The cracking scene was highly competetive, and “flame wars” were a common phonomenon. While most of them were fought digitally – through intros and scrollers, some of them were carried out on paper as well. Groepaz/Hitmen provided us with a hand-drawn, photocopied comic strip that was presumably spread at one of the legendary Venlo meetings in 1989. It poked fun at German C64 cracker Spitfire/Action, who was accused of “freezing”, i.e. using a special cartridge module to help him doing his cracks. “Freezing” was against the ethics of the scene, which expected of crackers to be skilled enough to do their cracks “by hand”.

Download the scan >>>here<<<.

As a bonus, Groepaz also provided a scan of the June 1999 members’ newsletter of the German C64 group The Stock International, which can be downloaded here.