Gustave Verbeek (; born Gustave Verbeck ; August 29, 1867 – December 5, 1937) was a Dutch-American illustrator and

cartoonist A cartoonist is a visual artist who specializes in both drawing and writing cartoons (individual images) or comics (sequential images). Cartoonists differ from comics writers or comics illustrators/artists in that they produce both the litera ...

, best known for his newspaper cartoons in the early 1900s featuring an inventive use of

word play Word play or wordplay (also: play-on-words) is a literary technique and a form of wit in which words used become the main subject of the work, primarily for the purpose of intended effect or amusement. Examples of word play include puns, ph ...

and visual storytelling tricks.

Biography

Verbeek was born in

Nagasaki , officially , is the capital and the largest Cities of Japan, city of Nagasaki Prefecture on the island of Kyushu in Japan. Founded by the Portuguese, the port of Portuguese_Nagasaki, Nagasaki became the sole Nanban trade, port used for tr ...

, Japan, in 1867, the son of

Reformed Church in America The Reformed Church in America (RCA) is a mainline Reformed Protestant denomination in Canada and the United States. It has about 82,865 members. From its beginning in 1628 until 1819, it was the North American branch of the Dutch Reformed ...

missionary A missionary is a member of a Religious denomination, religious group who is sent into an area in order to promote its faith or provide services to people, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care, and economic development.Thoma ...

Guido Verbeck, of Dutch ancestry, and his wife Maria (). He grew up in Japan, but went to Paris to study art, and worked for several European newspapers, creating illustrations and cartoons. In 1900 he moved to the United States, where he did illustrations for magazines such as ''

Harper's ''Harper's Magazine'' is a monthly magazine of literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts. Launched in New York City in June 1850, it is the oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the United States. ''Harper's Magazine'' has ...

'', and produced a series of weekly comic strips for newspapers. In the 1910s he abandoned cartooning and became a fine artist. He was noted for his

expressionist Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it rad ...

monotypes, which were the subject of an article in ''

The Century Magazine ''The Century Magazine'' was an illustrated monthly magazine first published in the United States in 1881 by The Century Company of New York City, which had been bought in that year by Roswell Smith and renamed by him after the Century Associati ...

'' in June 1916. He was ill for two years, and died on December 5, 1937, at the Home for Incurables, on

Third Avenue Third Avenue is a north-south thoroughfare on the East Side of the New York City borough of Manhattan, as well as in the center portion of the Bronx. Its southern end is at Astor Place and St. Mark's Place. It transitions into Cooper Square ...

and 183rd Street in the

Bronx, New York City The Bronx ( ) is the northernmost of the five boroughs of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the U.S. state of New York. It shares a land border with Westchester County to its north; to its south and west, the New York City boro ...

. He had been a patient there for two months.

Comics

Verbeek's first strip was ''Easy Papa'', a fairly conventional strip about two mischievous kids and their father, similar to the highly popular contemporary strip '' The Katzenjammer Kids'', which ran in a competing newspaper. ''Easy Papa'' appeared in '' The New York Herald'' from May 25, 1902, through February 1, 1903. Verbeek-rocanoe

Verbeek is most noted for ''The Upside Downs of Little Lady Lovekins and Old Man Muffaroo'', a weekly 6-panel

comic strip A comic strip is a Comics, sequence of cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often Serial (literature), serialized, with text in Speech balloon, balloons and Glossary of comics terminology#Captio ...

in which the first half of the story was illustrated and captioned right-side-up, then the reader would turn the page up-side-down, and the inverted illustrations with additional captions describing the scenes told the second half of the story, for a total of 12 panels. His signature usually appeared at the top of the first/last panel, upside down. The two main characters were designed such that each would be perceived as the other character when inverted. For example, in one often-reproduced panel, Muffaroo appears in a canoe next to a tree-covered island, and is being attacked by a large fish. When inverted, the image shows a later scene of Lovekins in the beak of a giant roc: Muffaroo's canoe has become the bird's beak, the fish has turned into the bird's head, the island has become its body and the trees its legs, and Muffaroo has turned into Lovekins. Verbeek created a total of 64 of these strips for ''The New York Herald'', from October 11, 1903, to January 15, 1905. A pilot strip was published on October 4, 1903. The format of the strip put extreme restrictions on the use of word balloons (even with the use of ambigrams only three strips used word-balloons, all in March 1904). Although the July 10, 1904, strip implies that the stories are set in America, Verbeek filled his milieu with African animals and peoples, fabulous monsters, fairy castles, etc. Verbeek's longest-running strip was ''The Terrors of the Tiny Tads'', published by the ''Herald'' from May 28, 1905, to October 28, 1914. This strip features a group of four unnamed and interchangeable boys, who encounter a variety of strange creatures based on inventive word combinations. For example, they find a "hippopautomobile" (a

hippopotamus The hippopotamus (''Hippopotamus amphibius;'' ; : hippopotamuses), often shortened to hippo (: hippos), further qualified as the common hippopotamus, Nile hippopotamus and river hippopotamus, is a large semiaquatic mammal native to sub-Sahar ...

with a steering wheel and seating in its back as in an

automobile A car, or an automobile, is a motor vehicle with wheels. Most definitions of cars state that they run primarily on roads, Car seat, seat one to eight people, have four wheels, and mainly transport private transport#Personal transport, peopl ...

), a "pelicanoe" (a

pelican Pelicans (genus ''Pelecanus'') are a genus of large water birds that make up the family Pelecanidae. They are characterized by a long beak and a large throat pouch used for catching prey and draining water from the scooped-up contents before ...

in which a rider could sit and paddle like a

canoe A canoe is a lightweight, narrow watercraft, water vessel, typically pointed at both ends and open on top, propelled by one or more seated or kneeling paddlers facing the direction of travel and using paddles. In British English, the term ' ...

), and a "samovarmint" (a

samovar A samovar (, , ) is a metal container traditionally used to heat and boil water. Although originating in Russia, the samovar is well known outside of Russia and has spread through Russian culture to other parts of Eastern Europe, as well as We ...

for serving tea with the head and claws of a wild animal). As with ''The Upside Downs'', the strip's text consisted of captions below the illustrations; there were no speech balloons. Dan Nadel describes the strip as "quiet, subdued, and somnambulant" in character, partly because Verbeek eschewed "speed lines, stars of pain", and other such cartoon conventions. Although most strips involved strange creatures, the tads had a clash with a pair of aggressive suffragettes in the June 28, 1914, strip. He created a short-lived comic strip in 1910 called ''The Loony Lyrics of Lulu''. These strips are about a girl who encounters imaginary creatures and writes (inoffensive)

limerick Limerick ( ; ) is a city in western Ireland, in County Limerick. It is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Munster and is in the Mid-West Region, Ireland, Mid-West which comprises part of the Southern Region, Ireland, Southern Region. W ...

s about them.

Reprints

Verbeek's strips got republished multiple times over the years, always only a subselection however until Sunday Press Books released their complete collection. * The Incredible Upside-Downs of Little Lady Lovekins and Old Man Muffaroo, G.W. Dillingham Company (New York) in 1905. * The Incredible Upside-Downs of Gustave Verbeek, The Rajah Press ( Summit, NJ) in 1963. * The Incredible Upside-Downs (of Gustave Verbeek), Real Free Press International (Amsterdam;) in 1973. * The Incredible Upside-Downs of Gustave Verbeek, Nostalgia Press, Incorporated (New York) in 1976. . * Niet Te Geloven Ondersteboven!, Erven Thomas Rap (Amsterdam) in 1976. . * Dessus-Dessous, Pierre Horay (Paris) in 1978. . * Four Confusing Tales, Each Illustrated by Six Up-Turnable Pictures, from the Incredible Topsy-Turvy World of Gustave Verbeek, Tobar Limited (Harleston, Norfolk), 1990's. . * ''Unten ist Oben'', Comic Companie ( Frankfurt/Main 1; Germany) in 1985. . * 少女ラブキンズとマファルー老人の冒険 (''The Incredible Upside-Downs of Gustave Verbeek''), TBS Publications, Tokyo in 1987. . Edited by 坂根厳夫 (Itsuo Sakane). * ''The Upside-Down World of Gustave Verbeek'', Sunday Press Books (Palo Alto, CA) in 2009. . The 2009 reprint contains the complete ''The Upside-Downs of Little Lady Lovekins and Old Man Muffaroo'' and the complete ''Loony Lyrics of Lulu'' together with other selected samples from Verbeek's comics career.

Remakes

In 2012, a remake of Verbeek's Upside-downs was published by Swedish publisher Epix. The book 'In Uppåner med Lilla Lisen & Gamle Muppen' () by Marcus Ivarsson shows 24 of Verbeek's comics redrawn in the style of the author. No other attempts were made to replicate the 'upside-down' comic style.

References

External links

* * * * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Verbeek, Gustave 1867 births 1937 deaths American comic strip cartoonists Dutch comic strip cartoonists American humorists Dutch humorists American comics artists Dutch comics artists American comics writers Dutch comics writers People from Nagasaki Dutch emigrants to the United States Artists from New York City