Die Gruppe X #11
Die Gruppe X #11 is the sole German-language edition in which West German readers could follow a consecutive chunk of Chris Claremont and Dave Cockrum's celebrated Brood Saga as it unfolded in Uncanny X-Men #156–160 — a stretch of storytelling that pushed the X-Men into outer space for a life-or-death clash with Deathbird and the Brood, introduced the full origin of Corsair as Cyclops's long-lost father, and closed with the transformation of Colossus's sister Illyana and a standalone tale in which Storm falls under Dracula's thrall. As part of Condor Verlag's wider program of translating Marvel's most ambitious 1980s material for the German market, this thick trade-format paperback served as many readers' first encounter with the Shi'ar mythos and the moral complexity that set Claremont's X-Men apart from superhero contemporaries. The volume's place in the Gruppe X run also reflects a broader cultural moment: German comic culture of the late 1980s was absorbing the full force of the American mutant boom years after those stories had already reshaped the medium in the United States.
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Condor Verlag, a Berlin-based publisher that held the German license for Marvel Comics through the 1980s and into the early 1990s, issued Die Gruppe X as a thick digest-sized paperback (Taschenbuch) series beginning in 1985, reprinting Uncanny X-Men stories in translated, multi-issue chunks. The series gave the team its German-market alias — 'Die Gruppe X' (literally 'The Group X') — a naming convention inherited from earlier German Marvel licensees rather than invented by Condor. Each volume in the series was padded with editorial 'yellow pages': contextual text articles explaining crossover events and character backgrounds that Condor had skipped or condensed, a workaround that fan historians have noted was Condor's way of keeping readers oriented when the reprint schedule did not follow American continuity in strict order. The underlying American source material — Uncanny X-Men #156–160 — was written by Chris Claremont with pencils primarily by Dave Cockrum and inks by Bob Wiacek, forming the heart of what Cockrum and Claremont designed as the opening act of their Brood Saga.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Die Gruppe X #11 was published in 1988 by Condor Verlag GmbH & Co. of Berlin as part of the digest-format Taschenbuch series that ran from 1985 onward.
- The volume reprints Uncanny X-Men #156–160, written by Chris Claremont with art principally by Dave Cockrum (pencils) and Bob Wiacek (inks).
- Uncanny X-Men #156 is Part 3 of 4 of the 'Pursuit!' storyline, in which the X-Men and Starjammers race to stop Deathbird and the Brood from threatening Earth, and includes the full origin of Corsair as the long-lost father of Cyclops (Scott Summers).
- The Starjammers connection to the X-Men was a deliberate creative decision by Cockrum and Claremont: they made Corsair Cyclops's father specifically to give the space-pirate team a recurring narrative hook in the X-Men series.
- Uncanny X-Men #159 (reprinted here) features Storm bitten and temporarily transformed by Dracula, illustrated with storytelling that highlighted Storm as a central protagonist of Claremont's run.
- Uncanny X-Men #160 (also reprinted here) introduces the demonic Belasco and depicts the transformation of Colossus's sister Illyana Rasputin — a pivotal character-development moment that seeded the subsequent Magik limited series.
- The X-Men were marketed in Germany under the name 'Die Gruppe X' — following a convention established by prior German Marvel licensees — while Daredevil (who appears in the indexed character list) carried the German alias 'Der Dämon.'
- Condor's Gruppe X Taschenbuch line was ultimately cancelled in 1992 due to low sales; it was only after Panini acquired the Marvel German license that the X-Men found a mass German readership under their original English name.