German comics are comics written in the German language or by German-speaking creators, for the major comic markets in Germany , Austria , and Switzerland , with spill-overs into the neighboring, but lesser, comic markets of Liechtenstein , Luxembourg and German-Belgium. There continues to be a large presence of translated material in the German language market. Panini Comics holds licensing agreements to publish translated Marvel and DC Comics , among other things. The German comic has many early forerunners. They are now generally recognized as pioneers of the comic form, predating the development of the American comic strip. German born and influenced artists Rudolph Dirks and Lyonel Feininger brought the innovations to American Sunday papers.
Learning a language, any language, is hard. German comic culture is very different from the one found in America or France, for that matter. Drawn by Manfred Schmidt, Nick Knatterton is a German comic from the 50s about a private eye, sporting a Sherlockian green plaid overcoat, cap and pipe. According to the author, this comic was originally intended as a parody of the American Superman-comics.
Learn German With Comics: A Brief Introduction To German (Web) Comics
Comic strip , series of adjacent drawn images, usually arranged horizontally, that are designed to be read as a narrative or a chronological sequence. The story is usually original in this form. Words may be introduced within or near each image, or they may be dispensed with altogether. If words functionally dominate the image, it then becomes merely illustration to a text. The comic strip is essentially a mass medium, printed in a magazine , a newspaper , or a book.
This has to do with the political situation between and , which set back the development of all German art forms. For comics it was even more difficult, because of the fact that illustrated stories told with speech bubbles were considered as an American invention, and because the American superheroes — long before the USA entered the war — had chosen the Third Reich and Adolf Hitler as their favorite opponent. Of course there were still cartoons and illustrated stories to read in the Third Reich, but for over a decade speech bubbles were frowned upon as an American bad habit. German artists would not recover from this setback for a long time.