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Post by andydecker on Feb 5, 2009 16:24:48 GMT
Here are some covers of german weekly horrorpulps. With the exception of two they are all cancelled for years. All were sold only at the newsstand. As it was supposed that german readers wouldn´t see storys taking place in Germany as exciting or interesting, 99% of these novels written by german writers are taking place either in England or America. This is a random selection of the good, the bad and the ugly ;D Lets begin with another Vampir Horror. VHR was published weekly and cancelled with No. 451. Here is No. 284 from 1978, written by a german writer who wrote everything from western to crime. At the time the series was tame and inoffensive. Not to mention really boring. This is a Geister-Krimi from Kelter Publishing. Geister-Krimi ran for 405 weekly issues from 1974 to 1981. According to anecdotes Kelter was the worst paying outfit and it isn´t held in high regards. They had the same cover concept for the whole run. The Silber Grusel-Krimi from Zauberkreis Publishing is the granddaddy of all the german horror pulps. At first a serial with the adventures of secret agent Larry Brent against the forces of darkness it later became another of those stand alone novels series and ran from 1968 to 1986 for 494 issues. At first bi-weekly it later went weekly, near the end it went back to bi-weekly. Most of this time they had the same cover concept. This is Der Magier (The Magician) 1982 to 1983, also from Zauberkreis Publishing, one of the short-lived serials. It was a showcase of german pulp cliches, even for weekly pulps the stories were bland and tame. No wonder it got the axe after one year due to low sales. The cover art was uniformly this ugly. This is Geisterjäger John Sinclair (Ghosthunter John Sinclair) from Bastei Publishing. This serial was started under its own imprint in 1978 (after 50 novels as a sub-series in another anthology-series) and is still published today. All 1600 weekly novels (+312 monthly paperbacks which are cancelled) were and are written by Helmut Rellergard aka Jason Dark, back then an editor at Bastei. (Except a handful of novels at the beginning when the publisher wasn´t sure if the writer could deliver 4 novels a month.) It is one policeman with magical weapons against the forces of darkness, and it has its fans. The covers were mostly done by spanish artists, often tailored to the content, sometimes the story is written around a picture. This is one of the recent better covers from issue 1307, called "Dead women of Berlin", one of novels were the british Chiefinspector is working on the continent as Evil is international Professor Zamorra, the Master of the Supernatural, is also from Bastei Publishing and the second survivor. Started in 1974 it was also a bi-weekly serial. French parapsychologist Zamorra, the man with no first name, inherits a castle on the Loire and a magical talisman, which was created by Merlin. With his beautiful secretary/lover Nicole Duval he fights the forces of darkness. At first it was a typical monster-of-the-week series with a dozen writers under one house-name and no continuity whatsoever. In 1978 a young writer named Werner Kurt Giesa came on board and became the only writer. He invented a solid background and brought in elements of fantasy and science fiction. Bastei´s series never were very gory or violent, but Zamorra is horror light. Giesa injected a lot of humour into the stories and did complex story-lines which went on forever. He was an original and loved by fandom. A couple of years ago his declining health forced him to take other writers on board. He died last year. This is No. 887 from 2008, called "Bloody Fog", the cover is one of the computerdrawn pictures which are now all the rage. And last the most infamous of all german horror pulps. Dr. Morton was published by Erber Publishing from 1974 to 1975 for 54 weekly issues. Erber was primarily a publisher of nurse novels and love novels who tried on the horror market. Conceptwise the serial was way ahead of its time. It had no supernatural like all the competition and was a straight crime and thriller series. Basically it was the evil scientist as the hero. Brilliant Harley Street surgeon Dr. Glenn Morton does medical experiments on humans in his secret laboratory, always one step ahead of Scotland Yard who wonders who this madman is doing these terrible crimes. His specimen are either crooks, who "deserved it" or unlucky bystanders. His sidekick is his chaufeur William Grimsby, who is a serial killer; he only gets off when he kills woman, so sometimes he goes on the hunt. The series was incredible gory and violent. The issue shown here "The singing killer" is one of the more memorable stories. Popstar Roy Barnabas is borerline mentally ill with sadistic tendencies. He likes to bite girls. Morton thinks he is an interesting case to study and kidnaps him. He treats him with drugs and hypnosis until Barnabas goes over the edge, digging up corpses for a bit of necrophila or biting young girls to death. When the police is closing in, Morton brings him to his laboratory and kills him for an autopsy. all in the name of science. End of story Needless to say that the authorities charged with keeping an eye of the newsstand periodicals so there was no explicit sex or too gory violence in books sold to basically a young readership weren´t amused. The series was banned so often that the publisher had to take it from the market. The novels were fast written hackwork, with a basic characterisation at best - like all the weeklys - still they are a truly guilty pleasure. I love it, even if I would also say today that this is truly no reading material for minors.
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Post by andydecker on Feb 5, 2009 16:38:20 GMT
I forgot some links. www.gruselromane.de is one of the most complex database of german pulp covers with thousands of scans. A true labour of love. www.drmorton.de/books.htmOn this website there are coverscan of Erbers horrorprogram, the Dr. Morton novels and other books. The publisher did a lot of original short story collections also for newsstand.
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Post by dem bones on Feb 5, 2009 23:06:47 GMT
Seriously andy, if i'd found the above excellent crash course in German Weekly Pulps within the pages of Paperback Fanatic, i'd not have been disappointed. I could be wrong, but i've a feeling that a Jason Darke magazine was published in England for a while during the mid-late 'eighties? I'd see them in the local newsagent but never got around to picking one up. We're poles apart on the merits (or otherwise) of the cover artwork! Maybe it's because the illustrators are mostly new to me, but i love the stuff you've been scanning up. Dr. Morton looks - and sounds - like the stuff and i'm very taken with that mildly lurid illustration gracing Grusel-Krimi. Great post.
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Post by pulphack on Feb 6, 2009 0:55:43 GMT
andy, you are a true hero of the pulp wars... this is sterling stuff, and begs that justin twist your arm to put it into a PF feature for the future.
some lovely covers - often for all the wrong reasons - and some series that may have been tame in practise, but sound completely mental in conception! i wish i could speak german...i had a book published by bastei, but i didn't get a cover THAT good.
this is wonderful archival work, and stirs the imagination just to read about it.
(incidentally, that's one of my pet preoccupations at the moment - does the anticipation of a book/film/album and what you EXPECT and imagine actually have a greater depth and resonance than the actual article when you get to see/read/hear it?)
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Feb 6, 2009 6:56:48 GMT
Yes, Andy sterling job. I'm intrigued by the cultural differences. I've noticed myself here that nudity, sexuality is more or less uncensored but the German's have an absolute aversion to horror - which I imagine makes it difficult to have a horror industry.
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Post by andydecker on Feb 6, 2009 13:00:33 GMT
Thanks for the nice words, guys! @ demonik Yes, I seem to remember that "Sinclair" had a shortlived british edition. It really sold well a time for licensed foreign markets; here there were even a couple of long-running weekly reprints, also some book-club editions. pulphackthat is a good question personally I think that todays relentless hype and spoilerage on the Internet just builds unrealistic expectations. Something is not right when you have the impression that the trailer was better than the entire movie afterwards. Btw, which novel did Bastei publish? @ Craig yes, nudity and sex was never a big problem here since the 70s, but violence was and is. Today the people of the "Federal Board for the Protection of Minors" are more concerned with PC-Games or neo-nazi stuff than with literature. Still, as this is of course a political thing with always changing standards you never know what tomorrow brings. In 1954 one of first banned things were Tarzan comics, because they were seen as "a product of an deranged fantasy", "putting youths into an irreal world of lies and corrupting their ethic standards". Today everyone has a good laugh about this. On the other hand, just last year the german edition of a Marvel Max comic was banned from all ages distribution. And most horor movies never make it uncut, even if they get a R-or 18 rating. Saw Planet Terror these days on pay-tv. It missed 5 minutes of gory stuff. Back then the board - which can get active only after the distribution - gave the horror weekly a hard time. No wonder that after a few costly run-ins with the government publishers decided to play it safe and established a kind of in-house code. But like I said, standards change. Bastei publishes weekly adult-westerns - like the horror a truly dying market - where you get the obligatory two more or less explict fuck-scenes. In 1980 this wouldn´t have been possible, today even in romance novels for the female market this is often a standard. But enough of my rambling. To round up things up, here are three more of the horror weeklys, all cancelled 30 years ago or so. The first is a great cover of Monstrula. This serial was published bi-weekly by Kelter Publishing from 1974 to 1976 for 46 issues. It was written alone by one of those prolific guys who wrote hundreds of these novels for all genres under countless pseudonyms. The hero was a british (what else ) journalist who gets cursed by the ghost of his murdered fiancee, so he can experience the terror of the supernatural. It was a quite good series, very gory and astonishingly nihilistic at times. The scanned novel has the great title "Bloodrage of the Killerdolls". Next is the ancestor of all german horror pulp. Jürgen Grasmück aka Dan Shocker created secret agent Larry Brent for publisher Zauberkreis in 1968. In hindsight you can see that the writer was heavily influenced by the then current media, the popular secret-agent-movies and the german Edgar Wallace movies. His hero Brent is a blond and athletic sonnyboy working for the ultra-secret PSA, the "Psycho-analytische Spezialabteilung", which has its HQ in New York under the restaurant Tavern-on-the-Green at Central park (no, really!). He fought all kinds of weird menaces and the forces of darkness. The concept is truly a child of its time, where everything american was eagerly - and quite uncritcally - embraced. The serial was quite a hit. After being published for years in the Silber-Grusel-Krimi it got its own imprint 1981 as Larry Brent, alternating reprints and new novels. It was cancelled 1986. Writer Grasmück died 2007. Born 1940 he was in a wheelchair since he was 15, he had one of those progressing muscle diseases. The cover is drawn by Lonati, another veteran of german newsstand weeklys. I adore his moody and distinctive work. According to anecdotes he was a recluse, the editors could only reach him through letters. He did hundreds of paintings for western, sf and horror. The title is a typical Dan Shocker. It is called "Terrorparty with Count Dracula". And last is a cover of "Dämonenkiller", one of the most beloved horror serial in the german fandom. These are the adventures of (british *g) journalist Dorian Hunter, fighting against the forces of darkness in form of the "Black Family", a kind of demon mafia like in the Vampire the Masquerade game. The twist here was that Hunter discovers that he made a deal with the devil back in the 15th century. Of course everything went wrong - he is directly responsible for the Inquisition and the witch-hunts - and he became a demon-killer, who gets always reborn after death with his memories intact. Hunter is his last incarnation. This concept gave the writers the opportunity to liven things up with historical adventures. (You really have to wonder if the producers of Highlander knew this serial ) The serial was created by austrian writer Ernst Vlcek, who also wrote a lot of SF, and was published as a sub-series in the Vampir Horror Roman in 1973. It was so successful that it got its own imprint a year later. This scan is of the first novel. They didn´t do a new No.1 but continued the numbering from the VHR. No.18 "The Feast on Devils Hill" is written by Neal Davenport, another austrian writer. The cover is a Thole. This weekly series is classic example of the factory writing publisher Pabel/Moewig so excells at. Vlcek, who died last year, was the head-writer who did the detailed outlines for the novels - he also wrote "important" novels under the by-line Paul Wolf -, which were than written by the other members of the writer-team. It is like an american tv-series - or a superhero-comic - with a tight continuity, where every novel is basically a chapter in an ongoing, neverending tale. If a reader likes the setting or the character, he keeps buying even when he is disappointed with the weekly installment. The series had to be cancelled 1977 with issue 143 after its third run-in with the authorities. It has seen a resurrection; today it is published again by a small-press outfit in hardcover, both new novels and a whole reprint of the original. This concludes my little overview about the german horror weeklys. I am glad you liked it.
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Post by pulphack on Feb 6, 2009 17:58:24 GMT
Bloodrage Of the Killerdolls - for bringing this title alone you should get the Vault equivalent of a knighthood, Andy!
Fascinating to see that there are still some weekely pulps published, and also that their methods of working hark back to good old fashioned Grub Street penny-dreadful methods.
Going off topic a bit, it's true that the trailer shouldn't be better than the film - but what does this say about what we bring to the things we watch and read? I've often felt that the same book can be read and perceived in completely different ways by two different readers, even though the writer may have been crystal clear about his intent. It's about how we filter stories through our own experience and perceptions, and I've just been idly wondering how much further that goes... too much time on my hands at present. perhaps.
It wasn't a novel, sadly, that was published by Bastei, but a non-fiction title: Die Jager Mit Dem Zweiten Gesicht (or Psychic Murder Hunters as it appeared here).
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Post by justin on Feb 6, 2009 20:03:35 GMT
Andy,
With the obvious exception of my consistently fascinating and insightful and witty contributions, this has to be one of the most interesting Vault postings yet! Thanks so much!
The thought of all those hundreds of pulp horrors with garish covers I've never seen just waiting to be catalogued and collected is mouth-watering. It's like doscovering a new batch of NELs just waiting to be rounded up. I'm glad I can't read German as the contents could never live up to the covers!
Yes I will be twisting your arm to let me reproduce the post in The Fanatic, possibly in the forthcoming 'Pulp Horror' special I'm pulling together with Johnny Allthingshorror and Dem, with hopefully contributions from everybody who's ever made a posting on the horror checklists.
More in the meantime Andy, this is gold dust!
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Feb 7, 2009 2:58:05 GMT
Tarzan comics, because they were seen as "a product of an deranged fantasy",
May there also have been a backlash in view of Burrough's 'Tarzan the Untamed' which stated that Tarzan's hatred of the German's was a 'holy hatred' or words to that effect, as the embittered Tarzan massacred a band of somewhat stereotyped German soldiers.
Burroughs tried tried to recover this in 'Tarzan at the Earth's Core' where he had a minor German character play the hero but the German public never quite took to him after the initial war inspired outburst and sales ever recovered.
I can vouch for the sanitised version of life in Germany. I have two kids who regard Bob the Builder as slightly risqué and Noggin the Nog as one step away from The Exorcist. Fortunately, a German friend keeps inviting me to Splatter movie nights perhaps just to demonstrate that not all his contemporaries fell for the censorship.
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Post by andydecker on Feb 7, 2009 11:23:22 GMT
I fear you give these guys back then too much credit. Here in Germany the gulf between "high" culture and "low" culture was (and is) very deep. I bet most of these guys on these boards in the 50s were teachers who survived the war and had very set minds about what was "wholesome" for kids. Even if they were now living in a new democratic state, they were children of the Weimar Republic or of Nazi-Germany, and they had preserved at least their cultural conservative mindset. They surely didn´t even knew who Burroughs was, and if they knew, they would have regarded him with loathing. Comics were regarded as harmful trash warping young minds. In the land of Goethe, Thomas Mann and Beethoven there was a deep-seated hatred for this foreign filth which was of course only read by the unwashed masses. Countless editorials dismissed the so-called "Groschenroman" (pennynovels) as absolutly worthless and without merit. It is painful to watch tv-reports even from the 60s and listening to the snarky und borderline hateful commentaries on media phenomenons like Elvis or The Beatles. I was born in 1960, and I distinctly remember a teacher in elementary school who was a war-veteran. He had no problem to throw his keyring at some unruly pupil to silence the class - the parents had no problem with this either, as far as I know, truly different times - and when he caught you with a comic-book it landed at once torn in the waste basket. The same goes for the math teacher in the "liberated" mid-seventies who caught me reading a sf-story-collection during class. The guy got off on humiliating pupils and so he spend some minutes quoting some of the more colurful and stupid dialogues before class. At least I got the book back, of course with the advice to not waste my time on such bullshit. And I guess in the Uk or the US the genre got the same reception. Van Vogts "Fans are Slans" can´ t come from out of nowhere
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Feb 7, 2009 11:52:17 GMT
Christ, sounds like my school. I was born in 1959. Most of my interest in horror comes from fun at school. Picture the scene. Five years old: taken with a small group to the headmistress to learn how to read. Headmistress smiles at us. (Do you remember as a kid being clearly able to recognise when an adult smile hid something deeply evil) She asks us to trace the letter 'a' in the air. I just couldn't do it. Too nervous, not sure what she was saying, terrified and trying desperately hard to get it right. So she beat me without mercy in a frenzy of obvious pleasure. I can still clearly see that apple and her twisted face. I was reading Pan horror at primary but wouldn't dare bring a book to school. the best we got were Mars attacks and American civil War cards www.marsattacksfan.com/homepage.htm which were exciting enough to achieve an almost immediate ban. Secondary school had a disdain for pulps and comics but I was fortunate that my English teacher preferred rugby and alcohol to teaching. Basically, they were happy if you read anything.
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shanea
Crab On The Rampage
All things GNS
Posts: 44
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Post by shanea on Apr 24, 2014 16:17:06 GMT
Here is a poor picture of he Guy N smith German magazines from the series mentioned in this thread I can scan and post up better ones if of any interest? Die Todesvogel - Bats Out of Hell Die Killer-Krebse - Killer Crabs King Crabs Nachtmahl - Night of the Crabs Der Ruf des Werwolfs - Night of the Werewolf Die Ruckkehr des Werwolfs - Return of the Werewolf Werwolf im Mondlicht - Werewolf by Moonlight Das Sleim-monter -Slime Beast Die Todesglocke -Deathbell
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Post by dem bones on Apr 24, 2014 16:42:59 GMT
I can scan and post up better ones if of any interest? This is Vault. Should imagine most of us adore cover artwork as much as we do the books themselves, so please go ahead!
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shanea
Crab On The Rampage
All things GNS
Posts: 44
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Post by shanea on Apr 24, 2014 20:43:58 GMT
Better images courtesy of smithland.co.uk -thanks to Hal Astell Origin of the Crabs Die Todesvogel - Bats Out of Hell Die Killer-Krebse - Killer Crabs King Crabs Nachtmahl - Night of the Crabs Der Ruf des Werwolfs - Night of the Werewolf. This is the original version of this story, latter translated into English by GNS (Blackhill books) Die Ruckkehr des Werwolfs - Return of the Werewolf Werwolf im Mondlicht - Werewolf by Moonlight Deathbell
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Post by dem bones on Apr 25, 2014 8:29:24 GMT
Thank you, these are lovely, particularly like the Night Of The Crabs and Killer Crabs artwork. The painting up front of Deathbell looks suspiciously like it was recycled from the Tandem Carnacki The Ghost FinderPeter Goodfellow
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