Heinrich Christian Wilhelm Busch (15 April 1832 – 9 January 1908) was a 19th century German painter and poet, who became famous for his (black and white) picture stories, done as wood engraving or zincography. with rhymed texts (mostly four-trochees). He's still widely known today, especially for his children's stories, like Max and Moritz, the success of which has made him one of the most-quoted poets in the German language right next to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Schiller. He's not however the author of Der Struwwelpeter, which is yet a bit older, although from the 19th century too.
Due to the lack of Speech Bubbles not really Comics yet, but definitely Sequential Art. Influenced The Katzenjammer Kids by Rudolph Dirks and found many other imitators.
Recurring topics in his work: Naughty boys playing pranks (not always going unpunished, however); mischievous animals; alcoholism; failing would-be artists; and anti-Catholicism.
A list of his works:
- The Virtuoso: A short story without talking about a truly awesome piano player. Uses several comic tropes long before they became mainstream.
- Max and Moritz: Two boys play pranks on a widow (twice), a tailor, a teacher, uncle Fritz, a baker, and a peasant. But he catches them, brings them to the mill, and has them grinded to grit. And after that, two ducks eat their remains. Busch's single most famous story.
- Hans Huckebein: A raven is caught by a boy, causes a lot of havoc but dies after drinking alcohol at the end.
- Saint Anthony Of Padova: A young man decides to become a monk after having trouble with his girl (and another guy who also loves her). Has visions of Mary, resists Satan, and does other saintly things. The strip makes fun of the Catholic church (Busch was Protestant, and you find this topic throughout his work), although Anthony himself isn't exactly unsympathetic.
- Pious Helene: The story of a girl who's sent to the countryside where people are supposedly better than in the city. However, Helene is more hypocritical than pious and likes to play pranks on her relatives. Not however on her cousin Franz, with whom she falls in love, despite the fact he's supposed to become a Catholic priest. They keep up their relationship even after she marries, and he becomes the real father of her twins. Then, in short order, her husband and lover die, and she becomes an alcoholic. This leads to an accident in which she dies. Afterwards, she goes to hell.
- Pictures for the 'Jobsiad': Differs from the other stories insofar as Busch just drew the pictures to a (much) older story. Tells the biography of Hieronymus Jobs, son of rich parents, who becomes a failure in every possible way.
- Father Filucius: A Sinister Minister (and Jesuite) tries to get influence on the family of Gottlieb Michael. It doesn't end well for him, and he gets his ass kicked.
- The Birthday, or The Particularists: Some villagers try to make a present for the exiled Hannoverian king. They fail several times; the only one profiting is mother Köhm, owner of the local pub, since the guys are heavy drinkers.
- The Knopp Trilogy: The life of Tobias Knopp, a fat bald guy.
- Adventures Of A Bachelor: Knopp feels depressed from his single life, so he goes to the world to visit old friends and find a wife. Several kinds of funny mischief occur to him, but at the end, at least he finds a wife - his until then housekeeper.
- Herr And Frau Knopp: The married life of Knopp and his Dorothee with its ups and downs. Essentially, a Dom Com, except not being on TV. Ends with the birth of Julchen (lil' Julia), their only child.
- Julchen: The third part centers on Julchen growing up from a baby to a young woman. At the end, she marries the hot forest warden Fritz; Knopp feels that his duty on this world is done, and dies soon afterwards.
- Fipps The Monkey: How he's caught in Africa, brought to Germany, and creates a lot of mischief. But also saves a baby from the fire once.
- Plisch And Plum: Two young dogs are thrown into the water by the evil guy Schlich, but they're saved by two boys. Much mischief happens, but things turn out quite well, except for bad guy Schlich who drowns in a pond.
- Balduin Bählammnote , the Would-Be Poet: A man hopes to become a famous poet, but the circumstances prevent him from creating any art.
- Klecksel The Painter: Boy Kuno becomes a painter, plays some pranks on other men, literally fights a critic who ripped apart his work, has some affairs with women, but ends up taking over the pub of his father.
Works by Wilhelm Busch contain examples of:
- Action Girl: An unnamed miller's daughter. She's alone when three robbers enter the mill, one of them implied to be a rapist. But without feeling in trouble for a moment, she flattens the wannabe rapist with a millstone, rolls up the second robber to a spiral (with the help of the turning axis of the mill-wheel), and beheads the third one (who apparently doesn't care for the fate of his mates) when he tries to rob the gold from a chest. The author comments: "This is how one single girl gets three men into trouble." Read it here.
- The Alcoholic: Appear in several stories.
- Alliterative Name: Hans Huckebein, Kuno Klecksel, Balduin Bählamm, and others.
- Amusing Injuries: Up to Amusing Death. Note that these stories are more than 100 years old, and even decades older than The Yellow Kid, often said to be the first comic. note
- Animals Not to Scale: Two ducks (no Funny Animals, real ducks) which can pull a grown man out of the water, and may beetles as big as a human hand.
- Arrested for Heroism: OK, not arrested, but instead of getting a reward from saving a child from drowning, the hero gets a bill from an Obstructive Bureaucrat.
- Ashface: One picture in-story, by Kuno Klecksel, depicting the legendary inventor of gunpowder, the monk Berthold Schwarz, after using his powder for the first time.
- Author Tract: Best example may be "Pater Filucius". Gottlieb Michael (the good guy) is generally seen as a stand-in for the good German people, whom the evil Catholic church wants to harm.
- Bears Are Bad News: A bear eats the donkey of Saint Anthony, but Anthony makes the bear carry him instead.
- Black Comedy: See the other tropes
- Book Dumb: When asked by the professors on his final exam how many parts (and what kind) a good sermon should have, Hieronymus answers (sorry for not rhyming): "Two parts: One part that noone can understand, and one part that's understandable."
- Break Out the Museum Piece: What some villagers do to hunt and kill Fipps at the end.
- Camp: The hairdresser in the story of Fipps the monkey. Some things never change, do they?
- Chocolate Baby: After Helene marries rich fat guy Schmöck (whose name doesn't coincidentally sound like shmuck), she bears twins who look very much like her lover Franz.
- Con Man: A hunter named Schmitt. He enters the scene barefoot and crying as if in pain. Then he puts on his boots and suddenly becomes happy. Then he seemingly goes away, but leaves a smaller pair behind - just the right size for a monkey. Fipps has seen this and, being Curious as a Monkey, puts them on. Only to find that they were filled with pitch so he can't climb on trees anymore. So Schmitt has no problem catching Fipps.
- Covered in Gunge
- Creepy Crows: Hans Huckebein, the unlucky raven
- Cute Kitten: Helene has one. Though the trope gets subverted when her cat and◊ another one (a tom)◊ first kill Lene's canaries and then wreak havoc in the house.
- Delivery Stork
- Domestic Abuse: Played for laughs, mostly.
- Editorial Synaesthesia: Notes to indicate music in "The virtuoso"
- Evil Jesuit: Pater Filucius in a nutshell.
- Fat Idiot: The appropriately named Schmöck.
- Felony Misdemeanor: Killing her chickens was mean, but the widow reacts in a way you could think they had killed her children.
- Food Fight: Peter and Paul. They end up Covered in Gunge.
- Funny Foreigner / Cloud Cuckoolander: The Englishman Mister Pief (Peeve?) from Plisch und Plum, who walks around while always looking through a telescope, causing him to stumble into a river. A classic example of a figure popular in 19th and 20th century continental European media, the wealthy British (sometimes American) tourist who travels around Europe with more money than sense. As quite often happened with this type of figure, his freely-spent cash helps bring about a happy end: He buys the two eponymous dogs after they save his life, which benefits their owners and the dogs themselves (who can now look forward to eating high-quality beefsteak every day), while the villain, Schlich, is so overcome with envy at their good fortune that he has a stroke, falls into a pond and drowns.
- German Humor
- Gratuitous Iambic Pentameter: One professor speaks in perfect hexameters.
- The Grim Reaper: In the last story about Tobias Knopp.
- He Also Did: Most Germans wouldn't know that he did more (like oil paintings, novels and serious poems) than pictured stories. Or even all of these.
- Holier Than Thou: Busch criticized the Catholic church several times.
- I'm a Humanitarian: A witch and her evil husband (though she turns the boy into a pig before; does that count?)
- I'm Melting!: This story.
- Kissing Cousins: Helene and Franz.
- Literally Shattered Lives: Louis, the sausage thief. Got caught by a watchdog in icy weather. The neighbor might have saved him but he stumbled. Clink.
- Meaningful Name: Or rather often, names with a meaningful sound. The guy Dümmel isn't exactly the sharpest tool in the shed. (May not work in other languages, though.)
- Pater Filucius abounds with this, especially as it is to a large extent an allegory of religious conflicts of the era. Thus Gottlieb Michael is Germany (Der deutsche Michel - the German Michael is the German counterpart to John Bull or Uncle Sam, named after the Archangel Michael, patron saint of Germany), his aunts Petrine and Pauline (named after St. Peter and St. Paul) represent the Catholic and Protestant churches, and his lady love, Angelica, refers to the Anglican church (Bush recommending to end the interdenominational strife by establishing something like the Church of England in Germany).
- Schlich, the villain of Plisch und Plum. His name means "dodge" or "trick".
- Money, Dear Boy: Busch rather wanted to become a "real" artist, like a poet or a painter, but found that people preferred his simpler, funny picture stories.
- Naked People Are Funny
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Surely you can trust someone who is called "Father Filucius".
- Panicky Expectant Father: Knopp makes a great example.
- Paper People / Squashed Flat: The robber / rapist crushed by the millstone. Other than typical for this trope, he doesn't exactly revert.
- Preacher's Kid: In the story about Saint Anthony of Padova. The bishop has to decide whether Anthony is worthy to be a saint. Anthony asks a boy who's supposed to be mute who his parents are. The boy starts: "The bishop Rusticus is -" and is instantly interrupted by the bishop who decides that Anthony is indeed worthy.
- Prophecy Twist: A gypsy woman predicts that Hieronymus Jobs "will speak, and many will hear him; he'll scare the thieves and console the ill". Which is why his parents pay for his studies to become a priest. At the end of the story, he'll become instead a nightwatch man.
- Red Scare: In one story, an "Inter-Nazi" appears. (No relation to Those Wacky Nazis.) Probably supposed to be an internationalist / social democrat.
- To further explain, "Nazi" is an old Bavarian and Austrian diminutive of the name Ignaz (Ignatius). Not surprisingly it has fallen into disuse since 1933...
- Running Gag
- Satan: Appears in some stories, to take Helene's soul to hell.
- Scary Stinging Swarm: As these boys learn.
- Schadenfreude: Schlich is made of this.
- Sequential Art: Busch produced black-and-white picture stories carved on wood (zincography) and accompanied by rhymed texts (often, tetra trochees). His The Virtuoso employs several Comic Book Tropes long before they were codified in mainstream media.
- Serious Business: The people of a Hannoverian village who want to celebrate the birthday of their ex-king (Hannover was conquered by Prussia in 1866; some people nursed a grudge because of this, and pro-Prussian Wilhelm Busch wrote this story as a Take That!).
- Sinister Minister: Cousin Franz, and Pater Filucius (even with a Meaningful Name - "Filou" is French for "crook")
- Starving Artist: Kuno Klecksel, sometimes
- Straw Hypocrite: Several Catholics
- Theme Naming: Plisch and Plum; Hiebel, Fibel and Bullerstiebel, the friends of Gottlieb Michael; the aunts Petrine and Pauline from the same story; and more.
- The Tooth Hurts: In one story. Hilarity Ensues (well, for the reader). You can read it online here (in German).
- Visual Pun: Cousin Franz is drawn blackhanded in the picture with the Chocolate babies and their not-father.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Helene's twins only appear on one panel as babies, and we don't learn what happened to them after Helene's husband Schmöck and their real father Franz die. Or Helene herself, for that matter.
- Would Hit a Girl: The three boys Klingebiel, Mickefett and Sutitt, who push Julchen into a ditch. Fortunately, Fritz is there to kick their ass.
- Written Sound Effect: Busch was pretty good at them. "Klickeradoms", "Rickeracke", "Klingelings"... these wouldn't be out of place in a modern comic either.
- The dogs Plisch and Plum are even named after sound effects (which are used when evil guy Schlich throws them into a pond).
- "Klickeradoms" actually was used as a sound effect in the German translation of Donald Duck comics; for a time it was falsely credited to the legendary translator Dr. Erika Fuchs.
