And two weeks ago he announced the award, at a very nice reception at the Comic Strip Museum, along with this rather nice book including the winner and four other finalists (five, I suppose, because one entry is by two brothers). The winning entry is a pleasingly surreal tale by Hamburg-based artist Marco Tabilio of Erasmus and a talking seal having postmodern adventures in the belly of a whale. The judges made the right decision; the other stories are all OK (perhaps I woudn't have included the second of the five) but this is the best of them.
If Hans's party had managed a little more than 100,000 extra votes out of 44 million in September's election, he would now be a member of the Bundestag; but as it is he remains in Brussels. Berlin's loss is our gain.