Walter Moers

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Walter Moers is a German comic creator and novelist, and a regular contributor to the satire magazine Titanic.

His most famous character in Germany is probably Captain Bluebear, whose franchise include puppet show sketches in children's TV, newspaper comics and a full length animated movie.

Most of his comics feature the eponymous brat Das kleine Arschloch (The Little Asshole). There are also two animated movies.

Most of his novels take place on the fictional continent of Zamonia.

Works written by Walter Moers include:

Works of Walter Moers that have been translated into English:

Comic books

  • The Little Asshole (8 volumes)

Zamonia novels

Non-Zamonia novels

  • A Wild Ride Through the Night


Notable tropes in the works of Walter Moers:


  • Absent-Minded Professor: Professor Schimauski
  • Everything's Better with Penguins: One short story starts with a German "white trash" guy watching TV. Then, someone rings his door, and when he opens, a hoard of penguins enters, starts a party. When he demands to know what this is all about, they show him that today's "international penguin's day". He's happy with that and joins the party.
    • Also inverted in one story where nuclear tests in Antarctica create a Godzilla-like penguin who surfs on an ice float to East Germany and starts to wreak havoc. (He's brought down by the Little Arsehole - who wrote the story BTW.)
  • Everything's Even Worse with Sharks: One story about a guy with a phobia for sharks. It starts with the fact that he'd never enter water deeper than a foot... not even a puddle... or a bathtub... and then gets really weird, when he claims there are miniature sharks causing diseases and (shark-themed) madness... and then, the shark police takes him away (did they?)
  • Footnote Fever: In the Zamonia novels Moers loves to make footnotes which content pseudo dictionary entries.
  • German Humor
  • He Also Did: Moers' works are peculiarly diverse in that he has been writing/drawing for three quite different audience demographics: Comicbooks for adults, TV for children, and the Zamonia novels for young adults. Fans of the Zamonia novels often know little about his comicbooks, or are even blissfully unaware of their existence. It's probably better for them.
  • Literary Agent Hypothesis: The Thirteen and a Half Lives of Captain Bluebear and The City of Dreaming Books were described as parts of the autobiography of their respective narrators, The Alchemaster's Apprentice a Zamonian fairy tale; Walter Moers merely translated.
  • Mind Screw: His Author Avatar in the Zamonia novels is a satire of the modern literature scene and uses Author Tracts as actual Author Tracts by Moers that criticise among other things... Author Tracts.
  • Moment Killer: The mother of a male teenager in one story. "Are you screwing already?"
  • Sink the Life Boats
  • Those Wacky Nazis
  • Unfortunate Names: Bratwurst