In 1972, artist Leo Leonhard and writer Otto Jägersberg published what Germany’s newsmagazine Der Spiegel described as “one of the most original books of the year … a clever collage of comic strip elements and stylistic quotations from art history.” This was Rüssel in Komikland, the story of Rüssel, a courtly mixture of human and elephant, and his beloved, Schüssel, a sentient and animated serving bowl. Together, the two produce a hybrid child, Schrüssel, and...

Between 2008 and 2011, the pages of Munich’s local comic fanzine Comicaze and the nationally distributed monthly Zack presented the adventures of four boys from Munich: the Mingamangas, whose collective name combines “Minga,” Bavarian dialect for “München,” with Japanese manga (a common interest of young Germans). Bini, Staffie, Vinnie and Bo are eleven-year-olds who live ordinary lives, going to school, making swimming trips, evading older bullies and enjoying each other’s company. Their ordinariness...

Despite its reputation—in Maurice Horn’s World Encyclopedia of Comics, for example—as a blatant expression of French chauvinism, René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo’s long-running comic series Astérix has joined the pantheon of classic bandes dessinées. Moreover, the diminutive Gaulish hero’s adventures have proven surprisingly exportable; readers from all over western Europe have been willing to laugh at the stereotypes of their own nations, while...