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“Multikulti Manga in Germany: or, Why Frau Merkel Should Read More Comics”, at Comics Forum 2012: Multiculturalism and Representation, Leeds, England, Friday, November 9, 2012

 

In October of 2010, German chancellor Angela Merkel famously—or infamously—remarked in a speech to the Young Union, the youth wing of her ruling Christian Democratic Union party, “The attempt at Multikulti [multiculturalism in Germany] has failed, utterly failed.” Leaving aside criticisms that the attempt had never properly been made on the official level, the truth is that non-official multiculturalism is alive and well on Germany’s menus, in its video stores—and in the pages of its comic books, particularly its...

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“They’re Crazy, Those Germans: Astérix Adapted, Parodied, Pastiched and Travestied in Germany”, at The Third International Comics Conference: Comics Rock, Bournemouth University, Bournemouth, England, Saturday, June 9, 2012

 

Despite its reputation—in Maurice Horn’s World Encyclopedia of Comics, for example—as a blatant expression of French chauvinism, René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo’s long-running comic series Astérix has joined the pantheon of classic bandes dessinées. Moreover, the diminutive Gaulish hero’s adventures have proven surprisingly exportable; readers from all over western Europe have been willing to laugh at the stereotypes of their own nations, while...

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“‘I waaß scho wos: wir mochn den Faust’: Diminution and Distinction as Adaptive Strategies in Wolfgang Ambros and Josef Prokopetz’ Fäustling: Spiel in G (1973)”, at Music in Goethe’s Faust: Goethe’s Faust in Music, NUI Maynooth, Ireland, Friday, April 13, 2012

 

After the huge success of his first album, Alles andre zählt net mehr (1972), Viennese Liedermacher Wolfgang Ambros was asked to provide a musical theatre piece for the 1973 Wiener Festwochen. His lyricist, Josef Prokopetz, suggested an adaptation of Faust, and this became the impetus to create Fäustling, a version of Goethe’s drama “scaled down” from German canonical Classicism to an early form of “Austropop,” a mixture of folk, rock and...

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“‘Great White Hope of the German Comic,’ or ‘Eternal Insiders’ Tip’”? 20 Years of Peter Puck’s Satirical Comic Rudi”, at Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association Conference, Boston, Massachusetts, Friday, April 6, 2012

 

From 1985 until 2006, readers of the monthly Stuttgart magazine Live (and after 1991, its successor Lift) were accustomed to seeing in every issue a full-page comic by Peter Puck. Puck’s creation, Rudi, quickly became popular because it combined a sophisticated and humorous artistic style and brilliant comic timing with pointed and witty dialogue that sometimes threatened to crowd the drawings out of their panels. Rudi is the episodic...

Read more about “‘Great White Hope of the German Comic,’ or ‘Eternal Insiders’ Tip’”? 20 Years of Peter Puck’s Satirical Comic <em>Rudi</em>”

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