Knax
| Knax | |
|---|---|
|
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| description | Sparkasse magazine |
| Area of Expertise | Children's magazine |
| language | German |
| publishing company | Deutscher Sparkassenverlag ( Germany ) |
| First edition | 1974 |
| Frequency of publication | bi-monthly |
| Widespread edition | 600,000 copies |
| ( Deutscher Sparkassenverlag ( Memento from September 14, 2015 in the Internet Archive )) | |
| Web link | knax.de |
Knax (official spelling: KNAX ) is an advertising comic for children and young people that has been produced by Deutsche Sparkassenverlag ( Stuttgart ) since 1974 and distributed free of charge in savings banks in Germany. Since then, over 200 Knax issues have been published. The comic appears every two months. In 2009 the circulation was 800,000 copies per issue. In addition to Germany , Knax is also available in France , Austria , Luxembourg , Denmark and Norway . The target group of the comic are “young savings bank customers”.
The title lettering of the comic is "KNAX" in white (or red) letters with a broken bar in the X.
content
The comic is set on a fictional island called "KNAX", where villagers (the "KNAXians") live in their village "KNAX" in a medieval village community. There is also a band of robbers here , the “Fetzensteiner”, who live under their leader Fetz Braun at “ Burg Fetzenstein” and who regularly want to attack and steal from the KNAXians. However, since the predators are not very bright, they always succumb. The figures from Knax represent an idealized picture of bourgeois society. Agriculture is represented as well as the various craft guilds , forestry and sea economics , gastronomy and trade . The financial sector is represented by a savings bank.
List of KNAXians:
- Didi, a boy
- Dodo, his best friend
- Nero, Didi and Dodo's dog
- Kiki, your squirrel (introduced in 1988/89)
- Ringo, a linguistically gifted parrot (introduced in 2014)
- Gantenkiel, the scribe, scholar and banker
- Emmerich, the merchant (who wears a basket as a hat)
- Ambros, the blacksmith and inventor
- Pierre Kattun, the tailor and artist
- Pomm-Fritz and Pomm-Friedel, the farmer and the farmer's wife
- Backbert and Steuerbert, the "sea bears" (seamen) from Knax and identical twins
- Bar attendant, the landlord
- Walter Wildfang, the hunter
- Schlapf, the sleepy guard
List of Fetzensteiners:
- Fetz Braun, the robber chief
- Brunhold, the "right hand" of Fetz
- Long beard
- Munch
- Tip
Other:
- Feelicia, the herb fairy (introduced in 1994)
Dodo, Pomm-Friedel and Feelicia are the only female residents on the island.
Introductory story
The history was explained in the early editions of Knax. Accordingly, an emigrant ship ran aground on the island. The people took the island in possession and gave it the name "after the sound that gave the bars of itself, was built as the village". Since then, the settlers have lived self-sufficient on the island and apparently without contact with the outside world. The characters in the comic are the descendants of these stranded emigrants. The wreck of the ship is used as a home for Backbert and Steuerbert. The Fetzensteiners are former pirates who also suffered shipwreck off the island and took up residence in the existing castle. It is unclear where this castle comes from.
The way of life and clothing of the people on Knax suggests that the emigrants came to the island in the Renaissance period . It is unclear whether the comic is set in the present or in the past. Didi and Dodo are the only children on the island and the only ones wearing modern clothes. They live together and apparently have no parents or guardians on Knax.
scope
Originally, each issue contained only one story, which was occasionally based on current topics. In earlier issues, background information on the subject of the issue was printed on the back of the issue.
Later, each KNAX booklet contained three stories, one with seven pages, one with ten and one with one page. The short seven-page story always dealt with an internal conflict in one of the two groups. The ten-page story, however, told a conflict between the KNAXians and the Fetzensteiners. There were also editorial pages, e.g. B. Interesting facts, puzzles, jokes, a handicraft corner and a contact page for pen pals .
Since the change to a new production team in issue 3/2004 (see below), the scope has been reduced to two seven-page and one one-page stories. To this end, the editorial pages have been increased by three, so that the magazine continues to have 24 pages (with cover ).
In addition to the booklets distributed free of charge, there were also several KNAX paperbacks, each around 100 pages thick. In each of these, the first story was new, the rest were reprints of previously published stories.
A large-format KNAX calendar appears annually. The copies from 1983 and 1984 were drawn by André Roche .
Production of the comic
The Knax magazine, invented for the Sparkassen in 1974 by Peter Wiechmann and the draftsman Erwin Frick , was initially produced by Kauka Verlag and soon after by “Studio K”. Even Manfred jack is named as a co-inventor of the comic. At the beginning the comic appeared with only one complete story on 16 pages and a circulation of 100,000. The stories initially dealt mainly with topics such as money, interest and savings. Over the years, however, these topics moved more and more into the background and the comic became thematically freer. The main cartoonist for the comics in the 1970s was Ángel Nadal Quirch (1930–2016).
From 1980, Studio Comicon took over production under the direction of Wiechmann and Fred Kipka . The format has been changed to a classic comic magazine (24 pages with three stories and editorial content like craft tips, puzzles and a pen pal section).
Comicon was split up in 1988 and the "new" Comicon SL and Kipkakomiks (based in Munich) emerged. Here the production of Knax was transferred to Kipkakomiks, which also produced other well-known German comics such as Fix and Foxi or parts of Yps for decades . The boss of Kipkakomiks, Fred Kipka, wrote all Knax stories without exception for over 20 years. After his scripts , the artwork was created by a team of writers, draftsmen and inkers in a studio in Barcelona . The finished comic pages came back to Germany, where a screen print was made and the pages were colored by hand. The editorial pages were also added there, and typesetting , lithography and printing were done. The distribution of the comic was then performed on the client, the Deutsche Sparkassen Verlag .
The Knax storyboards have been from Götz Bachmann since issue 3/2004 and are implemented in drawings by Roberto Freire, Boris Zatko and Ulf S. Graupner . Franz Gerg draws the cover pictures and the Knax calendar pictures. This change the appearance of the comic has changed from issue 3/2004: at Kipkakomiks the work was complete handgetuscht to the end and hand-colored, while the new team, although the Line is characterized also by hand and tuscht, but the coloring on the computer created.
Others
In Germany there are over 200 KNAX clubs which are organized by the savings banks and together have over a million Knax fans between the ages of around six and thirteen.
Children's parties with games and sporting competitions are organized under the name Knaxiade .
In 1984, 1987 and 1990 a KNAX radio play cassette was issued by the Sparkasse. In 1993 the advertising game KNAX - The computer game for Amiga and C64 appeared. In 1997 there was a KNAX comic disc for PC, which contained programs as well as three short cartoon episodes and the music video Wir sind die Fetzensteiner (also known as Das KNAX Lied ) for Knax. A total of five Knax cartoon episodes were published. With its world premiere in June 2007 there is also KNAX - the musical with great hits for clever kids (also known as the KNAX musical ).
The success of Knax soon inspired other associations of credit institutions to create their own commercial comics, such as Sumsi , Mike, the pocket money expert (Volks- und Raiffeisenbanken, 1978-2007) and Marc & Penny (cooperative banks, 1981-2007). Since July 2007 the magazine VR-Primax has been appearing as the successor to the last two advertising comics .
Remarks
- ^ Deutscher Sparkassenverlag ( Memento from September 14, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ a b The animals (Nero, Kiki, and wild animals) cannot speak.
- ↑ Kiki first appeared in issue 3/1988 and got its name in issue 5/1989 after a reader survey.
- ↑ Ringo was introduced as a new character in 2014.
- ↑ a b c Initially, only Fetz Braun and Brunhold of the Fetzensteiners had their own names. The other three names emerged later from a competition among Knax readers.
- ↑ Feelicia was introduced as a new character in issue 5/1994. According to her own declaration, she is neither a KNAXian nor a Fetzensteiner, but “neutral” and lives in the forest, even if she is generally on friendly terms with both sides.
- ↑ This was mentioned in Fetz's first comic paperback.
- ↑ This fact was never the subject of a Knax story.