Condor Verlag

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A company going by many names… at the same time, even.

Condor Verlag (Condor Publishing), also known as Interpart Verlag, Condor-Interpart, ConPart Verlag GmbH (abbreviated CPV), Condor Verlagsgruppe Berlin, Unimac and Beta (seriously!), is a former German comic book publisher (the publisher still exists, but no longer publishes comics) that specialized in publishing translated versions of licensed foreign comics. During the 1980s and early-to-mid 1990s, Condor held the license for German editions of various Marvel comics, which included Transformers. Between 1986 and 1992, Condor published a very... interesting selection of both Marvel US and Marvel UK stories. Many of the comics also contain unique text stories... unique to Condor, that is. Quite a few of the text stories were recycled from/for Interpart's M.A.S.K. Comic-Magazin, while another one was recycled from a story originally written for Condor's Thundercats Comic-Magazin, in all instances with hastily swapped out names.

Overview

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Condor Verlag was founded by Wolfgang M. Biehler between 1972 and 1973. One of their first titles was a licensed version of Spanish funny comic Mortadelo y Filemón (known as Mort & Phil in English), released under the title Clever & Smart. Other titles were satire magazines such as Kaputt (a licensed edition of Major Magazines' Cracked) and comics aimed at young children such as Bugs Bunny, Tom & Jerry or Schweinchen Dick (Porky Pig).

In 1979, Condor acquired the license to publish Marvel comics such as Die Spinne (Spider-Man), Die Rächer (The Avengers) or Die Fantastischen Vier (Fantastic Four) when the previous German publisher, Williams Verlag, canceled its titles due to bad sales. However, Condor wasn't the only Marvel licensee at that time, since other publishers such as Bastei, Hethke, Feest and Splitter published titles such as Nick Fury or Wolverine concurrently with Condor's releases.

Most Marvel comics by Condor were published in a downsized "pocket book" ("Comic-Taschenbuch") format, which usually resulted in extremely truncated dialogue. Some of Condor's more popular titles were later expanded with additional oversized publications ("Comic-Album") about the size of the Marvel UK Transformers issues, but as thin paperbacks. Die Spinne was even given a third series (Die Spinne Comic-Magazin) which was more or less in standard US comic book format. Condor's Marvel licenses expired in 1996, after which the German branch of Panini became the new Marvel licensee, which it still is today.

Characteristics

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In order to understand Condor's Transformers comics, one has to understand Condor's Marvel comics in general at first. Among German fans, Condor's Marvel comics are infamous for the following:

  • A confusing publication order. It was anything but unusual for Condor to start in the middle of a longer story arc, leave out parts of an arc or drop an arc before its conclusion. For titles released in several formats, multi-part stories could also be spread across these formats (for example, Spider-Man's six-part Kraven's Last Hunt saga was published in one issue of the Die Spinne Comic-Taschenbuch, two issues of the Die Spinne Comic-Magazin and one issue of the Die Spinne Comic-Album). Worse, the individual titles frequently featured stories that were originally published years apart, which made cross-references and crossovers between the titles very confusing for readers. The translations often tried to cover this up by referring to a more "contemporary" story published by Condor instead. Needless to say, the results were anything but convincing. Particularly glaring examples include:
  • A scene featuring Captain America and Thor in the reprint of Fantastic Four #334 (published in 1989) in Condor's Die Fantastischen Vier Comic-Taschenbuch #30 (published in January of 1991) omitted a reference to the contemporary Mighty Thor #411 (which wasn't reprinted by Condor until 1994, in Die Spinne Comic-Taschenbuch #61) entirely, and changed a reference to the sinking of Hydrobase, the Avengers' floating island headquarters, in Avengers #311 (which wasn't reprinted by Condor until 1993, in Die Rächer Comic-Taschenbuch #37) to a mention of the team temporarily splitting up following a battle with Kang-Nebula in Avengers #297 (published in 1988), which was reprinted in Condor's Die Rächer Comic-Taschenbuch #27 (published in January of 1990). Nevermind that Captain America wasn't even part of the Avengers line-up that split up in that story, but was part of the subsequent line-up, albeit in his temporary identity as "The Captain" because John Walker was using the identity of Captain America at the time, and the issues immediately following Avengers #297 were the tie-ins to the 1988 X-Men crossover Inferno, while Avengers #311, Mighty Thor #411 and Fantastic Four #334 were all part of the 1988/1990 crossover Acts of Vengeance.
  • On the first page of the reprint of Captain America #383 (published in 1991) in Condor's Captain America Comic-Taschenbuch #17 (published in September of 1993), a footnote that, in the original version, explained Captain America's "Stars and Stripes" volunteer network and Peggy Carter's role as his communications chief at the time was was changed to a reference to the 1989/1990 "Acts of Vengeance" crossover which was supposedly a very recent experience for Cap, since the main plot from the various Avengers titles was published in Die Rächer Comic-Taschenbuch #37 (May 1993) and #38 (September 1993, the same month Captain America Comic-Taschenbuch #17 came out)... even though a German reprint of Captain America's own Acts of Vengeance tie-in issues (Captain America #365-367, originally published in 1989/1990) had already been published sixteen months earlier within the same title, in Captain America Comic-Taschenbuch #13 (May 1992).
  • Clunky by-the-numbers translations that, while usually grammatically correct, omitted anything that made the original dialogue interesting. That doesn't mean the translations didn't have their own style, however—the truncated dialogue from the pocket books is known in retrospect for oftentimes absurdly colloquial expressions and frequently recurring phrases (often local dialect) such as "Fort mit Schaden!" (roughly "Good riddance!", standard phrase to accompany a punch in battle) or "Fiese Möpp!" (roughly "meanie", the standard "insult" for enemies in battle). In really extreme cases, the limited size of the speech bubbles merely allowed for nonsensical "dialogue" such as "So?" - "Ja." - "Hah!" - "Huh?" - "Pah!"
  • Very cheap-looking typewriter-style lettering (changed to computer lettering emulating the look of hand lettering in larger format publications around 1992).
  • Outrageous covers that were a mix of original covers with new background colors, composite "collage" images created from elements from several different original covers and unique, self-made covers that often even depicted off-model renditions of characters. Large caption boxes, ovals and other shapes pointing out that the comic was "NEW", a "first German edition" and contained "[number] action-packed full-color COMIC pages of the popular MARVEL SUPERHERO" were a common feature as well. Some titles (such as the Captain America Comic-Taschenbuch and the Die Gruppe X Comic-Magazin) also featured the "Marvel 25th Anniversary" frame (found on all US Marvel comics with a November 1986 cover date, including issue 22 of Marvel's Transformers title) as a standard cover element, often with multiple miscolored characters.
  • The infamous "yellow pages" (sometimes also blue or green) which contained background articles about the history of the Marvel universe, major crossover events and similar topics. In retrospect, many fans interpret the majority of these articles as "stories Condor wouldn't publish but needed to tell the readers about in order to understand the context of their current publications". For example, Condor completely left out the Secret Wars crossover and relegated it to a two-page text-only retelling in several of their comics.
  • A lot of characters were also given German names, either literal translations of their original names (the Fantastic Four became "Die Fantastischen Vier", the Avengers became "Die Rächer" etc.) or names that got the general meaning of the original name across (Spider-Man was named "Die Spinne", i.e. "The Spider", the X-Men were known as "Die Gruppe X", i.e. "The Group X", Daredevil was "Der Dämon" i.e. "The Demon", thus explaining his "DD" logo). However, Condor was merely following an existing trend and used many names originally established by previous German Marvel licensees. As time went on, some minor characters (mostly villains) reverted to their original names ("Nashorn" became "Rhino", "Der Strolch" became "Prowler"), whereas other characters such as Captain America or the Hulk had never had German names in Condor's comics to begin with.

Transformers comics by Condor

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Die, Transformer! DIE!!!!!

Aside from funnies and Marvel superheroes, Condor (going by several alternate names; see above and below for more details) also published various licensed comic book titles based on toy/cartoon tie-in properties such as M.A.S.K., Masters of the Universe, Teenage Mutant Ninja Hero Turtles, Action Force and Transformers.

The first Transformers comic published by Condor was a series with the semi-translated title Die Transformer which lasted for three issues in 1986, reprinting the first four issues of the Marvel US title (which meant that four issues' worth of content had to be split up between three German issues). It's possible that the title was canceled due to the relatively low popularity of the Transformers brand in Germany at that time (the toy line was available, but the cartoon had only been available to households that had cable access at the time, airing in English on Sky Channel until the latter's cable slot was replaced by Eurosport).

In 1989, when RTL plus, the German division of the Luxembourg-based RTL group, started airing a dubbed version of the cartoon, Condor launched a new title, now as the Transformers Comic-Magazin. Both titles were printed in a larger format than the US title, about the same size as the UK comics. Although issue 1 picked up where the limited series had left off, issue 2 suddenly skipped the rest of the first long story arc and jumped straight to issue 14 of the US title. The next four issues continued reprinting the subsequent US issues in chronological order... but with issue 7, the title suddenly switched to a reprint of UK stories, starting with issues 96 and 97. For a while, Condor continued reprinting UK stories in chronological order (but left out the extra-long story from issue 100, which contains a lengthy flashback that refers to Target: 2006, which hadn't been published by Condor). The Burning Sky!/Hunters/Fire on High! arc omitted both the beginning (Wanted: Galvatron — Dead or Alive!) and the finale, Vicious Circle!, because Condor never published any material from UK annuals. Condor continued to publish UK material in chronological order (albeit skipping some stories) until the Transformers Comic-Magazin was cancelled in 1992 with issue 24.

In addition, Condor published four pocket-book-sized issues of the Transformers Comic-Taschenbuch between 1990 and 1991, which picked up the US title where the Comic-Magazin had left off, publishing 16 more issues in chronological order. The last two US issues reprinted by Condor contained the US reprint of Man of Iron.

Finally, Condor also released three specials named the Transformers Extra Comic-Sonderheft between 1989 and 1991, which contained UK stories not published in the Comic-Magazin (such as Grudge Match!, Kup's Story! or Headhunt), the US story King Con! (originally published long after the last US issues featured in the final issue of the Comic-Taschenbuch), the first part of the Ancient Relics! crossover that was continued in Condor's Action Force title, and the (chronologically) last UK issues to be published by Condor, namely the first part of Aspects of Evil! (but not the other four) and (Double) Deal of the Century!. Since the latter two had originally been published in black and white by Marvel UK, Condor took it upon themselves to color them... and the results were hilarious.

Characteristics of Condor's Transformers comics

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AUTOBOTS SUPERIOR, DECEPTICONS INFERIOR
  • Unlike the Marvel superhero comics, Condor's Transformers comics usually retained the original English names of the Transformers characters (the occasional typo notwithstanding), most probably at the request of Hasbro (since the toys were sold under their US names in Germany). Bizarrely, the Marvel UK-only "Jawbreaker" name for Overbite was kept for the German version of "Enemy Action!" (Condor's Transformers Comic-Magazin #19). The only exception was the Ark, which was literally translated as "Arche".
  • Dear God, the covers. If the covers for Condor's Marvel superhero titles were weird, their Transformers covers were downright insane. Nearly all of them were self-made (read: traced from existing artwork but combined to form a new composite image), often featured off-model characters (such as a crazy recurring Optimus Prime/Soundwave hybrid, often with Powermaster Optimus Prime's combined mode head and sometimes even with Megatron's knees) in borderline random colors and characters that don't even appear in the issue at all. Most importantly, almost every cover features some random humans regardless of whether humans even appear in the story or not. Apparently, Condor was under an editorial mandate that humans had to be depicted on the covers to give potential readers (or their parents?) something to relate to.
  • Since the Marvel US stories were published in the Transformers Comic-Taschenbuch following issue 6 of the Transformers Comic-Magazin, editorials for issues of the Magazin chronologically set after "Afterdeath!" (published in Comic-Taschenbuch #2) continued to claim that Optimus Prime was believed to be dead by his fellow Autobots, but was actually alive and well on Cybertron, thus referring to the UK story arc that began with "Prey!"... even though Optimus Prime's return to Earth (chronologically set immediately before "Afterdeath!") was published in issue 10 of the Comic-Magazin. Even worse, this persistent denial of published continuity was also propagated in Comic-Taschenbuch #3, the issue immediately following the one in which Optimus Prime was killed for real!


Text stories

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The Transformers Comic-Magazin team, looking for more horrors to inflict upon the world.

Starting with issue 2 of Transformers Comic-Magazin, the comics began to publish original text stories to publicise the latest toy releases, usually written by the comic's translator, Robert Mann. These stories were charmingly inept at best, but feature a lot of obscure characters, such as Crossblades and the Rescue Force.

Stories tended to veer between actual tales, lists of available toys (disguised as briefings), or old stories pasted in whole or part with a new introduction. The story from Comic-Magazin #4, for example, is repeated briefly in issue #10 and in full in issue #21; the story from Comic-Magazin #15 features portions of the stories from issues #2, #9 and #11; and the text story from Comic-Magazin #5 is repeated partially in Comic-Taschenbuch #2 and in its entirety in Comic-Magazin #22.

Due to the stories being written in 1989–1992, there is a rather interesting cast dynamic. The Autobots are led by Powermaster Optimus Prime, with the Autobot Double Targetmasters appearing in nearly every story. The Autobot Powermasters, Sparkler Minibots and Cloudburst, Landmine and Waverider are also regulars. Bumblebee appears until he is turned into Goldbug in the comic, at which point he becomes Goldbug in the text stories. Additionally, some stories feature him as a Pretender under both names. The Decepticons, meanwhile, are led jointly by Megatron and Shockwave, in a nod to the early Marvel US stories which the comic had been reprinting.

Because of the overall very similar concepts and settings, many of the text stories were shared with another licensed title based on a toy franchise published by Condor (under its "Interpart" imprint/identity), M.A.S.K., with the names of characters and locations swapped out, often haphazardly. This includes the stories from Comic-Magazin issues #5, #13 and #20, part of the story from Comic-Taschenbuch #3, and possibly more. Many of the M.A.S.K. versions of these stories were credited to a "Michael Rubin", so either it was common practice for Condor's writers to plagiarize each other's works, or Robert Mann used pseudonyms just like the publisher itself did. An exception was the M.A.S.K. version of the story from Comic-Taschenbuch #3, which was not only credited to Robert Mann himself, but even featured the same unchanged German title!

The text story in issue #23 is something else entirely—it's a story originally written for an issue of yet another licensed title, namely Condor's Thundercats Comic-Magazin that was canceled after only six issues, with the names of characters and locations (inconsistently) swapped out for Transformers-related names, resulting in an utterly bizarre scenario far removed from any other Transformers fiction. Like the M.A.S.K. stories, the Thundercats version was also credited to Michael Rubin. Meanwhile, issue #24, the final issue of the series, features a prose adaptation of the first three parts of the Marvel UK comic story "Space Pirates!" (written by Simon Furman), again credited to Robert Mann.

Even a straightworward nonfiction article published in Comic-Taschenbuch #1 is not immune from plagiarism: Credited to a "Michael Landmann" (actually one of the pseudonyms of Michael Nagula, Condor's main Marvel translator from 1989 through 1996, who would occasionally use this pseudonym for nonfiction articles published in Condor's Marvel publications), it's a translated version of the original announcement of the Marvel Transformers comic book that was originally published six years earlier in Marvel Age #17, originally credited to Dwight Jon Zimmerman. Though the translated version features a few minor alterations, it does not correct the outdated names of several characters such as "Blow-Out" (Cliffjumper) or "Spin-Out" (Sunstreaker).

Characteristics of Condor's text stories

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  • The writers often seem confused as to the nature of Headmasters and Powermasters. The terms are used as ranks in most of the tales, thus Megatron is referred to as a Powermaster, and Rodimus Prime is a Headmaster. This would be more understandable if writer Robert Mann wasn't also the person who translated some of the Headmaster Marvel comic stories.
  • Likewise, the concept of the Pretenders also gets bizarrely misinterpreted: The story from issue #5 (which is recycled twice, the second time with Bumblebee upgraded into Goldbug) operates under the idea that Bumblebee's Pretender shell can transform into a Volkswagen, and when Bumblebee is captured and a misspelled Submarauder is placed inside the shell, it can transform into a Decepticon!
  • Rodimus Prime appears sporadically, though depending on which writer uses him, he is either the Autobot leader on Cybertron who is a contemporary of Optimus Prime and easily contactable, or the Autobot leader on Cybertron of the near-future. Again, writer Robert Mann translated the Marvel UK tales in which Rodimus time-travels to the present day, so he really has no excuse.
  • Many of the stories revolve around Optimus Prime mysteriously going missing. By issue #16 his fellow Autobots actively start to distrust him due to this.
  • Overall, it appears the writers' knowledge of the Transformers brand was limited entirely to the translated comics published by Condor, and thus the stories feature a lot of weird misinterpretations of established concepts and characters. Notably, the space bridge (referred to as a "dimension bridge" in the German version) is claimed to not only connect Earth and Cybertron, but also to allow the Decepticons to bring warriors from the future to the present day, based on a misinterpretation of the beginning of Prey!, the first UK story published by Condor, which briefly addressed the events of the US stories "Aerialbots over America!" and "Decepticon Graffiti!" (both of which were published by Condor) and the UK story "Target: 2006" (which wasn't published by Condor).
  • Through either design or accident, several new characters are introduced. These are Stealth, who gets a rather large role; Ground Shaker, who gets a medium-sized role; Clockwise, who gets a tiny role; a Throttlebot helicopter simply named "Throttlebot" (!), who also gets a tiny role; an Autobot subgroup named the Predabots and a Decepticon named Airstriker, who both get tiny roles; and Blackcat, who gets to present a puzzle page.
  • Additionally, there are some hilarious name misspellings. Hosehead is consistently written as "Horsehead", Finback is "Funback", Bomb-Burst is "Bombursi", and Submarauder is "Submaroder". These are not isolated incidents, these occur in every issue in which these characters appear!
  • Oftentimes, characters get assigned to the wrong factions. This happens particularly when an Autobot subgroup has a Decepticon counterpart, and their toys would ship in a shared assortment. Presumably, Condor's writers were given toy catalogs as reference, which didn't properly distinguish between factions, thus resulting in some mix-ups. Most prominently, this affects the Triggerbots and their Decepticon opponents, the Triggercons (with Ruckus in particular being consistently declared an Autobot), and sometimes also the Sparkabots and Firecons. Most notably, issue 12's story is largely triggered (ahem!) in the first place by Optimus being upset that his "good friend" Ruckus had been injured by stray Autobot fire!
  • Also due to the UK comics forming a large portion of the writers' base of reference, the text stories feature several name oddities otherwise unique to the UK comics: Overbite is called "Jawbreaker", and the term "Sparkler Minibots" is used as well, though not always as an alternate name for the Sparkabots: Instead, it's sometimes used as a super-category for both the Sparkabots and the Firecons, while other times, the Sparkler Minibots are a Decepticon team that works alongside the Firecons, with the Sparkabots being both groups' Autobot counterparts!
  • Some of the toy lists barely disguised as "briefings" also have the abbreviation "ASST", as in "assortment", hilariously misinterpreted as "assistants", giving us the bizarre line-up of "New Pretender Assistants", "Sparkler Minibot Assistants", "Small Targetmaster Assistants" and "Micromaster Transport Assistants".

Titles published

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Notes

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The comic equivalent of the pig in a poke.
  • Die Gruppe X, Condor's licensed version of the long-time top-selling X-Men series, was one of the first major Marvel titles Condor had to cancel due to low sales, in 1992. (The first Marvel title Condor canceled was the Der mächtige Thor Comic-Taschenbuch, in 1989, despite featuring Walt Simonson's stories at that time, and Frank Miller's Der Dämon/Daredevil as a back-up feature.) It wasn't until Panini took over the Marvel licenses that the X-Men (now under their original name) finally became a major title in Germany as well.
  • Condor probably dealt with Hasbro UK (aka "Hasbro Bradley"), who were in charge of the European market at that time. (Distribution in Germany was handled by the German branch of Milton Bradley until it was officially turned into a proper Hasbro subsidiary, the Hasbro Deutschland GmbH, in 1991.)
  • Like with all their Marvel titles, Condor's way of dealing with unsold Transformers issues that were shipped back to them was to strip them of their covers (sometimes losing pages in the process), then slap two or more of them together and add a new cover. That way, they created a plethora of "collected editions" with names such as "Super-Auswahlband". To make things really insane, many of these "collected editions" would contain completely random issues (often in reverse order compared to the individual releases' numbering)... and the collected editions were numbered. So one could buy multiple seemingly identical "collected editions" with the same number and cover and end up with entirely different content! Certainly a nightmare for variant collectors (that is, if any of them were interested in German comics). Collected Transformers comics may have been available way into 1993.
  • As you can see at the top of this article, Condor went by a lot of different names over the years. "ConPart Verlag" is the current name, essentially an abbreviation of the previous name "Condor-Interpart". Some of the other names were used concurrently: The Transformers Comic-Magazin was published under "Condor Verlag", the M.A.S.K. Comic-Magazin under "Interpart Verlag" (although issue #26 features a "Condor Verlagsgruppe Berlin" logo in its cover), and the Action Force Comic-Magazin under "Unimac". Seriously, we're not talking imprints here; we're talking a publisher with an outright identity crisis!


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