D - Gruppe returns and it´s about time !

So, last time I didn´t get to write much about the first issue of D - GRUPPE issue 1 REVENGE OF THE ICE QUEEN because as always I got a bit sidetracked by one of my usual rants about German superheroes. But now that we have covered all of that - at least for the forseeable future - we can concentrate on the comics.


Originally planned as a 50plus page collection it was split into 3 issues for two main reasons. Firstly, as it was an old strip from the early 1990s, it had to be cleaned up and doing that with over 50 pages would have delayed the comic immensly. Second, and more important, publishing the story in 3 parts means that the cover price is much, much lower. You can read it all more in detail here

The first issue of D - GRUPPE by Terry Hooper - Scharf, Benjamin R. Dilworth and John Erasmus published by Black Tower Comics Group is a european album sized ( about DIN A 4 ) comic with 32 black and white pages plus a color cardboard cover and color backcover priced at 5.78 EUROS. The strange price comes from converting English Pounds into European Euros I guess. The issue contains 2 stories : REVENGE OF THE ICE QUEEN, a 14 page story that introduces the team of D - Gruppe and FESTIVAL OF DEATH, a 5 page backup featuring DEUTSCHER MICHAEL ( which more correctly should have been DEUTSCHER MICHEL ). The second story was originally done in color and you can see one of the gorgeous original color pages as the back cover.


Additionally the issue also contains a 2 page introduction to D - GRUPPE, 6 lost pages of D - GRUPPE artwork by Ben Dilworth and ads for DENE VERNON - THE THING FROM BELOW.

I have to say, the first issue contains some of the best art I´ve seen so far from the BLACK TOWER books. While on THE BAT RIUMPHANT the art by Terry Hooper was more reminiscent of the 1940 pulp comic due to the nature of the comic ( a superhero created around that time ) in the lead story it looks more like 80s John Byrne on UNCANNY X - MEN at the height of his fame. Which in great part has to be accredited to the inks by Ben Dilworth and comparing him to John Byrne would really be selling him short. There are clear traces of Byrne and also a bit of Barry Windsor Smith there but at the same time he has his unique look that is much more realistic than comicbook looking.


Like I already said, THE REVENGE OF THE ICE QUEEN, introduces all seven members of the team and they go up against their first villain. While the story has not too much character interaction you get a pretty good idea how the team members relate to each other, what their powers are and what the purpose of D - Gruppe is. And of course you get a good dose of action. But like ALPHA FLIGHT ( which may be the reason I automatically thought of John Byrne when I saw the art ) it has it´s own national quirks and unexpected group dynamic. It begins with the unusual team leader Kopfmann ( Headman ), a superintelligent dwarf and continues with Waldmeister ( Forrestmaster, additionally " Waldmeister " is also an ice - cream flavor ), Insektenkönig ( I guess this would be the German name for Insect King ), Goldener Soldat ( Golden Soldier ), Sturmgeist ( Stormghost ), Sternenengel ( Star Angel ) and Einsamer Wolf ( Lone Wolf ). I´m not sure but I guess Einsamwolf is just a typo.

Lastly we have Bluebird, which would be " Hüttensänger " in German or more specifically Rotkehlhüttensänger, Blaukehlhüttensänger or Berghüttensänger depending on if we´re talking about an eastern, western or mountain bluebird. Which is the reason why I´m okay with Bluebird instead of the German translation.

Aside from the German names there are also other bits in the story that show a clear knowledge of Germany ( yes, nobody wanted to appear on GOTTSCHALK ) and a familiarity with the look of various German cities that appear in the stories like Lemgo or Hannover . It´s a nice change of pace from most of the American comics that take place in Germany which always looks like Bavaria. Seeing the spot - on depiction of German everyday life it comes as no surprise that Terry Hooper partially grew up in Germany and the genesis of D - GRUPPE came from a lack of German superheroes at that time :

Growing up in rural Germany wasn’t so bad. No British comics, of course, but I had access to Bastei comics such as Silberpfeil,


Buffalo Bill,


Lasso,


Schwarzer Wolf


as well as the ubiquitous Disney comics and those produced by Kauka Verlag. But in the UK I’d been used to The Purple Hood, Billy The Cat, The Steel Claw in British comics as well as US super hero comics. Wastl was the only German character in a costume I could find and it turned out he was Belgian!


In the 1980s came Mykros


and Fotonik but they were French. There simply were no German super heroes. Of course, later in the 1980s Helge “ Herod ” Korda ( writer ) and Stefan Dinter ( artist ) produced the parody HEROES FROM THE BLACK LAGOON. But that was a loong time later.


Fairy tales were big on German tv and there were quite a few involving dwarves. So I created a German dwarf hero who was quite an acrobat. Later I thought that rather than just make him athletic I’d make him a genius - Klaus von Happe ( “ Kopfmann ” ) was born.

The second story FESTIVAL OF DEATH also has wonderful art, this time by John Erasmus and like I said, check out the color page on the backcover. All in all a great issue that introduces a complete team ( something most writers at DC seem incapable of, now that I have read more of the NEW 52 books ), has lots of action and is fun to read.

Issue 2 of D - GRUPPE has the same size but it has only 24 pages plus color cover and contains a 20 page story ZEIT - GEIST ( not to be confused with german podcast ZETTGEIST to be found on the blogroll ), a one page introduction that contains more information about D - Gruppe and a backcover pin up drawn by Terry Hooper and inked by Jim Beanranko, all for 4.05 Euros. ZEIT - GEIST is a 3 part story with the 3rd part coming out in issue 4. The art is once again done exclusively by Terry Hooper


and the new team, with some new members who have joined the team since THE REVENGE OF THE ICE QUEEN after Kopfmann decided his team needed more power ( that´s a nice piece of continuity from isue one right there ) , goes on its first Crisis - like big crossover adventure. The story spotlights the new members a bit without spoiling too much and introduces the main threat.

Issue three also has 24 pages plus color cover and has the second part of Zeit - Geist, ZEIT - GEIST STRIKES ! with 21 story pages, also for 4.05 Euros. Here the story is continued, the concept of the parallels is introduced and the fighting begins in earnest.


Like the best crossovers the story involves multiple earths, in this case called " parallels " that are inhabited by heroes of mainly german origin, and the whole of creation is in peril.

It´s not the most original concept - which could have been the case if it HAD come out in the 1990s - but that´s not really the important part. Because the really fun part is all the different variations of superheroes that interact and seeing characters from Germany´s classic literature / fairy tales like Rotkäppchen, Barbarossa or Baron von Münchhausen as part of a supergroup to save the universe interact. I mean we´ve seen all the big battles in such stories like JLA / AVENGERS but for me the best bits were Sue Dibny and Sue Richards chatting about life with an elongated husband or Snapper Carr and Rick Jones teaching Jarvis the finer points in grilling a burger.

Of course it wouldn´t be a true BLACK TOWER comic if things weren´t different from what they seem at first. Like in SAVAGE DRAGON things look really familiar down to strange forces " whiting out " existence like in Crisis only to take a turn for the unexpected.


As with most of the Black Tower Comics output a big part of the appeal of the stories is nostalgia and I won´t deny it. This may not be the right reading material for all the new readers out there who expect their stories to drag out everything for six issues to fit into a nice paperback and who are accustomed to flashy art and " brave " page layout instead of solid storytelling that puts the story first.

I might even say that part of this nostalgia may come from remembering a time when comics were bold, daring and exciting. Reading the issues I felt the same " energy " for lack of a better word when I read the first issues of a new comic company like iMAGE or CROSSGEN. It´s also a bit of a chance to look into a possible universe as you can imagine how comics in Germany could have been if this series really had been picked up by Bastei.


It´s interesting to see all these German superheroes who usually get the short end of the stick getting more than their 15 minutes of fame, especially for German readers. The price is only a bit higher than most mainstream comics offered by Marvel or American independent publishers and with the bigger size you can´t even argue with that. Also there will be no reboots, relaunches or other marketing schticks involved so you can get them without fear.

And really, don´t you have a few empty spots on your pull list that could be filled up by new books, now that most of the good part of DC has self - destructed ?


Now you may ask : but where do I get those fantastic comics ? Since I have gotten my review copies directly from Black Tower mastermind Terry Hooper by mail I had to research this a bit ( I can´t tell my readers to start a blog in the hopes of getting some copies as well, can I ? ) and finding them wasn´t easy. As expected I couldn´t find it on amazon but I was a bit surprised that I couldn´t find it on LULU since i know you can get the Black Tower comics there. So I used the link to the Black Tower comics and books online store that can be found on the Black Tower comics and books website link on the blogroll. It can be a bit difficult to navigate so here are the direct links for issue 1 , issue 2 and issue 3 of D - Gruppe where you can see some preview pages of the issues. Of course you can find all other publications by the Hoopster there. I also found some pages from the Zeitgeist story here but from the look of it those are the original pages, the cleaned up version looks much better.


For more about D - Gruppe and Terry Hooper here are the links that helped me greatly in making this post :

d - gruppe issue 1 : revenge of the ice queen

d - gruppe issue 2 : zeit - geist

d - gruppe issue 3 : zeit - geist strikes

terry hooper profile on lambiek

terry hooper interview by phil latter


As is the tradition on this blog a video at the end, but instead of the original 1944 black and white version of LORD OF THE RINGS ( which will be posted at some other time ) I really found two from Black Tower comics. The first one is from the horror anthology TALES OF TERROR and since lately the posts tend to dabble in that territory I found it appropiate.



The second one is from Black Tower´s PURPLE HOOD series with art by Benjamin R. Dilworth. Enjoy.



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We need raw power and I mean to get it or else D - Gruppe is a joke.

Germany´s first Super Hero Team

I´m a terrible, terrible human being. No, really. On one side I keep bitching about Marvel, DC, Dark Horse, Image and all the other comic companies not drowning me in review copies but when I finally get some comics to review it takes me like ages to do the reviews.


Case in point : D - GRUPPE by Terry Hooper - Scharf, Benjamin R. Dilworth and John Erasmus published by Black Tower Comics Group. I got the first three issues some time ago ( shame on me, it´s been so long that I have no idea when exactly ) well after issues 1 and 2 of BLACK TOWER ADVENTURE but since the story in D - GRUPPE takes place before the TWILIGHT OF THE GODS saga I thought it best to write about them first.

With all the noise and news bombardement about DC´s new 52 it is time to step back and look what else is happening in the comic world. There are a lot of comic readers out there who have stopped reading DC books or have reduced their DC reading pile so they might look for something new to read. So how about a comic universe that´s under the helm of one mastermind that doesn´t have any reboots ? Okay, it´s in black and white but the storytelling is way better than some examples I have seen in some of the new DC books. But what´s most important - they are fun to read.

When was the last time reading a comic book was fun ? I wish I had some of the new DC issues other than the new JUSTICE LEAGUE 1 by Geoff Johns and Jim Lee to compare. But in the first story of issue 1 of D - GRUPPE, a 14 page story called THE REVENGE OF THE ICE QUEEN, all seven members of the team are introduced and they go up against their first villain. While the story has not too much character interaction you get a pretty good idea how the team members relate to each other, what their powers are and what the purpose of D - Gruppe is. And of course you get a good dose of action.


Now before we go further into analyzing D - GRUPPE a few of my readers from outside of Germany may be wondering why the title of this post labels them as Germany´s first super hero team. I´m not really a historian of german superhero comics but my research points to it that there is no german comic book about a german super hero team that predates D - GRUPPE which was created in the 1970s and first published in the 1980s. Now why is that ?

The german comic market has always been mostly imported comics that were translated and while there were german comics by the big publishers and later by the independent press superheroes were a terrain most german comic creators were afraid to enter. Or if they did superheroes it was mainly for parodies of the existing american superheroes. Because the american comic creators - let´s face it - were the top dogs in the superhero area and most german comic creators didn´t think it was worthwhile or even possible to do german superheroes in a serious manner. And that´s not something that I´m making up since it was one of the many obstacles we faced when doing the now infamous first - and so far only issue - of POWER FREAKS.


As I said, I´m not a comic historian who knows everything about german comics and I´m not saying who influenced who but between the end of the 1990s and 2000 ( which was when we did POWER FREAKS ) there was a sudden spike in german comics in the independent comic scene that also contained some titles that featured superheroes or characters with superhero - like characteristica.

The first was HELDEN ( HEROES ) by Ralf Paul and Guido Paul which started in 1997 and was announced as " Germany´s answer to super hero comics by the country that brought you Blitzkrieg, Bratwurst and Heidi Klum " in the PREVIEWS catalogue. Although as far as I can remember the story is about the adventures of some rolegame playing team´s characters and as such rather a fantasy comic than a superhero comic.


In 2001 IPP Productions started DORN ( THORN ), their real, full - on superhero comic that took place in Cologne but there was no team involved.


In 1998 Infinity Verlag began publishing DIE VERGESSENEN ( THE FORGOTTEN ONES ) but as far as I can remember that book was more about conspiracies in the vein of X - FILES than straightforward superheroes and I guess nowadays it would be filed under " mystery ". Most books tried to do superheroes without putting too much attention to the superhero aspect.


A series that wasn´t afraid of being labeled as a superhero comic was NEW ARDEN CHRONICLES from Final Art Comics in 1999 which clearly showed it´s influences like the art of Todd McFarlane and the Image comics of the 1990s.


The same year Karicartoon Verlag started with KOPECK that had some superpowered people in it and although the main character was a mercenary I´m willing to let it count if somebody as Grifter is in the superhero category.


There also is UNION DER HELDEN ( UNION OF HEROES ) but while it does feature more than one superhero I´m not sure if it really qualifies since it´s a webcomic and not a drawn comic but a photo comic.





Now why have german superhero comics taken so long to surface ? To tell the truth I can only speculate but in american superhero comics there aren´t many german superheroes because most germans that appeared were villains. Because germans make the best villains. They are well structured, tidy, efficient, always on time, they have culture and come on.....Nazis, how can you beat that for a villain ? From Baron Strucker to Dr. Doom ( where Bavaria was changed to Latveria ) to the Red Skull most german comic characters were Nazis.


Or sometimes Nazi collaborateurs like Baron Blood who was not only a Nazi ( although from british heritage ) but also a vampire and aristocrat. Combining three evils in one person he was like the turducken of supervillains.

Aside from all the evil germans there have been a few attempts at creating german superheroes by american comic companies which ranged from the slightly embarassing E - Blitz from Düsseldorf, later called Blitzkrieger


to the more painful Hauptmann Deutschland who was later called Vormund who together were part of the Schutzheiligentruppe ( troop of patron saints ). Wile one of the possible translations of guardian is Vormund, in the german language Vormund is almost exclusively used in the sense of a legal guardian. The better translation would have been Wächter because Vormund just sounds ridiculous a a superhero name.


And do I even have to mention Bundesadler who appeared in a few panels of JMS´ Morlun story as food and to show how ridiculous the idea of a german superhero is ?


Okay, at this point most of you - or at least some of you - may be screaming : What about Nightcrawler ? He´s a popular superhero and he´s german. Right, this one was ours but they killed him off.

And let´s face it : he wasn´t the best looking one. In one of my earliest posts about the NIGHTCRAWLER miniseries by Roberto Aguirre Sacasa and Darick Robertson ( and I can recommend the two trades of it for all fans of Nightcrawler ) I wrote :

I think it´s no coincidence that Nightcrawler looks like he does. Come on, he´s the german guy on the team. Canada has the übermacho with Logan who is just slightly taller than Yoda, Africa got the goddess with Ororo, Ireland got the fighting drunk Sean, Russia got the iron worker ( because of the iron curtain ) with Pjotr, the native americans got Warbird ( who did not last that long....so maybe he was worse of than Nightcrawler )...and what did Germany get ? A bluefurred freak who looks like the devil's pet demon, a cross between papa smurf and Mephisto with the soul of a saint. Which is how Germany may appear to foreigners : ugly and cold on the outside. But once you get to know it a little better it´s full of warmth and beautiful things. Except Bielefeld which doesn´t really exist.


So historical speaking germans in comics are mostly Nazis and when they are heroes they are either ridiculous, disfigured, meet an untimely demise or - all of the above. I think at the moment Maverick is the only german superhero left in the Marvel universe and let´s see how long he lasts.

Keeping in mind the bad track record of german superheroes in american comics and the bad translations ( for names as well as for dialogue ) it´s a nice change of pace to read a book like D - GRUPPE with correct use of names and a real knowledge of the german culture and history. One of the reasons why I liked reading JUSTICE LEAGUE EUROPE was that they were travelling around and you could see many foreign countries. Or rather what american comic creators thought other countries looked like.

I remember that I had an issue of JUSTICE LEAGUE EUROPE with me on the trip to Venice ( Italy ) with the art school and one of the other pupils leafed through the comic and complained that the indian city where the story took place didn´t look like indian cities look. Which was only natural since the most the artist knew about India was probably from what he had seen in some old Technicolor movie from the 1970s, like Fritz Lang´s THE TIGER OF ESCHNAPUR or THE INDIAN TOMB ( or JOURNEY TO THE LOST CITY ) which starred the sultry Debra Paget who did a really rauchy bellydance in the second movie.

I really don´t know how her outfit passed the censorship of that time.

Debra may not have been the biggest star but after the release of THE INDIAN TOMB the amount of fan mail for her received at 20th Century - Fox was only topped by that for Marilyn Monroe and Betty Grable.

Like I said, in most cases comics that take place in Germany are either poorly translated like the one with Spider - Man and Wolverine in Germany where Spider - Man thinks a guard is talking about the people he killed while in reality he´s only complaining about his wife being a lousy cook.

Or it´s done by someone who doesn´t know that much of the history and the country - both of which is clearly not the case in D - GRUPPE since Terry Hooper partially grew up in Germany.

Man, once again I didn´t get to the review part but I guess we´ll have to leave that for the next part as it´s already pretty late and I have to wrap this post up. But we will get to talk more about D - GRUPPE in the next installment and maybe I´ll even have time to mention that I almost came to be part of the comic.

As I have mentioned Debra Paget in this post I absolutely have to post the clip of her dance scene in THE INDIAN TOMB for all readers who are too young to have seen the movie.



I couldn´t find a video about the SPIDER - MAN VS WOLVERINE comic but they did square off in the animated series from the 90s. I tried to find the full episode but the only ones I could find were in bad quality, the latino dubbing or the wrong format. Or all of the things I just mentioned. Luckily I found this clip which is in good quality and the right format.



Speaking about that comic, I tried to find a video about german super heroes but the only one was from the GERMANY VS USA channel and while it says it´s about super heroes it doesn´t really mention any german super heroes or how super hero comics were published in Germany. So because americans who can´t read german really think those soldiers are talking about all the people they have killed I thought it appropriate to post a video about all the other lies about Germany foreigners are told.



Even though I didn´t really get to talk about D - GRUPPE in this post I wanted to include a video about them but I couldn´t find one, not even on Terry Hooper´s own video channel. So instead I´m posting a video about the Purple Hood which is at least super hero related.



And last but not least here´s the second Spider - Man movie. When I was growing up this was the pinnacle of comic book achievement.



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