If you have any questions about these stories, don’t be afraid to ask. I can already tell you the basis of this one: I just wanted an excuse to draw Drag. Yes, it’s just that shallow.
The Nazis didn’t seem so weird to a lot of people back then. They were seen as a chance for the Right People — the white race — to win back what they perceived as losing all around the globe to the “Mud Races.”
White race shouldn’t have gone running around the globe stirring up all those people in their homes in the first place. You get what you pay for. Now stop whining.
*new commenter* That panel where a terrified Udo makes the Hitler salute by reflex has really stuck in my head. It just seems to say so much about what it must be like growing up in that kind of dictatorial society, especially when trying to stay hidden.
I’d like to ask you something, if you don’t mind. At what point did you realise Udo was Jewish? Was it there from the start, or only around this issue, or somewhere in-between?
Germans got thrown into camps all the time for refusing to go along, join up in the party or the military, do the Roman salute, etc. Udo’s family was trying to hide — but some of them agreed thoroughly with the patriotic side of the German war effort. He’s got cousins who are war heroes. Assimilation can go deep in any persecuted minority, especially in any who think they’ve been beating persecution by becoming more mainstream. Udo’s dad was convinced that, as good Germans, the whole family could stay outside of the flood of history going on around them. He was only human.
Oh, you think Udo let me know he was Jewish until about issue 15? You think I really knew what he was doing here? You think these guys EVER kept me in the loop? No such luck. I was sometimes the last to know. Some reader would have to point it out to me. There I was, “loop de doo,” happily drawing pretty pictures and some fan mail would push me off the brink into a horror show of repercussions (I get “loop de doo” from Pete Sickman-Garner, who seems to have an even worse relationship with his characters).
Hm… I never asked Udo if Papa survived the war… or ended up in a camp. If Udo didn’t, that meant Papa didn’t, and that meant, knowing Papa’s instinct for survival…. oh, hell…
Thanks a bloody LOT, Elin!
Oh, absolutely. It was just such an impressive moment when it comes to illustrating what propaganda + conforming for survival can do to your head.
Really? Wow, I was totally sure you knew at this point – what with that “My mother’s ITALIAN” thing – just not letting us suspect until issue 13, before finally the big reveal in #14. Amazing. Your characters are really sneaky!
…am I misremembering or didn’t Udo say “my whole famil’s dead!” ín #26, “Miki”? Although I understood that to be from the soldiers dying in war and the civilians from bombs.
Udo’s being kind of dishonest, there. He’s trying to get away with trying to make Winzig believe his family died as a persecuted minority — last-minute, desperate projection — but, hey, in his situation I think I’d be acting a bit mendacious and more than a little crazy. We all need sympathy, and he WANTS some. And a moral club to hit Winzig over the head with. So… Winzig falls for it — and then hits him back with the same club! I never said any of my characters were jewels of rectitude. Oh, and if I sound a bit looped and goofy, it’s because I’m drunk: http://clallamatbay.blogspot.com/2010_01_01_archive.html#3514803070119074350
I see. I think I misremembered Udo’s internal dialogue with his conscience from the same issue.
If they were jewels of rectitude, I very much doubt I would like them much in the first place, and I’m sure I wouldn’t be as deeply moved as I’ve been, by some of them.