Steam noir

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Steam Noir is a German-language steampunk franchise based on the role-playing game Opus Anima . The main work of the franchise so far is the comic series Steam Noir - Das Kupferherz , drawn by Felix Mertikat , written by Benjamin Schreuder and Verena Klinke . The first volume was awarded a Sondermann at the Frankfurt Book Fair .

The world

The stories of Steam Noir are set in the fictional world of Landsberg , with floating islands held together by gravity, so-called “clods”. One of them, the island of the dead, Vineta , moves between the others. As it approaches, it causes chaos and destruction as well as the transition of the deceased, who are called "souls" but are physically tangible, into the world of the living. This event occurs at irregular but predictable intervals, it is called "the blind days". The “souls” have an influence (“distortion”) both on dead matter, as can be seen in the facade damage of houses that have been exposed to their auras for a long time, and on living beings. In humans, they cause growths that usually require amputation of limbs or have fatal consequences. A separate professional group, the "Bizzaromanten", serves on the one hand to research the "souls" and their "distortions", but also ensures that "souls" are locked in a closed security area (the "ghetto").

The actual setting is the Kingdom of Januskoogen , which is ruled by an emperor. According to Verena Klinke, this is designed in a deliberately chosen contrast to the often Victorian steampunk scenarios based on the Wilhelmine model. According to Rupert Koppold in the Stuttgarter Zeitung , Benjamin Schreuder also admits older role models such as ETA Hoffmann as an influence. In Januskoogen the first Faculty of "Bizarromantie" was born. The privately financed "Leonardsbund" is one of the beneficiaries of this research. He conducts investigations in connection with the "souls" and their defense, with the authority of the state. On the other hand, the calculation methods, thanks to which one can predict the next appearance of the island of the dead, are said to go back to the masked secret society of the “Calendar Order” (KO). Mechanical beings with artificial intelligence also populate Landsberg, or at least Januskoogen .

The world of Steam Noir is largely identical to that of Opus Anima , only the concept of the island of Vineta and its returned souls is new in the comic. In the role-playing game there is "soulless" instead.

Steam Noir - the copper heart

characters

  • Heinrich Lerchenwald , as a bizzaromant in the field service of the Leonardsbund, deals with the tracking down of souls and their accommodation in the ghetto. He has a university past and sees it with discomfort that his research results and the devices he has developed are being used by colleagues to destroy souls. Verena Klinke calls this a conscious allusion to Robert Oppenheimer . Lerchenwald lives in separation from his wife Marlies and has a seriously ill son, Albrecht, with her.
  • Ms. D. is a crime scene investigator, a colleague in the Leonardsbund von Lerchenwald and guided by her cool mind.
  • Richard Hirschmann completes the investigation team. He is a machine man who, despite his purely mechanical nature, seems to have a deep compassion for his two colleagues.

action

part 1

The three investigators of the Leonardsbund are called to a house into which a soul has penetrated. Hirschmann is sent ahead to ventilate the house because it is filled with anesthetic gas. Then the trio discovers that a little girl in the house had been walled up alive in the fireplace several years ago and the soul removed the corpse. Investigations into the previous owners of the house, the missing couple, the Schönhebers, reveal that they had a deceased son, Leander, and an adopted daughter, Lisa, who was also missing. In the evening Lerchenwald is attacked by members of the Calendar Order, who believe that he has found a copper heart at the scene. The next day Lerchenwald and Hirschmann visit the home where Lisa lived before the adoption. They learn that she had a serious heart defect and was told by a certain Dr. Eduard Presteau had an artificial heart inserted, which was considered a medical miracle. Before the two of them can follow the new trail, they learn from a messenger machine belonging to the Leonard League that a soul has been sighted in Aurich, a district flooded as a result of a distortion. Lerchenwald learns from the soul that it is waiting for the return of Vineta to return there. He is surprised both that a soul feels this desire and that it should be possible. But without him being able to question the soul further, it is shot by the emergency services. This releases a distortion that costs Lerchenwald a hand. He receives from Dr. Presteau placed a prosthesis. Ms. D. mistrusts this magnanimous act, she suspects that Lerchenwald, like Lisa before, are merely experimental objects for the doctor. Together they visit him for an evening reception and get to know his adopted daughter Manuela, who is also equipped with her father's prosthesis. Lerchenwald sees a soul which, according to witnesses, he identifies as the one who broke into the house of the beautiful people.

Volume 2

The soul escaped and Dr. Presteau proves to be an evasive and soothing interlocutor towards Lerchenwald. However, Ms. D. learns from Manuela that she, too, is extremely reserved towards her adoptive father. The next day, Lerchenwald witnessed how armed violence was once again used against souls, this time by colleagues from the Leonard League. He learns that his research has led to the development of weapons and is upset about it. For this reason and for alleged misconduct during the incident that cost him his hand, he receives a reprimand from the Leonardsbund. Hirschmann defends him and thus saves Lerchenwald from worse. By checking the delivery lists for anesthetic gas, the trio can track down the soul that has escaped from them. It is Leander Schönträger, as they had previously suspected, but before they are confirmed they are driven away by a monstrous figure. This is Tetar, the biological son of Dr. Presteau. Leander visits Lerchenwald in the evening. He wants to go back to his parents in Vineta, who have also died, and has only come to the living to get his adoptive sister Lisa. The copper heart implanted in her did not let her die all these walled-in years, even if her body has decayed in the meantime. Leander brings Lerchenwald to Lisa so that he can get the copper heart Dr. Bringing Presteau back.

Volume 3

Leander explains to Lerchenwald that his father himself walled Lisa up in the fireplace. Her heart should be removed again, apparently she was really intended as a test subject, as assumed by Ms. D. The family prepared to flee and wanted to hide Lisa for two days, but they were killed beforehand without revealing the hiding place. Lerchenwald asks a doctor friend to take Lisa's heart and thereby redeem her. Meanwhile, Ms. D. learns in the ghetto that it is being cleared and that the souls are to be moved. She also knows that the Leonardsbund has been cutting funds for research into the healing of souls and investing in weapons for some time. Manuela observes a conversation between her father and agents of the Calendar Order. Dr. Presteau's research is funded by the KO, the agents are assigned to get him the copper heart. Manuela runs away from her father and turns to Ms. D. She offers to become her assistant. Ms. D. accepts the offer, but informs her that she has resigned from the Leonardsbund. Lerchenwald visits his son Albrecht in the hospital, he wants to send him the copper heart. Leander stops that, insists that Dr. Presteau gets the heart and has Albrecht von Tetar kidnapped. On the basis of a complaint by Lerchenwald's wife Marlies, he is suspected of kidnapping his son and arrested, but is freed by agents of the Calendar Order.

Development and publication

Felix Mertikat published the role-playing game Opus Anima in 2008 together with some former school friends . It was developed by Mertikat together with Till Bröstl, Maja checks and Andreas Steiner, later Steam - Noir -Texterin Verena Jack was already working here as a writer.

Mertikat and Schreuder published a comic at the Cross Cult publishing house before Steam Noir : their thesis at the Film Academy Baden-Württemberg Jakob . Mertikat had the basic rules of Opus Anima with him when he first talked to the publisher . According to Mertikat, publishing director Andreas Mergenthaler liked the concept and offered to commission the two of them to make a comic adaptation of the role-playing game after Jakob was published .

Carried out the first release of six pages from the comic in May 2011 in a sample issue for Free Comic Book Day of The Goon . The excerpt from the second half of the first album was largely redrawn for the final version. As of the 06/2011 issue, preprinting in Comix magazine began shortly thereafter .

After completing the first volume, Benjamin Schreuder left the series to devote himself to other projects. In his place came Verena Klinke, who had already edited the first part. She took over the story with the open ending from Schreuder and, shortly after the first album was released in October 2011, she and Mertikat developed the basics of the plot for the next three parts, with which the plot ends. The second album was released in June 2012, the third (for the first time without a magazine preprint) in May 2013. The publisher has announced the closing volume for January 2016. From part 2 onwards, the dates of the comic festivals in Erlangen and Munich are based on in order to be able to present them there after the first volume has been published for the Frankfurt Book Fair .

reception

In 2012, the first volume was awarded the Sondermann award in the category of self-published comics (national) at the Frankfurt Book Fair .

The first album also found a certain echo in the reviews of the German daily press. For Daniel Klein in the Tagesspiegel it is a classic detective story with approaches of social criticism, according to Gottfried Knapp in the Süddeutsche Zeitung  " a dense, ironically broken mixture of classic motifs of the fantastic ". He thinks he can easily recognize the mysterious cities as a role model. Andreas Platthaus from the FAZ considered the work at least in his blog on the newspaper's online portal. At that time he was still undecided as to whether the series would prove to be a " big hit for the German comic [...] or" just "a witty gimmick ". He sees Berlinoir as a forerunner .

Thomas Klingenmaier finds volume 2 in the Stuttgarter Zeitung more plot-driven than the first, Mertikat's pictures darker , even if they tend to be playful and cartoonish . He also draws the obvious comparisons to the Holocaust, which, according to Verena Klinke, are read by many, but relativized by her: » We […] do not provide an accurate depiction of historical events, but rather see them as exciting narrative elements. "Klingelmaier does not contradict this either, on the contrary, he sees in the work" a wink that one should not take this very strange world too seriously. «

Steam Noir - a turning point

The five-page short comic by Verena Klinke and Felix Mertikat was published in 2012 as part of a The Walking Dead magazine for the free comic day. The action takes place 75 years before that of the copper heart . It tells of the experiences that one of the founding members of the "Bizzarromantic Faculty" had with regard to the way the rural population dealt with the "souls". They are put in a sack there and drowned in the moor.

Games

Steam Noir Revolution

The card game was conceived and written by Daniel Danzer, originally as a revolutionary game with no knowledge of Steam Noir . The idea of ​​relating it to this came about by chance, as Mertikat lived in the neighborhood. In the game, five factions try to overthrow the emperor, three of them, students , workers and suffragettes , have not yet played any major roles in the comic and probably date from the time when the game was conceived without any reference to Steam Noir . With Ms. D. and Manuela Presteau, two characters from the comic are represented with cards from the women's rights activist faction, but in the comic they have not yet joined such a group and it is not necessarily to be assumed that they will still do so. The fourth faction, the Mechandros , do not appear under this name in the copper heart either , but it seems to be a kind of "representation of interests" of the mechanical beings, Richard Hirschmann can be used as a playing card on this page. While the Leonardsbund, for example, did not take part in the revolution at all, at least a “real” faction from the series was represented with the “Calendar Order”. Even if the game has no direct reference to the plot of the comics, it is recognizable through the illustrations by Felix Mertikat in the world of Steam Noir .

The game offers three winning options: If the strongest faction at the end of a game (with the exception of the faction of the emperor, who also plays but is not directly controlled by any other player) is less than 15 points ahead of the second-placed player, that player emerges victorious from the revolution . If the gap is greater, the others see her as too “greedy for power” and immediately overthrow her, with the second-placed winner. If the emperor emerges from the game as the strongest power, the weakest faction wins, as it was least involved in the revolution.

Steam Noir - Revolution took second place in the Hippodice author competition for board games in 2013.

Steam Noir - Calendar

A board game entitled Steam Noir: Kalendarium , also financed by crowdfunding, is planned.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g Michael Hüster: Steam Noir - Das Kupferherz. Adventure in a fantastic new steampunk world. An interview with Felix Mertikat and Verena Klinke, conducted by Michael Hüster . In: Zack . No. 168 . Mosaik Steinchen for Steinchen Verlag, June 2013, ISSN  1438-2792 , DNB  020631308 , p. 68-71 .
  2. ↑ Rupert Koppold: New comic "Copper Heart". Back to the future - via Esslingen. Stuttgarter Zeitung, October 15, 2011, accessed on February 17, 2014 : "During his studies he liked to deal with romanticism, for example with the" feverish "stories of an ETA Hoffmann, says the scenarioist Benjamin Schreuder."
  3. ↑ Verena Klinke (text), Felix Mertikat (drawings): Steam Noir. Turning point . In: Free Comic Day 2012. The Walking Dead . Cross Cult, Ludwigsburg 2012, p. 27-31 .
  4. ↑ Alexander Müller: Visit to the workshop of Felix Mertikat - illustrator of "Kupferherz". Rolling Stone , October 19, 2011, accessed February 18, 2014 .
  5. ^ Opus Anima. NewQuest Verlag Till Bröstl, accessed on February 16, 2014 (official site of the role-playing game, indicated in the imprint).
  6. ↑ Daniel Klein: Preview: Under Steam. Der Tagesspiegel , June 16, 2011, accessed on February 17, 2014 .
  7. ^ Benjamin Schreuder (text), Felix Mertikat (drawings): Steam Noir - Das Kupferherz . In: Comix . No. 06-10 / 2011 . JNK, Verlag Jurgeit, Krismann & Nobst, Berlin 2011, DNB  1014791847 . ↑ Verena Klinke (text), Felix Mertikat (drawings): Steam Noir - Das Kupferherz 2 . In: Comix . No.
     04–07 / 2012 . JNK, Verlag Jurgeit, Krismann & Nobst, Berlin 2012, DNB  1014791847 .
  8. ↑ Steam Noir. German Comic Guide , accessed on February 16, 2014 (the publication dates for the two subsequent volumes can also be accessed).
  9. ^ Matthias Hoffmann: Fast Facts: Comic Prices . In: Comic Report . tape 2013 . Edition Alfons, Barnstedt 2013, ISBN 978-3-940216-16-8 , pp. 122 .
  10. ↑ Daniel Klein: Science Fiction Comic. Hunter of Lost Souls. Der Tagesspiegel , November 4, 2011, accessed on February 17, 2014 .
  11. ↑ Gottfried Knapp: The world after the blind days: the comic saga 'Steam Noir'. Süddeutsche Zeitung , April 13, 2012, archived from the original on April 16, 2012 ; accessed on February 17, 2014 .
  12. ^ Andreas Platthaus: Steampunk from a German pen. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , February 20, 2012, accessed on February 17, 2014 .
  13. ^ A b Thomas Klingenmaier: Steampunk comic: "Steam Noir". Now souls are being exterminated. Steam Noir Volume 2: Holocaust in the etheric world. Stuttgarter Zeitung , July 8, 2012, accessed on February 17, 2014 .
  14. ↑ Steam Noir: Revolution. startnext, accessed on February 17, 2014 (project page of the crowdfunding platform): “After game designer Daniel Danzer had the basic idea for this revolutionary game, he came across the atmospherically perfect world of comic artist Felix Mertikat. He lived just a stone's throw away "
  15. ↑ Author competition 2013. Hippodice Spieleclub eV, accessed on February 18, 2014 .
  16. ↑ Steam Noir: Calendar. (No longer available online.) Felix Mertikat, archived from the original on December 29, 2013 ; Retrieved February 18, 2014 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / steamnoir.com