About Max Vaehling
Max Vaehling, aka Jaehling, is a German comics creator and self-publisher. His most notable webcomic is Conny Van Ehlsing, Monster Hunter (at Webcomics Nation).
Biography
Vaehling was born in Bremen in 1969. On his website, he claims to have had his first work published in about 1978 (within his primary school class), but his first notable contributions were cartoons for school papers in the late eighties. In 1989, he was one of the founders of the German fanzine PANEL (later PANEL ambixious comix). He left the PANEL staff and stopped making comics altogether in 1991.
Some time between 1996 and 1997, he began writing again and soon developed the superhero parody Reception Man, to be published in various German fanzines as well as self-published through Vaehling’s label Dreadful Gate Productions by the end of 1999. Since then, Vaehling has been present in several comics magazines in Germany and abroad, including PLOP, cOMIc and Underdog (Germany), Kaufzwang (Switzerland) and Das Schubfach (Brazil).
In 2003, Vaehling graduated from the University of Bremen as a social scientist. His thesis, about the anti-comics campaigns in the 1950s, was later re-edited and published in the anthology Comic! Jahrbuch 2004. He has since published several freelance articles and essays, both about comics and other topics.
Online activities
In 2000, Vaehling developed his first web site at www.dreadful-gate.de. His first regular webcomic was terrain vague (2001-2002), an urban fantasy strip based on then-popular myths about street crime and video surveillance.
In 2004, Vaehling developed a new title based on one of Reception Man’s supporting characters, Conny Van Ehlsing. The German series Monsterjägerin Conny Van Ehlsing has been online at German web zine LOA since January, 2005. The English translation, Conny Van Ehlsing, Monster Hunter, was first published in early 2007.
Also in 2005, Vaehling re-joined the PANEL staff to develop and edit the PANEL web site and web zine, PANEL online. There, he co-created the irregular comic strip Neues aus der Entenstraße.
(Taken from Comixpedia on February 16th, 2008)
