always watch your back in
the Looniverse

In Association with Amazon.com

strips

WILHELM BUSCH

Wilhem Busch
self-portrait, 1873

signature
In the same year Goethe died, Wilhelm Busch was born in Wiedensahl, a small German village, on 15 April 1832.
He died 9 January 1908. He is best known for his Max und Moritz strip, but produced much more.

Busch is still very popular in Germany to this day - so popular that some Germans don't like him as, in their youth, they have been force-fed his stuff. A pity. Not only his strips, which were put in rhyme as was customary - almost obligatory, in those days, show he was a master craftsman. Many of his strips were colored, but I don't know if they have been published that way, originally.
Besides writing, drawing and painting, Busch was an accomplished sculptor. He always had a sympathetic eye peeled to the seedier sides of life and, with a delightful lack of reverence, just hated all clerics. Right on, Wilhelm!
Wilhelm Busch has been turned into animated films several times. Best known are MGM's Katzenjammer Kids, but in the 1950s Germany produced at least one B/W movie (there must have been more). Alas, those movies based on strips hardly ever really make it. Just look at Tintin or Lucky Luke, or Paramount's Popeye the Sailorman. The other way round has been more successful, but that is mainly because of Carl Barks' Donald Duck; great cartoons like Tom and Jerry resulted in what you can only call inferior strips.
There were still earlier European strips: I know the most famous one only in Dutch, Reizen en Avonturen van Mijnheer Prikkebeen. This was drawn by a contemporary of Daumier (†1879), Cham, based on sketches by Swiss Rodolphe (or Rudolf?) Töpffer; who, sadly, could not finish his work because of an eye disease. In the Dutch editions Cham did not get credit.

And now, let's have what you came for:

Max und Moritz
Born 1860...

design
 the kids


kingkids


Katchandhammer

... Still Going Strong!

Some less-known Busch

hans Huckebein
Hans considers
der Unglücksraben
Bad Luck Raven getting set for Bad End


owl
Owl candelabra


scheisse d'rauf
Scheisse d'rauf


feather
"cup, glass, knife and feather"
tools of the trade

strips







SEARCH this site or the Web

back



copyright notice
all material on this site, except where noted
copyright © by , curaçao
reproduction in any form for any purpose is prohibited
without prior consent in writing
Busch himself is in the public domain