Michael Koeckritz 
The artist Swen Papenbrock was born in 1960 and lives in Kassel were he also grew up accompanied by the Perry Rhodan series.
He sais: »When I remember correctly, I had my first contact with Perry Rhodan in 1970/71, however at that time not as a reader, but as an admirer of Johnny Bruck's title pictures. This might sound strange at first, but can be explained relatively easy.
»We had a Flowershop in the neighborhood, which was converted into a newspaperstore. It was customary for flowershops in the 60' and 70's to offer flowers to the customers after official business hours. These flowers were offered in automated displays where the customer could select and buy his / hers bunch of flowers for one D-Mark. The new owner of the store made use of this feature after the flowershop had been converted. This way, weekly series like: Jerry Cotton, Terra and, you guessed it ... Perry Rhodan were part of the offerings.
»Since my weekly allowance wasn't that great, I had no other choice than to flatten my nose on the small display windows, admiring the title pages. With the arrival of the 3rd edition, I was always up-to-date on the up-and-comming issues, I could convince my father to increase my allowance so I could buy the novels from the start of the new edition. He regreted his decision after he noticed that every second page of my school workbooks contained spaceship sketches. However, my path could no longer be changed!
»My father's interruption of my flashlight - under the bedcover - nightly readings, and totally destoying my Perry Rhodan issue in his anger, which I had intended to read in record time, could not change my Perrymania for the better - on the contrary!
»Another milestone, for me as a graphic artist, was the release of the magazine »Zack« in 1972. I was always fascinated by the different comic series covered by that magazine. Enthusiastically, I was now also buying the Zack Magazine in addition to the Perry Rhodans each week. Needless to say, this was the foundation of a still growing collection of comic and Rhodan issues. (Much to the dismay of my parents!)
»It took about 2 years until I had cought up with the Perry Rhodan series, buying issues from all three available editions. In the meantime, I tried also to buy all the associated Merchandizing articles to the series.
»Then in the early 80's, a story and drawing competition was announced in the ATLAN series, 2nd edition. Immediately, I submitted four illustration, which were published in Atlan issues 200, 202, 206 and 207. A couple of weeks later, I received a letter with the following text: "As winner of the drawing competition of issue #202 we're presenting a cheque over 100 D-Mark." This was the deciding factor for my career as graphic artist. It is quite possible that my old pictures are still collecting dust somewhere in the Pabel-Moewig archives.
»My preference for Perry Rhodan and Sci-Fi reached a highpoint between 1982 and 1984 in the attempt to release a fanzine together with friend of mine. Sporadically, we released a couple of issues of "Dunkelstern / Dark Star" (50 issues each). Moving to Stuttgart proved to become a problem in working together with my friend and the magazine died after the fourth issue.
»I then joined the regional group of the SFCD (Science Fiction Club Deutschland) in Stuttgart and participated in the monthly meetings held in a pup. Needless to say that I brought along my sketch pad and the praising comments of the SFCD members were well received. One of these admirers was a man who later helped me land my first contracts. Uwe Luserke was the owner of a small agency for pictures and art and handled the distribution of my first pictures. I was proud like a peecock when I saw issue # 286 of Zauberkreis (Magic Circle) with my title picture on it. After that, I filled some orders by the Moewig and Kelter publishing firms.
»In 1985, I moved back to Kassel, gathered some of my creations and sent them to Norbert Hethke. I received an answer the following day. He called me up and asked me if I wanted to create a title page for "Sprechblase" (Text Bubble). Enthusiastically, I said "yes" and issue # 74 of Sprechblase had my title picture.
»Ewald Fehlau of Bastei Publishing called me about some illustrations, which resulted in some ghost story pictures.«
After Swen finished Middle School (the German education system is way different than the American system) he began an apprentisceship as painter and varnisher in Stuttgart which led to his Master's certificate. After that he bacame a government certified designer in the field of coloring and layout, and also became a guilder. Because of his occupation with drawing pictures, he seldomly worked in that field. Swen was also busy in the field of model making and in 1995 he got the idea to create a bust of GUCKY. (Pucky)
Since 1995/ 96 he works as one of three title picture graphic artists for the Perry Rhodan series. Ever since the BSV pocket books were re-issued, he is also drawing illustrations besides Title pictures.
This multitalented artist is also active in the field of Comics and works for the series: "Die Vergessenen" (The forgotten ones) issued by Ideenschmiede Paul & Paul.
Source: PMV
Adaptation: MK
