I really can't speak or read German. I suck. Sometimes I can understand a witten sentence by piecing together bits and pieces, but I sure can't read longer texts.

    However, this disadvantage doesn't stop me from being fascinated by so called "Romanhefte"; the German version of dime novels and pulp literature paperbacks. They are sized slightly smaller than an American comic book, they're usually 68 pages, two columns, and most of the time they contain one short novel or a novella. They do of course have regular paperbacks in Germany as well, but these little magazines - the German equivalent of American pulp magazines of the early 1900s - are still around.

    A handful of the titles has been coming out weekly since the 1950s, titles such as G-Man Jerry Cotton and the science fiction series Perry Rhodan - yes, they're still published weekly. They've tried to publish the Cotton novels as paperbacks in Scandinavia, but few titles came out before the title was cancelled. In Germany, there are literally thousands of Jerry Cotton novels. That FBI agent sure has a lot to do...

    Jason Dark's (real name is Helmut Rellegard, born 1945) novels about ghost detective John Sinclair (named after Roger Moore's character Lord Brett Sinclair in the TV series "The Pesuaders") appeared for the first time in 1973, and right now, there are more than 1600 Sinclair mysteries. There's one new Romanhefte out every week, plus one new paperback a month, and 95% of this is written by Rellergerd himself! He still uses an old mechanical typewriter and each novel takes three days to write. When he gets to "Ende", he just puts a new sheet of paper in the typewriter, and starts writing the next story.

    Those who know the German language can go to the site Gruselromane and read more about this. Even more facts can be found at Die Welt der Romanhefte. Those of us who don't know German can always drool at the cool pictures and cover art, and translate with Babelfish (which renames Romanhefte hero Tony Ballard "Tony Ball Pool Of Broadcasting Corporations").

    And then in 2006, the unavoidable happened: fans of the Romanhefte started putting out their own mags, distributed online and downloadable for free as PDF files. Like Der Hüter by "Harry B. Foster". The cover art is incredibly ugly and amateurish, but what's behind it sure looks like a "real" Romanhefte. You can download the first issue at www.gruselromane.de/hueter/romane/hueter001.pdf. It sucks that I can't actually read the damn book...

    ...But that hasn't stopped me from buying several bizarre old horror titles and a couple of issues of Kommissar X - I'm a fan of the old Kommissar X/Joe Walker movies of the 1960s.