The character Nick Knatterton was created in 1935, when Schmidt wrote and drew a detective story called ''"Der Hilferuf der Maud O'Key"
to the weekly magazine Die Grüne Post, with the events located in Chicago in the United States. The main character was called Nick Knatterton, and he already had the famous chin and a chequered coat. The character next appeared in the magazine Die Landpost in 1946; the story was called "Der Schuß in den künstlichen Hinterkopf"'', German for "The shot in the artificial back of the head". Schmidt recalled that in 1950 he came into possession of a
Superman comic brought from the
United States and started
parodying the way the comic was narrated: Soon after the war I got my hands on a colourful comic brought from the United States, which was called
Superman. The comic had a visual story where bubbles filled with text came out of people's mouths, noses, ears and foreheads depending on what they said, heard, smelled or even thought. Swirls around a person's head meant they were losing consciousness, and stars represented a blow to the chin or other sensitive body part. The course of the events, which would fill many pages in a novel, was concentrated into one small picture, saving almost 95 percent of the reading time. I decided to start parodying this completely primitive style of storytelling so thoroughly that no one would care about such bubble-filled stupid literature meant for illiterates.
(Manfred Schmidt in 1970.)) This explanation can not be seen as entirely truthful, as Schmidt had already drawn comics since his childhood and also used
speech bubbles in an experienced manner. Another story tells that some time around 1946 Schmidt had received an issue of the American comic
Classics Illustrated containing a comic based on a novel by
Charles Dickens. Schmidt's friend viewed comics as an art form of the future, and so Schmidt became interested in the matter, became familiar with
Superman, changed the beginning of the story
"Der Schuß in den künstlichen Hinterkopf" to a more comic-like fashion and offered it to the magazine
Quick where he had submitted caricatures. The editor Anton Sailer accepted the submission and the comic started being published as a continuing story. The comic soon became popular, and only a few people realised it was a parody of comics. At first Schmidt only wrote parody into the comic, but soon he started inserting
satirical references to daily politics and the community life of the two German countries. Sometimes Schmidt even quite directly attacked
Konrad Adenauer,
Franz Josef Strauss and
Erich Mende in his stories. The collected publications of
Nick Knatterton are still missing four pages that have not been seen since 1957 - apparently because Strauss engages in questionable arms trade in them. These pages were shown at Schmidt's 100th anniversary exhibition in the
Hannover comics museum. The comic also had
merchandising (playing cards, colouring books, masks etc.) and the stories were published in foreign magazines. The comic was published for many years, but creating new stories became increasingly more difficult for Schmidt: I sat desperately at my drawing board (also called a "torture bench" by my family) from morning to evening trying to invent new and dangerous situations for Knatterton. This process took more and more time. When I was thinking of things that could happen to a person, I started seeing a seed of disaster in every item and in every harmless situation. ==Character==