Gudrun Penndorf accepted her prize sitting down, almost like a queen, while the spectators stood and applauded. In fact, there was hardly anyone in the audience who hadn’t read anything by her. An example? “The Romans are crazy!” The Munich resident, who turned 85 on June 11, wrote the sentence “Ils sont fous, ces Romains!” translated by Obelix and thus by René Goscinny. And according to her laudator, the author Timur Vermes, she has created an even more famous German counterpart. Names such as Schnurstrax or Strammermax also come from her. And so, since 1968, Penndorf has shaped the German image of Asterix as much as the translator Erika Fuchs has shaped the perception of Mickey Mouse and Duckburg.
That they are now at the Munich Comic Festival in the America House with the Peng! Lifetime Achievement Award was honored, said Penndorf, she had never expected that in 1968. Otherwise she seemed satisfied with the words of praise from Vermes, who in the end himself received a special prize for his book “Comicverführer”. The price for Penndorf was known beforehand. It was the same in the case of Alexander Braun, who received the award for the best secondary literature for “The Katzenjammer Kids – The Oldest Comic in the World”. It’s about America around 1900, in addition to comics, a lot of social history is also told and, according to laudator Dirk Wagner, the whole thing reads largely like a novel.
Braun could not come for family reasons. Helena Baumeister, the winner of the award for the best German-language comic, was there for that. She received it for “Oh Cupid“. A portrait of the Tinder generation, which, according to the repeated laudator Timur Vermes, impresses with its surreal wit and conciseness. Appropriately, Baumeister’s acceptance speech was then limited to: “I’m speechless.” The award for the best European comic, the the Italian Igort received for “Reports from Ukraine 2: Diary of an Invasion”. The prize is not only symbolic, but also for the craft, it said in the laudatory speech. But also for showing solidarity for Ukraine in the “comic Bubble” alive.
Hans Well and Die Wellbappn also interspersed political tips against Söder, Schuhbeck & Co., who accompanied the evening with highly entertaining music. Other prizes: Dave McKean’s “Raptor” was honored as the best English-language comic, Alan Moore’s “Swamp Thing” as the best classic edition and Rainer Schneider received a special prize for his “special contribution to Munich comic culture”. Schneider left the club in 1996 Comicaze was founded and he is also a mainstay at the Comic Festival which ended on June 11th. Numerous associated exhibitions but can still be seen.