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“Another Camp Heard From: Austrian Superheroes vs. the 'Habsburg Dilemma'”, at CAUTG/APAUC Annual Conference, University of Regina, Regina, Saskatchewan, Saturday, May 26, 2018

 

Harald Havas’s ASH: Austrian Superheroes (2016- ) is a comic about the Neue Wiener Wächter: the red-and-white-clad Captain Austria, Jr. and his teammates Der Bürokrat, Lady Heumarkt and Das Donauweibchen. Their localized code-names identify them as a form of “nationalist superhero,” who “explicitly identifies himself or herself as representative and defender of a specific nation-...

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“Bobby Bär, meet Bobby Bear: The British Origins of an Austrian Comic Strip in the 1920s”, at Canadian Society for the Study of Comics Conference, Toronto, Ontario, Thursday, May 10, 2018

 

Das Kleine Blatt (1927-1944) was a newspaper published in Vienna by the Austrian Social Democratic Workers’ Party. Aimed at the whole family, it also ran a comic strip for children: Bobby Bär became so popular that by 1933, there were 70 chapters of the Bobby Bär Club in Vienna.

The origins of Bobby Bär are unknown; a...

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“The Superhero as 'Border Angel': Crossing Space, Time, and Genres in Graupner and Wüstefeld’s Das UPgrade”, at Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association Conference, Indianapolis, Indiana, Saturday, March 31, 2018

 

Das UPgrade is a projected ten-volume series—now three volumes in—about the only superhero of the now-defunct German Democratic Republic. Ronny Knäusel is born in Dresden in 1967; thanks to the combination of alien intervention five millennia ago, an experimental GDR fertility pill, and an American surf-rock song playing on the radio, Ronny can teleport himself and others—but only when he hears the Beach Lords’ hit “Palms in Sorrow.” As a young man, he uses this ability to spirit...

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“Flüchtlingscomics: Comics About / For / By Refugees—Across Cultures, or At Cross Purposes?”, at CAUTG/APAUC Annual Conference, Ryerson University, Toronto, Ontario, Monday, May 29, 2017

 

The current refugee crisis in Germany has prompted the development of strategies to facilitate communication between Germans and their sometimes unwelcomed guests. Given the barriers of language and culture between Germans and refugees, the comic book, with its emphasis on both visual mediation and verbal communication, has become one of these strategies. Thus a new genre has arisen: der Flüchtlingscomic.

This category, however...

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“Prototypes in a German Hippie Paradise: Peter-Torsten Schulz and Michael Ryba’s Schindel-Schwinger”, at Canadian Society for the Study of Comics Conference, Toronto, Ontario, Thursday, May 11, 2017

 

Between 1975 and 1977, the small West German Illu Press published five volumes of Schindel-Schwinger. With clear influences from American underground comics (particularly the work of Vaughn Bodē), the series tells the story of Flohheim, a commune populated by Proben: escaped “prototypes” of living creatures accidentally imbued with life by God in a drunken stupor. To maintain his reputation, God has charged his sons, Petrus and Luzifer, to compete to capture...

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“Time Gamers: The Failure of ‘the New German Astérix’”, at Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association Conference, San Diego, California, Friday, April 14, 2017

 

In June 1991, German comics publisher Ehapa announced its plans to conquer Europe. In a bid to overtake its main rival Carlsen, Ehapa sought to free itself from dependence upon licensed imports such as the Disney comics and Franco-Belgian bandes dessinées that had made its fortune, and develop its own exportable properties. This seemed feasible, in the hope of an expanded German market due to the reunification of West and East Germany, and with an eye to the coming European Single Market...

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“Missing in Action: The Late Development of the German-Speaking Superhero”, at Superhero Identities Symposium, Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne, Australia, Friday, December 9, 2016

 

The creation of Siegel and Shuster’s Superman (1938) and the superhero genre in American comics occurred before and during World War II, when Germany was culturally isolated. If, however, prewar Nazi journalists objected to Superman’s Jewish-American origins and deployment in anti-German propaganda, postwar critics such as Fredric Wertham (1954) saw costumed vigilantes as fascistic themselves. Europeans agreed, yet continued to regard superheroes as uniquely American. A failed attempt to...

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