What’s so funny about that? The comical art of Walter Moers

For decades, Walter Moers has been one of the most original and imaginative storytellers in contemporary German-language literature. As a brilliant dual talent – an author who draws and an illustrator who writes – he has achieved cult status.

Moers’ early days as a comic artist around 1990 reveal his darkly humorous, provocative side. Characters such as the uninhibited “Kleine Arschloch” or “Adolf, die Nazi-Sau”, who even made it into the German charts with the song “Ich hock’ in meinem Bonker”, brought him to prominence. With the fibbing Captain Bluebear, who spins his sailor’s yarns in “Sendung mit der Maus”, he also captivates a young audience. The novel “The 13½ Lives of Captain Bluebear”, first published in German in 1999, marked the start of the fantastic Zamonia series.

With twelve novels to his name – including “Ensel und Krete”, “Die Stadt der Träumenden Bücher” and “Der Schrecksenmeister” – Walter Moers has created a literary universe in which linguistic wit and visual imagination are uniquely intertwined. The author’s alter ego is the poet-dragon Hildegunst von Mythenmetz. The setting is the wondrous continent of Zamonia, where everything revolves around adventure and heroics, fairy tales and fables. In the labyrinthine catacombs of the city of Buchhaim, millions upon millions of “dreaming books” await discovery. It is the world of Tratschwellen and Stollentrolle, of Kratzen and Schuhus, of Buchlinge and Bücherjäger.

The major retrospective at the Stadtmuseum is a collaboration with the International Comic Salon and the Ludwiggalerie Schloss Oberhausen. Alongside hundreds of drawings, oil paintings, models and puppets, it also presents, for the first time, originals from Moers’ latest bestseller, “Qwert”.