from: Michael Apitz
published: Societäts Verlag
on 20.07.2016
Since 2007, graphic artist, painter and comic artist Michael Apitz has accompanied the home games of his heart's club, the Frankfurt Eintracht, with affectionate and humorous comic columns, which were initially published in the stadium magazine of the Frankfurt Eintracht. After the series "Im Adler-Olymp" was discontinued after the club was promoted back to the 1st league in 2012, Apitz was offered the opportunity to continue his popular Eintracht comics with a new series in the Frankfurter Rundschau. And so, on 25 August 2012, the series "Im Herzen von Europa" started in the FR supplement HEIMSPIEL, which has now accompanied four exciting seasons of Eintracht.
The amusing anecdotes have already been featured in the Rundschau, on Facebook and finally also on SGE4EVER, the Eintracht online magazine. Nevertheless, it is a great pleasure for Apitz - and certainly for all Eintracht fans - that the collected comic episodes of the last four years have now been published in a beautiful volume by Societäts Verlag. A total of 69 episodes of "Im Herzen von Europa" are collected in the book and thus offer the reader once again in a humorous way the opportunity to experience all the highs and lows of these past seasons. From Armin Veh's despair to remember all the new names of his just promoted team to the entry into the Europa League, the wading through the relegation quagmire or special tactics against Bayern to the dramatic relegation battle against the "Glubb" from Nuremberg, the book offers a season review of a very special kind. It is very nice that under the individual comics short explanations about the respective starting situation were set, so that one understands not only as a loyal fan, but also as an ignorant, to which the individual episodes refer. However, there are also small details that will really only be revealed to very loyal followers of the "Diva of the Main". The best example of this is the heated discussion about the yellow away jerseys, which is commented on here by the burning of one such jersey in the background of a picture.
You can tell from the comics that Apitz really puts his heart and soul into this subject, that he is very observant, and that he has a knack for delivering justified criticism in a charming and decisive way. With his view of the pitch, the dressing room and the players' heads, he gets to the heart of the fans' feelings. And that's not so easy, because Eintracht regularly causes extreme emotional fluctuations among its supporters. One moment they are full of rage about bad decisions and unused opportunities, the next they are cheering again, as Axel "Beve" Hoffmann (<link http: www.beveswelt.de _blank>Http://www.beveswelt.de/?cat=9) from the Eintracht Museum noted in his laudatory speech at the press launch of the book.
Apitz always creates the comics completely up-to-date. Only one or two days before the next home game, the ideas are first sketched, before a final drawing is drawn in black and white. He then scans these in order to colour them on the computer. In this way, small contemporary documents are created by a fan for the fans, which can still be enjoyed long after the game. And therefore applies also to this comic volume quite clearly: Absolutely recommendable!
More about Michael Apitz can be found at: <link http: www.eintracht-comic.de _blank>
An article by Frankfurt-Tipp