Wulffmorgenthaler
Encyclopedia
Wulffmorgenthaler is a webcomic
and newspaper comic strip
created by Danish
writer
/artist
duo Mikael Wulff
and Anders Morgenthaler
. The name of the strip is a portmanteau created from the pair's surnames. The name was also given to a satirical TV series, broadcast on the Danish channel DR2
in 2005.
. The strip became a regular feature on DR's internet culture portal in 2002, and in October 2003 it became a regular daily newspaper strip in Politiken.
As a webcomic Wulffmorgenthaler, receives more than 15,000 visitors a day, and the concept is developed as a series of animated
short films for MTV Europe
.
, featuring shaky line drawings and coloring that appears to be computer-generated
. Most installments are delivered in a single panorama frame, avoiding the more traditional format of boxed divisions to signify progress or movement in time. The characters and situations vary from strip to strip, but there are several recurring character
s, such as the "Toucan Kid" (a grotesque hybrid of man and 28% toucan
), the so-called "Fucked-up Crazy-Ass Weirdo Beaver" (a seemingly innocent creature who consistently pulls off unimaginably weird feats), Dick Bird (a greasy-haired entrepreneur
whose product for sale changes from strip to strip), Werner (the hapless yet happy antihero) and a voyeur who would always inform his neighbour how arousing he finds his wife and daughter. Pandas are often shown as violent beasts. The leader of the WWF
has been shown to suffer humiliation from these animals on several occasions. The Dalai Lama
is sometimes portrayed as being frustrated with his enlightened being by violently kicking Leonard Cohen
fans. Recurring characters in Wulffmorgenthaler tend to be more of a running gag
than a legitimate continuing narrative
. Another common theme is portraying the use of inanimate everyday objects as their torture, sometimes followed by their revenge or escape.
For a period, humans portrayed in the comic wore no clothes. According to the comic's website, Morgenthaler "was fed up with the tiresome meticulousness of drawing clothes on people so he just stopped doing it." Sometimes, when the situation called for a specific outfit to denote a specific role, humans would appear clothed. Lately characters have all started to appear fully clothed, and older comics have been edited to add clothes.
Content ranges from sideways political statements to complete non-sequitur
, and relies on both intelligent humor and bathroom humor, as well as an abundance of blood, sexual references and grotesque imagery, to get its point across. Reading Wulffmorgenthaler is often an exercise of the imagination, as it has a habit of juxtaposing supremely ordinary characters in supremely unusual situations, or vice versa. "Punchlines
" are delivered by way of dialogue or with one-liners
written in a caption below the image. Because the comic is drawn in a non-serial format, delivery and timing are especially important (and difficult to maneuver), and as a result most of the humor in Wulffmorgenthaler relies on the quality of the writing itself rather than the element of surprise that usually lends itself to the traditional comic-strip punchline. No subject is taboo in the world of Wulffmorgenthaler, with recent topics including the Pope
, illegitimate sex
, and the consumption of aborted
fetus
es for dinner.
, as the strip's followers voiced their concern over an advertising campaign
by the Danish office of advertising agency DDB
promoting the Volkswagen Golf GT
, having appropriated its joke from a Wulffmorgenthaler strip. In a reversed issue, Wulffmorgenthaler was accused of plagiarising a photograph that had circulated on internet, to which Anders Morgenthaler conceded that the duo had been inspired by the image and based a strip on it in the belief that it was a privately forwarded photograph.
hippo
and Margit, a politically correct
female squirrel, introduce various short films. The only recurring character from the comic is the Toucan Kid. New characters include Ansgar and Loke, a very sexually active archeologist and his colleague who is deadly afraid of "the Vagina", the contestants on a fifties game show. Another recurring feature on the show was a "Reality show" starring a hapless school photographer, Bent, and his retarded assistant Bubber, the brothers Lefevre, who are carpet salesmen trying to be actors, Asger Lesniak who has a personal vendetta against a guy who frequents the places he works, and Bimmer, a character obsessed with life in the tropic nether regions.
The TV-series evolved in the second season into Dolph og Wulff, in a documentary
style, with The Fascist Hippo Dolph as the dominating main character.
The second season further evolved to a third season, this time in the style of a late night talk show, on March 17 called Dolph og Wulff - med venner (Dolph and Wulff - with friends). The friends are a sex-crazed beaver named Rocco and an orangutan called "Finn". Rocco was actually created as a sex-crazed squirrel for the first season, but it was ultimately decided to not use him, so the Rocco puppet was used as Margit instead.
Webcomic
Webcomics, online comics, or Internet comics are comics published on a website. While many are published exclusively on the web, others are also published in magazines, newspapers or often in self-published books....
and newspaper comic strip
Comic strip
A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions....
created by Danish
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
/artist
Comics artist
A comics artist is an artist working within the comics medium on comic strips, comic books or graphic novels. The term may refer to any number of artists who contribute to produce a work in the comics form, from those who oversee all aspects of the work to those who contribute only a part.-Comic...
duo Mikael Wulff
Mikael Wulff
Mikael Wulff is a Danish comedian, who appeared in television shows such as Dolph og Wulff, and is co-illustrator of the Wulffmorgenthaler comic strips, which he produces together with Anders Morgenthaler.-References:...
and Anders Morgenthaler
Anders Morgenthaler
Anders Morgenthaler is a Danish comics artist, children's book author, and film director.-Biography:Morgenthaler is a graduate of Designskolen Kolding and the National Film School of Denmark...
. The name of the strip is a portmanteau created from the pair's surnames. The name was also given to a satirical TV series, broadcast on the Danish channel DR2
DR2
DR2 is a Danish television station. It is part of Danmarks Radio, the public service broadcasting company of Denmark.It was launched in 1996 as a satellite-/cable-only channel. This was highly controversial at the time, as it was considered close to a breach of public service principles that the...
in 2005.
Publication history
Wulffmorgenthaler debuted in 2001 as a comic strip competition entry named Kalzone, completed a few hours before the entry deadline. Submitted under the pseudonym "Pernille Richter Andersson", the strip won the competition, and a one month run in the national newspaper PolitikenPolitiken
Politiken is a Danish daily broadsheet newspaper, published by JP/Politikens Hus.The newspaper comes third among Danish newspapers in terms of both number of readers and circulated copies ....
. The strip became a regular feature on DR's internet culture portal in 2002, and in October 2003 it became a regular daily newspaper strip in Politiken.
As a webcomic Wulffmorgenthaler, receives more than 15,000 visitors a day, and the concept is developed as a series of animated
Animation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...
short films for MTV Europe
MTV Europe
MTV Europe is a pan-European 24-hour entertainment cable and digital television network launched on August 1, 1987. Initially, the channel served all regions within Europe being one of the very few channels that targeted the entire European continent...
.
Style and content
The comic has a very distinct styleLiterary genre
A literary genre is a category of literary composition. Genres may be determined by literary technique, tone, content, or even length. Genre should not be confused with age category, by which literature may be classified as either adult, young-adult, or children's. They also must not be confused...
, featuring shaky line drawings and coloring that appears to be computer-generated
Computer graphics
Computer graphics are graphics created using computers and, more generally, the representation and manipulation of image data by a computer with help from specialized software and hardware....
. Most installments are delivered in a single panorama frame, avoiding the more traditional format of boxed divisions to signify progress or movement in time. The characters and situations vary from strip to strip, but there are several recurring character
Recurring character
A recurring character is a fictional character, usually in a prime time TV series, who appears from time to time during the series' run. Recurring characters often play major roles in an episode, sometimes being the main focus...
s, such as the "Toucan Kid" (a grotesque hybrid of man and 28% toucan
Toucan
Toucans are members of the family Ramphastidae of near passerine birds from the Neotropics. The family is most closely related to the American barbets. They are brightly marked and have large, often colorful bills. The family includes five genera and about forty different species...
), the so-called "Fucked-up Crazy-Ass Weirdo Beaver" (a seemingly innocent creature who consistently pulls off unimaginably weird feats), Dick Bird (a greasy-haired entrepreneur
Entrepreneur
An entrepreneur is an owner or manager of a business enterprise who makes money through risk and initiative.The term was originally a loanword from French and was first defined by the Irish-French economist Richard Cantillon. Entrepreneur in English is a term applied to a person who is willing to...
whose product for sale changes from strip to strip), Werner (the hapless yet happy antihero) and a voyeur who would always inform his neighbour how arousing he finds his wife and daughter. Pandas are often shown as violent beasts. The leader of the WWF
World Wide Fund for Nature
The World Wide Fund for Nature is an international non-governmental organization working on issues regarding the conservation, research and restoration of the environment, formerly named the World Wildlife Fund, which remains its official name in Canada and the United States...
has been shown to suffer humiliation from these animals on several occasions. The Dalai Lama
Dalai Lama
The Dalai Lama is a high lama in the Gelug or "Yellow Hat" branch of Tibetan Buddhism. The name is a combination of the Mongolian word далай meaning "Ocean" and the Tibetan word bla-ma meaning "teacher"...
is sometimes portrayed as being frustrated with his enlightened being by violently kicking Leonard Cohen
Leonard Cohen
Leonard Norman Cohen, is a Canadian singer-songwriter, musician, poet and novelist. Cohen published his first book of poetry in Montreal in 1956 and his first novel in 1963. His work often explores religion, isolation, sexuality and interpersonal relationships...
fans. Recurring characters in Wulffmorgenthaler tend to be more of a running gag
Running gag
A running gag, or running joke, is a literary device that takes the form of an amusing joke or a comical reference and appears repeatedly throughout a work of literature or other form of storytelling....
than a legitimate continuing narrative
Narrative
A narrative is a constructive format that describes a sequence of non-fictional or fictional events. The word derives from the Latin verb narrare, "to recount", and is related to the adjective gnarus, "knowing" or "skilled"...
. Another common theme is portraying the use of inanimate everyday objects as their torture, sometimes followed by their revenge or escape.
For a period, humans portrayed in the comic wore no clothes. According to the comic's website, Morgenthaler "was fed up with the tiresome meticulousness of drawing clothes on people so he just stopped doing it." Sometimes, when the situation called for a specific outfit to denote a specific role, humans would appear clothed. Lately characters have all started to appear fully clothed, and older comics have been edited to add clothes.
Content ranges from sideways political statements to complete non-sequitur
Non sequitur (absurdism)
A non sequitur is a conversational and literary device, often used for comedic purposes. It is a comment that, because of its apparent lack of meaning relative to what it follows, seems absurd to the point of being humorous or confusing....
, and relies on both intelligent humor and bathroom humor, as well as an abundance of blood, sexual references and grotesque imagery, to get its point across. Reading Wulffmorgenthaler is often an exercise of the imagination, as it has a habit of juxtaposing supremely ordinary characters in supremely unusual situations, or vice versa. "Punchlines
Punch line
A punch line is the final part of a joke, comedy sketch, or profound statement, usually the word, sentence or exchange of sentences which is intended to be funny or to provoke laughter or thought from listeners...
" are delivered by way of dialogue or with one-liners
One-liner joke
A one-liner is a joke that is delivered in a single line. A good one-liner is said to be pithy.Comedians and actors use this comedic method as part of their act, e.g...
written in a caption below the image. Because the comic is drawn in a non-serial format, delivery and timing are especially important (and difficult to maneuver), and as a result most of the humor in Wulffmorgenthaler relies on the quality of the writing itself rather than the element of surprise that usually lends itself to the traditional comic-strip punchline. No subject is taboo in the world of Wulffmorgenthaler, with recent topics including the Pope
Pope
The Pope is the Bishop of Rome, a position that makes him the leader of the worldwide Catholic Church . In the Catholic Church, the Pope is regarded as the successor of Saint Peter, the Apostle...
, illegitimate sex
Sexual intercourse
Sexual intercourse, also known as copulation or coitus, commonly refers to the act in which a male's penis enters a female's vagina for the purposes of sexual pleasure or reproduction. The entities may be of opposite sexes, or they may be hermaphroditic, as is the case with snails...
, and the consumption of aborted
Abortion
Abortion is defined as the termination of pregnancy by the removal or expulsion from the uterus of a fetus or embryo prior to viability. An abortion can occur spontaneously, in which case it is usually called a miscarriage, or it can be purposely induced...
fetus
Fetus
A fetus is a developing mammal or other viviparous vertebrate after the embryonic stage and before birth.In humans, the fetal stage of prenatal development starts at the beginning of the 11th week in gestational age, which is the 9th week after fertilization.-Etymology and spelling variations:The...
es for dinner.
Plagiarism
The strip was for a period the focus of a debate concerning plagiarismPlagiarism
Plagiarism is defined in dictionaries as the "wrongful appropriation," "close imitation," or "purloining and publication" of another author's "language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions," and the representation of them as one's own original work, but the notion remains problematic with nebulous...
, as the strip's followers voiced their concern over an advertising campaign
Advertising campaign
An advertising campaign is a series of advertisement messages that share a single idea and theme which make up an integrated marketing communication...
by the Danish office of advertising agency DDB
DDB Worldwide
DDB Worldwide Communications Group Inc., known internationally as DDB, is a worldwide marketing communications network. It is owned by Omnicom Group Inc, one of the world's largest advertising holding companies...
promoting the Volkswagen Golf GT
Volkswagen Golf
The Volkswagen Golf is a small family car manufactured by Volkswagen since 1974 and marketed worldwide across six generations, in various body configurations and under various nameplates – as the Volkswagen Rabbit in the United States and Canada , and as the Volkswagen Caribe in Mexico .The...
, having appropriated its joke from a Wulffmorgenthaler strip. In a reversed issue, Wulffmorgenthaler was accused of plagiarising a photograph that had circulated on internet, to which Anders Morgenthaler conceded that the duo had been inspired by the image and based a strip on it in the belief that it was a privately forwarded photograph.
Television series
Wulffmorgenthaler was also broadcast as a television series, in the style of a parodied show for children in Denmark, in which Wulff, Morgenthaler and their pantomime friends Dolph, a fascistFascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
hippo
Hippopotamus
The hippopotamus , or hippo, from the ancient Greek for "river horse" , is a large, mostly herbivorous mammal in sub-Saharan Africa, and one of only two extant species in the family Hippopotamidae After the elephant and rhinoceros, the hippopotamus is the third largest land mammal and the heaviest...
and Margit, a politically correct
Political correctness
Political correctness is a term which denotes language, ideas, policies, and behavior seen as seeking to minimize social and institutional offense in occupational, gender, racial, cultural, sexual orientation, certain other religions, beliefs or ideologies, disability, and age-related contexts,...
female squirrel, introduce various short films. The only recurring character from the comic is the Toucan Kid. New characters include Ansgar and Loke, a very sexually active archeologist and his colleague who is deadly afraid of "the Vagina", the contestants on a fifties game show. Another recurring feature on the show was a "Reality show" starring a hapless school photographer, Bent, and his retarded assistant Bubber, the brothers Lefevre, who are carpet salesmen trying to be actors, Asger Lesniak who has a personal vendetta against a guy who frequents the places he works, and Bimmer, a character obsessed with life in the tropic nether regions.
The TV-series evolved in the second season into Dolph og Wulff, in a documentary
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
style, with The Fascist Hippo Dolph as the dominating main character.
The second season further evolved to a third season, this time in the style of a late night talk show, on March 17 called Dolph og Wulff - med venner (Dolph and Wulff - with friends). The friends are a sex-crazed beaver named Rocco and an orangutan called "Finn". Rocco was actually created as a sex-crazed squirrel for the first season, but it was ultimately decided to not use him, so the Rocco puppet was used as Margit instead.
External links
- Wulffmorgenthaler official Danish site
- Wulffmorgenthaler official English site
- Wulffmorgenthaler on MTV
- 1st season 2nd season 3rd season (Dolph og Wullf med venner) of Wulffmorgenthaler TV show
- Wulffmorgenthaler Comic Strip in Russian Livejournal
- Wulffmorgenthaler comic strip in the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten