Hydra Comics: Where George Lucas Saves Western Civilization and Angels Wear the Iron Cross

^[1]1,822 words

What I had actually wanted to review was Edwin Black’s The Transfer Agreement. One hears a lot about the agreement itself, but not much about the book. I guess that should have been a clue. I never got past Chapter Four, what with Jewish author Edwin Black ranting and raving, in his Introduction to the 25th anniversary edition, about how he had been going and would continue to go after all those “special villains” of the “fiscal Holocaust”: “Hate cannot function in a vacuum. Hate needs money to prevail.” You don’t say, pal.

Black also claims, among many other things, that the fact that Germans were starving at the end of and after the First World War was their own fault — Why did they send farmers to the front? — and that the Versailles Treaty had simply been karmic payback for the terms Germany herself had imposed on her enemies in previous wars. (He then lists exactly one example — which was never implemented.) He also says that talk of a powerful Jewish conspiracy was just insanity, while simultaneously recounting the ways in which organized Jewish actions brought down empires and economic giants. You see, it only looked like a conspiracy; it wasn’t really one.

I suppose Black felt he had to prove something to his co-ethnics, seeing as even his parents almost disowned him when he began conducting his research. But I’m not masochistic enough to waste my time and sanity on his hate-filled, unreflecting, and often simply factually untrue rantings. So instead I chose to write about something far less highbrow, but much more enjoyable: the Hydra Comics series.

I discovered German publisher Hydra Comics via the Nemmersdorf comic ^[2] that I previously reviewed here. Hydra publishes both original works and German translations of foreign comic books that fit its portfolio, such as Federico Goglio and Massimiliano Longo’s graphic novel ^[3] on Yukio Mishima. An ongoing project is a series simply called Hydra Comics; its installments are released on a semi-regular schedule of once a year so far. I hope they’ll be able to speed it up eventually.

Each issue features several stories. The first had three; the fourth, which is the current issue, has already progressed to five. Being self-declared pop culture nerds, the Hydra team naturally created a group of superheroes who have just now assembled and will form their own Justice League/Avengers style of group called The Order (a nod to The Turner Diaries?). Personally, I’m not into superheroes, time travel, or parallel universes, but these guys and gals are easy to live with. We need heroes, super or otherwise.

Hydra Comics no. 1 ^[4] features “Wiedergutmachung,” the story of a physics professor who tries to alter the past after his wife and daughter are killed at Breitscheidplatz, Berlin in 2016 by a Muslim terrorist (a real event ^[5]). He goes on to basically become The Order’s Professor X. There’s also “Schakal,” named after another future Order member; it is about a soldier who is possessed by an ancient spirit. This story has great artwork by Remata’Clan. Then there is my favorite story, “Horus,” about — yes! — Space Germans. Having settled — you guessed it — on the Moon after the Second World War, they are now ready to land on Mars and want it to become a great event for all mankind. So they reveal their existence to the people of Earth, with predictable results. Hydra keeps promising a sequel, but so far it hasn’t materialized.

No. 2 ^[6] introduces a superhero whose world has been overwritten by a dystopian parallel universe. “Der dunkle Strang” is a very dark story and again features our time-traveling professor. But the highlight of this issue is undoubtedly “Der nützliche Idiot,” which starts out with a letter written by a Leftist liberal college professor to his wife, apologizing for his disappearance and long silence. Nobody would believe him if he told the truth, he writes, and proceeds to relate his strange tale. Professor Hardner had been invited to hold a lecture at a meeting of the rich and famous, and of course spoke on the topic of “Climate Deniers, Corona Deniers, White Racists: The Conspirators of Oppression,” and received a standing ovation. That night, unable to sleep, he wandered around the compound and stumbled across a late-night meeting. “Would that I had gone back to my room,” he laments.

Invited in by the group, he finds among them Greta Thunberg, LeBron James, and George Lucas, and is shown the latest results of their campaigns: Streaming services have lost 24% of their target group, Hollywood has become irrelevant, video-game sales are down by 20%, sports viewing is down by 18% and falling, and green politics has lost massive support. In short: “In all areas where our progressive agenda is being aggressively pushed, more and more white men are bailing.” A horrified Hardner is then told the truth: This shadowy counter-conspiracy is undermining “the agenda” in order to save civilization. “We’re not giving out red pills,” Greta Thunberg reveals. “We make the blue ones indigestible.”

LeBron James then explains:

The white man must change. He is told at work that he only has his job because he benefits from racism and sexism. He doesn’t ask. He keeps his mouth shut because he wants to provide for his family and maybe watch the game in the evening. Then the black ballgame millionaire — in other words, yours truly — calls him a piece of white shit if he doesn’t get down on his knees for a violent black criminal. Whether we burn down his cities; destroy his legacy; humiliate, steal from, and murder him — he takes it all. But there are fewer and fewer ways to escape. Perhaps he is beginning to wonder where there will be room for his children in our new world.

The white man has to wake up, and Hardner is part of the group’s plan. The good professor flees in terror and hides in his grandfather’s old cabin somewhere in flyover country. What is he to do? If he continues his work, he is playing right into the cabal’s hands.

Over the course of the following weeks, Hardner seeks escape in hard physical labor. He begins repairing the cabin, builds up his muscles, and grows a beard. “I have to accept the fact that I worked for the wrong side,” he concludes. Of course, in the best horror tradition, his wife turns out to be part of the conspiracy as well.

Issue no. 2 ends with a piece on the “Renards furtifs ^[9].”

No. 3 ^[10] is titled Helden (Heroes) for a reason. “Vierundzwanzig” introduces our first classic superheroes, Omega and Psi, or Alex and Anna as they are known in their identities as ordinary college students. They gain temporary superpowers thanks to another mad scientist.

“Galstarr: Die Sonnenwölfe” is unusual insofar as that it is based on the work of German rapper Galstarr (formerly Absztrakkt), who also co-wrote the story. As Absztrakkt he had written complex, spiritually-based songs, often with Buddhist themes, but there had also been those dealing with Germany’s changing society, as for example “Heil wenn ich rappe” ^[11] or “Walther” ^[12] (a reaction to the mass rapes ^[13] in Germany on New Year’s Eve 2015-16). The latter can be considered a key moment in his becoming Galstarr. He has been rapping to Nordic and folkloric sounds since 2020, exploring European mythology as well as ethnic and political questions. Galstarr even released a song to accompany the comic story, “Die Köpfe der Hydra” ^[14] (The Heads of the Hydra). “In me beats a father’s heart now,” he tells his listeners, “and that scares me, for my views are becoming more radical.” The pinnacle of that development is probably one of his newest songs, “Galgen” ^[15] (Gallows), which is clearly inspired by William Pierce’s Day of the Rope.

The third story, “Der Schakal: Kabale,” again features our possessed soldier and, like “Vierundzwanzig,” ends with a cliffhanger. Then there’s a commemoration of Jack Marchal ^[16], the French creator of Les Rats maudits, the politically-incorrect black rats.

Issue no. 4 ^[17]’s cover immediately catches the eye: Superhero Omega tries to extract an explanation for what is going on in Germany and the world from Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and gets this predictable Scholzism: “I can’t remember.” (Readers outside Germany might not be familiar with that line; it’s Scholz’s standard reply when confronted with his involvement in the CumEx affair ^[18] — or any other scandal, for that matter.) I’m guessing this is Hydra’s equivalent to Captain America, or Superman taking on Hitler. Omega and Psi’s story continues in “Fünfundzwanzig,” when The Order finally assembles. The black rats are back as well, in “Les Rats Maudits: Kneipengespräche.”

One of the world’s most hated supervillains, Yuval Noah Harari, gets his own comic story in the dystopian “The Rise of Homo Deus,” which quotes Harari’s own words. An interesting story is “Like a Rolling Stone,” written by Volker Zierke and reminiscent of his weird but evocative novel Ins Blaue (Into the blue), with its themes of escape from modern society and elemental, almost primordial powers. It has a lot in common with the Galstarr story in the previous issue, but unlike Galstarr, Zierke takes the lone-wolf approach.

My favorite is a manga, of all things, entitled “Klassenfahrt.” A group of students from Berlin goes on a school trip to the sea. Ethnic tensions are ever-present. Kilian, one of the few white teenagers in the group, can’t relate to his peers, whom he despises. His friend Maria walks a fine line between her friendship with Kilian and her relationship with Tarek, an ethnic Turk. Four other non-white students get handsy with a German girl at the beach and, when reproached by a teacher, go into the all-too-familiar routine of insulting the “Almans” and “Kartoffeln” (potatoes, an anti-German slur). Frau Schindler — an interesting choice of name, there — one of the accompanying teachers, is a German convert to Islam, which is seen by the Muslim troublemakers as proof of Christian/white weakness.

Kilian builds a camp in the woods and discovers an old Viking runestone there. Another runestone stands in an open-air museum that the group visits, and of course the usual suspects mock the old Nordic people and even climb onto the stone.

So far, things are depressingly familiar. But then the four troublemakers begin to encounter shadowy people in the woods, and one night both students and teachers are alarmed by terrible screams. A teacher finds the four boys hanging upside down, lifeless, in the trees. To be continued . . .  It’s pretty clear where this is going, but I still hope Hydra will hurry up and release issue no. 5 soon!

To date, Hydra has only published The Liberation of Nemmersdorf in an English translation. I suspect they are waiting to see whether there’s a market for it, so if you’re interested in the “right” kind of comic books, let them know. Alternatively, comics are a great tool when learning a foreign language, as generations of Latin students who took to Caesar’s Bellum Helveticum in comic-book form ^[19] can confirm . . .