The cover of Daniela Schreiter’s 2014 bestseller Schattenspringer: Wie es ist, anders zu sein (literally, “Shadow Jumper: What It’s Like to Be Different,” translated as The World Beyond My Shadow: A Life with Autism, 2020) proclaims itself as “enlightening about Asperger-autism, barely known in Germany, and dispelling prejudices,” further describing autism as a “taboo topic [Tabuthema].” The comic’s publisher, Panini, which long showed little interest in producing German artists rather than licensing foreign material, has made Schreiter a star, with two Schattenspringer sequels (2015 and 2018); a young adult comic, Autistic-Hero-Girl (2017); and two comics for kids featuring Lisa und Lio (2020 and 2023), an autistic schoolgirl and her alien fox companion. All these publications emphasize Schreiter’s lived autistic experience and argue for the acceptance of neurodiversity.

Panini has capitalized on Schreiter’s success as the visibility of autism in German society has increased; her books garner positive reviews for both inspiring young autistic readers and informing neurotypical readers; and Lisa und Lio won a prestigious Max-und-Moritz Prize in 2022. Schreiter has thus become German comics’ foremost representative of “a ‘minoritized’ culture … comparable to Queer, Black or Deaf cultures” (Jaarsma and Welin 25; Davidson 793), cultures that Schreiter explicitly supports. In this sense, Panini may be said to construct Schreiter’s stardom by rough analogy to the rise of queer comics artist Ralf König in the 1980s and 1990s—an analogy weakened by Panini’s marginalization of Schreiter’s career, prior to her autism diagnosis, as a creator of funny animal-BDSM comics.