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Cartoon by Ralf König: More "embarrassing for old age" than "mild old age"
Photo: Ralf König
From the foreword to the book, the reader looks at »Marie Coronette«, an elderly lady, dressed up, who has put a quote in Ralf König's mouth that would be slightly wrong to call it historical: »If the people don't have toilet paper, napkins should to take!"
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Ralf König,
60, once made the gay lifestyle fit for the mainstream with bestsellers "The Moving Man".
The book was filmed with Til Schweiger.
In the nineties, the Bavarian State Youth Welfare Office wanted the king's book "Bullenklöten!"
Put on the index, the accusation: socio-ethical disorientation through a "world of thoughts centered on sexual pleasure".
In the noughties, König took on Islamists: The cover of "Jinn Jinn" showed a gay man in pink sandals stepping on the beard of a Muslim.
Yes, that was how it was in March when it all started: the first lockdown, the first Corona comics by Ralf König on Facebook.
There hasn't been much to laugh about in the months since then - just maybe about these comics: From March to October, the Cologne-based illustrator published an episode on Facebook and Twitter almost every day.
Rowohlt Verlag has now bundled them all in one book, supplemented by unpublished bonus episodes.
The title: "Lost Times".
Culture man and leather pig
The focus is on Konrad and Paul, an aging couple that would be a hopeless understatement to call them unequal.
Konrad is a distinguished cultured person, Paul is a testosterone-drunk leather bastard who falls in love with some youngster for a long time.
In the spring, Paul is still confident that the new normal will not be too different from the old one.
The wedding of Felix and Jerome, for example: It will probably take place.
"Jens Spahn doesn't forbid gay marriage."
König is considered the world's most popular author of gay stories.
He turned 60 last year, but he still has the humor of a 16-year-old in his comics: a little dirty, with a lot of fun with the little provocation.
Sometimes King's characters feel reminded of the eighties and nineties, of the great fear of HIV, but even safe sex is not of any use to them in times when someone can sneeze on a condom at any time.
After all: sex via Skype and Zoom is new to the present.
In most of his Corona comics, König does not rely on classic punch lines, but rather on the absurdity of the dialogues that many people actually had in these times, regardless of whether they are homosexual, heterosexual or otherwise.
There are the grown children who suddenly crave to visit their parents in the old people's home, whom they never visited before Corona.
There are the couples who see each other from morning to night because the office, the bar, the cinema have been squeezed into the living room at home, home office, home drinking, home dating.
They can't even find peace and quiet to masturbate.
There's the manager of the local supermarket who suddenly becomes a sex symbol.
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Title: Lost Times
Publisher: Rowohlt Buchverlag
Number of pages: 192
Author: König, Ralf
Buy for € 24.00
Price query time
02/14/2021 3:58 p.m.
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King's gay hero Paul writes a poem for him: "... and that breast, the beautifully hairy one, is there on the REWE Payback card?" Being a sex symbol: That too can be a system-relevant task in times when the public space is so free from Is stimulating.
Lower your pants
A few months ago, in an interview on the occasion of his 60th birthday, the “taz” told König that he was more “embarrassing” than “mild with age”.
For a cartoonist, these are not the worst conditions.
Art: For König, that means lowering his pants - those of his characters and, figuratively, his own too.
He's one of those comedians who can laugh at themselves and, perhaps more importantly, those comedians who make the audience laugh at themselves too.
If you laugh, you gain distance from things and yourself. When would that have ever been more necessary than now?
"The humor is desperate," says Konrad, the king's character, "but we shouldn't lose it."
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