Nick Knatterton
[2] The character next appeared in the magazine Die Landpost in 1946; the story was called "Der Schuß in den künstlichen Hinterkopf", German for "The shot in the artificial back of the head".
The comic had a visual story where bubbles filled with text came out of people's mouths, noses, ears and foreheads depending on what they said, heard, smelled or even thought.
Swirls around a person's head meant they were losing consciousness, and stars represented a blow to the chin or other sensitive body part.
I decided to start parodying this completely primitive style of storytelling so thoroughly that no one would care about such bubble-filled stupid literature meant for illiterates.
At first Schmidt only wrote parody into the comic, but soon he started inserting satirical references to daily politics and the community life of the two German countries.
The comic was published for many years, but creating new stories became increasingly more difficult for Schmidt: I sat desperately at my drawing board (also called a "torture bench" by my family) from morning to evening trying to invent new and dangerous situations for Knatterton.
His selection of gadgets include an artificial back of the neck, steel-reinforced trouser bottoms and a fake beard containing a parachute.
[4]: 12 The irony and metafiction in the series are based on narrative text boxes used by Schmidt, explaining and commenting on the actions in the comic; often these explanation appear as useless or even absurd.
There often is an arrow leading out of the text box, showing ironically accurately where the explanation applies to, and Schmidt used this to parody the comic narrative.
At the time, text boxes in comics were peculiar and unusual forms of narrative, and they can be compared to instructions, where pictures and words complement each other.
In many stories, Knatterton has found out the real situation and been able to complete his deductions when visiting the Alibi Bar, where he sometimes finds a wealthy family's teenage daughter and the man who stole her jewelry wrapped up in each other's arms.
Characters in the stories include the gullible model Molly Moll (using the name Dolly Dur as a singer), the Alibi Bar's hostess Virginia Peng, Juwelen-Juppe and the inventor Professor Bartap.
In June 1955 the newspaper Abendzeitung reported that these drawings had caused a "storm of objections" as teachers believed they had a negative effect on the school youth.
Centa Hafenbrädl, a member of the city council from the Christian Social Union in Bavaria, accused the drawings of having "too much sex and too little good taste".
The mayor general suggested that all the rest of tickets would be immediately cancelled, but that would have cost the city a loss of 8 thousand Deutsche Marks.
[3]: 56–59 The official Zentralstelle zur Bekämpfung unzüchtiger Bilder, Schriften und Darstellungen made a criminal report of the city of Munich, as these drawings were seen as indecent and harmful to the youth.
All 15 episodes of the show were created by Slovenian artist Miki Muster[7] and are available on DVD[8] not only in Germany but also dubbed in Finland where it earned a Gold Record in three months.
