than in Marvel´s version. I think the handle on Mjölnir was always drawn too short making it look like a handyman´s tool and not a weapon. If you have seen the first CONAN movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger you know how long the handle these warhammer´s handles were. Even if it was a bit shorter it would still be long enough to be held with both hands. 

Of course nowadays weapons experts have come to the conclusion that a warhammer with such a long handle would be impossible to use in close quarters and the warhammers with long handles were only used when you had much open space or on horseback. Which validates Kirby´s version.

Since I mentioned it in the post here is a video about die Warusschlacht.



And because it´s in german here is a documentary in english.



Another video with the main focus on the battle in the Teutoburg Forrest.



This one is more about the culture of the germanic tribes.



We can´t have a post about Germany and Thor without a comic related video, this time from COMIC MISCONCEPTIONS : Was Thor a Nazi ?



Yeah, it seems everybody hates german guys except for Tara Babcock.



I´m not sure if I got around to post any videos of this channel but LIFE IN GERMANY is a really interesting series. People outside of Germany get to see how life in Germany really is and people who life in Germany can see how they come across to foreigners. Which believe me, they sometimes have no clue about. Anyway, since this may be the first videos from this I wanted to start with the Top Ten most awesome things about Germany.



Followed by Things that throw me off about Germany.



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