Condor Verlag

The 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 German comic book publisher that specializes 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. At least one of the text stories was also published in a M.A.S.K. comic, with swapped out names.

Overview

The 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 as the Marvel UK Transformers issues. 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

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.
• 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

Aside from funnies and Marvel superheroes, Condor 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 comics 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 pages had to be reassembled). It's possible that the title was canceled due to the relatively low popularity of the Transformers brand in Germany at that time.

In 1989, when RTL plus 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 published 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 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

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, 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 the 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.

Titles published

• Die Transformer (3 issues, 1986)
• Transformers Gratis-Comic-Leseprobe (free preview of the first few pages of Comic-Magazin #1)
• Transformers Comic-Magazin (24 issues, 1989-1992)
• Action Force Comic-Magazin (6 issues, 1989-1990; issues 5 contains a crossover with Transformers; issue 6's cover falsely claims Transformers appear inside)
• Transformers Extra Comic-Sonderheft (3 issues, 1989-1991)
• Transformers Comic-Taschenbuch (4 issues, 1990-1991)
• Transformers Super-Auswahlband (? issues, 1992-?)

Notes

• 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, 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, 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 "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", 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!

External links

• The ConPart Verlag's official website. Don't expect to see anything comic-related these days.
• The Condor Verlag on German Wikipedia
• List of German Transformers comic by Condor including details on reprinted US and UK stories at the Unofficial Handbook of Marvel Comics Creators German Edition
• A Dutch fan's overview of the Condor comics (in English)