Anke Feuchtenberger "A German animal in the German forest"

"When an artist like Anke Feuchtenberger has been working on an extensive comic project for years and not only revisits all the forms with which she has already enriched the profession, but develops them further and coordinates them with one another, then a masterpiece is in the making. "A German animal in a German forest" is the title of the 250-page story set in an East German village in the second half of the twentieth century. The disturbing physicality and vulnerability familiar from Feuchtenberger's work are taken to extremes here, and at the same time the black and white graphics reach a new peak of expressiveness. No one else tells stories like Anke Feuchtenberger, no one can escape the pull of this comic."

- Andreas Platthaus

Jul Gordon: "Route is being recalculated"

"The theme is there," explains the artist in her exposé, "a framework has also been created, the type of drawing and narrative carefully determined... everything else will gain further definition as she continues to work on this story of a shift in reality (a loss of reality?). In these draughtswomen's hands, this looks like a highly promising comic adventure. The pages already available from the project open a door into a rather mundane universe, which at the same time appears strangely opaque. This makes you alert and curious, and brief overviews of the next chapters are seductive precisely because of their clear indeterminacy."

- Brigitte Helbling

Stefan Haller: "Shadow Mother"

"The mother of illustrator Stefan Haller (*1972) suffered from an unexplained mental illness (depression? bipolar disorder? schizophrenia?), which overshadowed his childhood without being talked about. Five years after her death, he began to process the story in this comic: thoughtfully, without reproach, without snivelling, very precisely. He does not focus on his own state of mind, but captures the microcosm of the whole family, each of whom was affected by his mother's illness in their own way: her restlessness, fatigue, overstimulation, nervous weakness, emotional withdrawal. The author pursues his research with cautious curiosity. There is no continuous story, but conversations, memories, even the mother's (authentic) diary is illustrated as sensitively as it is relentlessly. Few episodes, especially the mother's diary entries, are framed, the figures mostly move across the white paper as if searching, the background is sketched with a few strokes, if at all. The drawings appear simple, almost naive. But you can feel the necessity of this art on every page."

- Petra Morsbach

Nienke Klöffer: "The age of fish"

"Cold times are coming, the age of fish. The soul of man becomes immobile like the face of a fish," says the fallen classical philologist to the first-person narrator in Ödön von Horváth's 1937 novel "Youth without God", referring to the youth of the "Third Reich" before the war, brutalized by the zeitgeist, revanchism and Nazi propaganda, and the illustrator, born in Karlsruhe in 1988, sets her comic adaptation in precisely this period. She has cleverly condensed the plot. These are powerful black and white drawings, carefully arranged, with a line that is not virtuoso but full of life. The atmosphere of aggression, puberty, stupidity and longing is convincing, the portrait of the impotent teacher with his erotic, political and transcendental needs is individual and intense, even Horváth's humane despair is conveyed. An astonishing achievement by a young artist who was born half a century after the novel under completely different circumstances."

- Petra Morsbach

Nicolas Mahler: "Ulysses"

"This is not the first time that the creative force behind this comic version of James Joyce's "Ulysses" has set out to transform lush world literature into astonishingly restrained pictorial epics. Here, the somewhat different approach is of interest, mixing (for example) news from a Viennese newspaper with the strolling and writing of a long-nosed, sheltered gentleman. The question of where it will all lead seems to go in excitingly unpredictable directions. This, in turn, seems entirely appropriate to the original - with or without scissors and waste paper. But what - if anything - will become of Molly Bloom's "yeses" later on? We are curious."

- Brigitte Helbling

Eva Müller: "Work is (half) of life"

"The comic tells the story of a working-class family over three generations. In memories, detailed descriptions of milieu and everyday culture, Eva Müller reveals how poverty, origin and milieu shape precisely what the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu describes as habitus. The author uses her own career to show how strongly this in turn shapes one's own self-perception and mindset and how it shapes people over generations who will not question their own class and milieu in the future. In leaving the milieu of origin, in self-distancing, Eva Müller analyzes structural principles. In clear, powerful, impressive images and pointed dialogues, she describes her own remarkable emancipation as an artist, tells of cracks and ruptures, as well as of fears and self-questioning, which have not left her side to this day, regardless of her success."

- Stefanie Stegmann

Lena Steffinger: "Summer"

"In her project "Summer", Stuttgart-born Lena Steffinger deals with the changes in friendship in two three-way constellations. Impressively but unobtrusively, she addresses the parallelism of personal memories and disappointed feelings, of trust and mistrust in carefully formulated texts and lyrical images. At the same time, the possibilities of the comic are explored to the limits of its genre."

- Frank Druffner

Jochen Voit and Sophia Hirsch: "Ernst Busch - the last proletarian"

"With "Ernst Busch, the last proletarian", Jochen Voit presents the jury with a comprehensive, precisely researched scenario. Sophia Hirsch's colorful, restrained drawings are a perfect match. Ernst Busch, an important historical figure in Germany and an idol of the left in the 20th century, is portrayed as an old, embittered old man and his life is told in flashbacks."

- David Basler

Nacha Vollenweider: "Back to the homeland"

"Nacha Vollenweider's autobiographical comic narrative begins and ends with a walk through Córdoba, Argentina, the author's home town. In between, many things come to light: the marriage to her partner in Hamburg, the separation in Brazil, the return to Argentina. Nacha Vollenweider's visual language is clear and striking, but can lose its calm at any time - for example in the multi-page zoom on the threatening mouth of the Hamburg registrar or in the recourse to color when the environmental destruction of lithium mining in northwestern Argentina, necessary for our environmentally friendly electric cars, is considered."

- Florian Höllerer