COMIC REWIND 
Johann Ulrich (Germany. 1965)
Johann Ulrich founded the German publisher avant-verlag after visiting the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2000. There he attended a talk by Thierry Groensteen, who at the time was one of the people in charge at CNBDI (Cité Internationale de la Bande Dessinée et de l'Image) in Angoulême. Discovering that most of the titles were not available in German, he decided to start publishing them himself.
In Frankfurt he made contact with Raúl (Raúl Fernández Calleja), artist of Berlín 1931 and he offered to be his publisher in Germany. As a second title, he chose Anita by Gabriella Giandelli and Stefano Ricci. In 2001 these first two books appeared. In 2008, Johann Ulrich received the "Aventurier de la culture" award from the French Ministry of Culture.
In Germany avant-verlag publishes works by authors such as Manuele Fior, Joann Sfar, Simon Schwartz, Gipi, Birgit Weyhe, David B., Zerocalcare and Liv Strömquist and Spanish authors Antonio Altarriba, Kim, Bartolomé Seguí, Antonio Hernández Palacios, Max and Guillermo Abril.
The official website of avant-verlag is www.avant-verlag.de.
