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Neues rund um den Außerirdischen mit blauem Pulli von @ferdinandlutz — bekannt aus 📰 #DeinSPIEGEL und den Büchern 📚 bei @reprodukt_berlin
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About 10 years ago, while I was standing on a ladder and whitewashing my small student room, I got an important phone call. I had previously figured out what I did NOT want to be later on (no diplomat, no scientist), and had postponed the decision far into the future. I financed my studies with newspaper comic strips and illustration jobs. Comics were always my little hobby on the side, nothing I dared to fully commit to. Well, and then came this call. If I would be interested in drawing a comic - for the children's edition of DER SPIEGEL? Every month? Five pages? Beginning in two months? I had never done comics for children before, let alone longer stories, let alone conceived a series that could potentially carry a long arc of suspense. I climbed down the ladder and said yes, I could see that happening. 

You learn to tell stories by telling stories. You become a comic artist by drawing comics. By being thrown in at the deep end like that, I got to know the medium (in front of an audience), got lost in some dead ends and produced material for the equivalent of three Asterix albums every two years. After one year, I quit my Master's, and concentrated exclusively on comics. 

At one point, management consultants came to the SPIEGEL and advised cutting my Q-R-T comic from five to two pages for financial reasons (which made me come up with the Rosa & Louis series). But reader protests led to the page count being increased again and Q-R-T coming back to the magazine. Now, after ten years, the SPIEGEL wants no new episodes any more, in order to reprint the old stories from ten years ago. For financial reasons, of course. So I came up with one last episode that would make it make sense for everything to be retold afterwards. 

A strange feeling of freedom spreads through me. Thinking up a long story for the SPIEGEL every month has taken up a considerable amount of my headspace. I am a bit wistful and relieved at the same time. The books at @reprodukt_berlin will continue, but I now have time to take a breath and devote myself to new projects and new characters. Thank you to all the loyal readers over these ten years. The very last episode is out now.
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