It starts like a normal day in March 2020. “Morgähn …” calls the ball-shaped, bulbous-nosed Paul to his well-groomed partner Konrad. He waves it away: “Better go straight back to bed! It's lockdown outside!” Corona is also having an impact in everyday German (and gay) life. “This new virus from Wuhan” turns the lives of the opposing comic couple, their friends and relatives upside down. It will stay that way until the end of the year.
Image: APA
While drive-controlled Paul feels badly slowed down for months (emergency signal: “Fiep …”) and Schöngeist Konrad tries to enjoy the tranquility of the lockdown life, her creator Ralf König used the pandemic time very productively. Since the beginning of lockdown a year ago, he has been lovingly and amusingly describing the worries and hardships, but also joys and jokes of his cartoon characters every day until the end of October.
The 180 tableaus have now been published by Rowohlt in the anthology “Vervirte Zeiten” – a corona diary with predominantly gay staff, but with a lot of generality. “All Konrad and Paul episodes from the Internet and many previously unpublished bonus episodes are now collected here and can be read in one go,” says König for his work, which was born out of necessity. “Bound and printed on good old paper. You can stay at home there.”
The major themes he had planned up to then – “Political correctness, gender-sensitive language, quarrels in the queer scene and despicable old white men” – were suddenly out of the window, König stated in the foreword. “In my perplexity, I quickly posted scribbled cartoons on Facebook, which I seldom do. As a book author, you make a living from selling books, so I was always suspicious of free entertainment,” emphasizes the 60-year-old, who since the huge success of “The Moving Man” (1994 Filmed in a terrific way by Sönke Wortmann) is one of the most popular German comic artists.
Instead of an ambitious large-scale project, the small form: one scene per day, composed of four panels, at the end a nice punchline – or sometimes none, just like in real life. It is about dealing with Corona in two-person and other relationships, about lust and frustration, ESC and other cancellations, visiting bans, toilet paper debates, neglect tendencies, the wasted daily routine.
Often, due to the lack of an exit point, people only make calls or zoom in on these comic pictures – and it sometimes turns out to be hearty and dirty, as is not uncommon with König. A “running gag” about a particularly attractive supermarket branch manager who turns the gay scene on works as a red thread. In addition to rough thigh knocks (brand: leather fetish types always have their protective masks on their men), König also has a lot to say about the “general slowdown” of this year. “Lost times” are confused times.
The pandemic gave him “a remarkable creative kick in the ass,” reports the comic author, who was born in Soest / Westphalia and has lived in Cologne for a long time. “I let the events drift from day to day, influenced often enough by new messages or inspirational entries in the comment bars.” Angela Merkel appears on page 10 of the book, with what is probably her second most famous sentence (after “We can do it”): The Chancellor warns in a TV address “It's serious. Take it seriously.”
Ralf König had a hope when he submitted his successful Corona chronicle, which ends with a cozy New Year's Eve for Paul and Konrad, in conciliatory terms: If the book is on the market in spring 2021, “hopefully the siren will stop wailing and we will be able to go maskless again Squeeze and hug and otherwise shamelessly get on your skin. That'll be nice “. Unfortunately it turned out differently. The comic master drawer, his characters and we readers still need a little patience.
(SERVICE – Ralf König: “Vervirte Zeiten”, Rowohlt, 192 pages. 24.70 euros.)
