What Were The Original Plans for D-Gruppe?

 What were my actual plans for D-Gruppe?  Well, when the initial team was created in a little village called Dalborn in the 1960s it was quite simple. They would be Germany's defenders and at the time the Cold War was in full swing so potential enemies were everywhere but I was not that sophisticated in my thinking (hey, I wasn't even 11 back then more like 10 years old).

Germany is rich in fairy tales and legends -I am sure that everyone has heard of The Brothers Grimm (Jacob and Wilhelm), who were German academics best known for collecting and publishing folklore, particularly their collection of fairy tales, Children's and Household Tales?  If you live in an area surrounded by forestry and at least one "haunted house" then a kid's imagination can run wild. When not doing farm chores or playing around the gardens the big draw was the forest  and we spent a lot of time there -our little group was known as "Wald kinder" (forest children).

In the Zeitgeist storyline D-Gruppe is summoned by various characters including der Rattenfänger von Hameln (or Pied Piper of Hamelin). In this case based more on Val Johnson's appearance in the 1957 film The Pied Piper of Hamelin.

I cannot recall how General Blitzen came about but I think it was as a thunderstorm set in and someone said "Da feuert General Blitzen seine Kanonen ab!" ("There goes General Lightning firing off his cannons!")  may sound odd but as small children in England my grandmother told us thunder was "just giants playing football"! Elfen kinder (elf children) and on and on.

When you read Die Rache der Eiskönigin (Revenge of the Ice Queen) it is a threat from Germanic fairy tale character and the question then arose as to who or what Waldmeister was since Klaus von Happe (Kopfmann) first met him when very young deep within forestry -and Waldmeister knew the Ice Queen by name.

The Zeitgeist story introduced heroes from parallel German worlds and even their meeting point Der Ort der Götter (The Place of the Gods) had a very ancient Germanic look. Well, as I found later on, if American super heroes could meet American super heroes from alternate Earths why not the same for German heroes?  Remember also that Captain Britain in Alan Moore and Alan Davis's run met other Earth counterparts.

Fighting various threats including from Waldmeister's brother Meer Pater (Sea Peter) would have been fun and it certainly got an editor at Bastei Publishing in Germany interested. Had Egmont not purchased Bastei and stopped any and all projects (editors were not even allowed to tell creators working for them that there were cancellations) D-Gruppe would have been published under Bastei,

As for stories there was Zeitgeist of course and then D-Gruppe in Space but there would have been hints that something was wrong with Waldmeister; after all how could a being seemingly a force of nature react as nature itself was destroyed?  That would have been The Days of Terror or Days of Darkness storyline -I just could not decide which sounded best).

That would have essentially brought the whole D-Gruppe first chapter to an end. After that newer characters would have been introduced -even a planned clash with Task Force Germany- but keeping things with a German feel as making them US style super heroes would have been a bad move.

D-Gruppe have interacted with non German Black Tower characters -as seen in The Trial story as well as Return of the Gods Twilight of the Super Heroes and The Green Skies. Bits and pieces of the previously mentioned stories have been incorporated into published stories and some members have even featured in one off stories thanks to Ben Dilworth. 

The perfect "way ahead" would be to find a German publisher and artists (and there are some excellent German comic artists out there) involved leaving me to just write the stories. I doubt that will ever happen  but it's nice to think about!