View source for Gustave Verbeek

{{Short description|Dutch-American artist (1867–1937)}}

{{Infobox person
|name        = Gustave Verbeek
|image       = Gustave Verbeek 1895.jpg
|caption     = Verbeek in 1895
|alt         = Black and white photograph of Gustave Verbeek in 1895
|notable_works = ''The Upside Downs of Little Lady Lovekins and Old Man Muffaroo''
|birth_date  = {{Birth date|1867|8|29}}
|birth_name  = Gustave Verbeck
|birth_place = [[Nagasaki]], Japan
|death_date  = {{Death date and age|1937|12|5|1867|8|29}}
|death_place = [[Bronx]], New York City, U.S.
|nationality = [[People of the United States|American]]
|occupation = Comic strip cartoonist
|father = [[Guido Verbeck]]
|mother = Maria Manion
|relatives = [[William Verbeck]] (brother)
}}
'''Gustave Verbeek''' ({{IPA|nl|ɡʏsˈtaː fərˈbeːk}}; born '''Gustave Verbeck''' {{IPA|nl|- fərˈbɛk|}}; August 29, 1867 – December 5, 1937) was a Dutch-American illustrator and [[cartoonist]], best known for his newspaper cartoons in the early 1900s featuring an inventive use of [[word play]] and [[visual storytelling]] tricks.<ref name=obit/>

==Biography==
Verbeek was born in [[Nagasaki, Nagasaki|Nagasaki]], Japan, in 1867, the son of [[Reformed Church in America]] [[missionary]] [[Guido Verbeck]], of [[Dutch people|Dutch]] ancestry, and his wife Maria ({{nee|Manion}}).<ref name="Hommes">{{cite journal |last1=Hommes |first1=James Mitchell |title=Verbeck of Japan: Guido F. Verbeck Aa Pioneer Missionary, Oyatoi Gaikoujin, and "Foreign Hero" |date=2014-07-11 |page=439 |url=http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/22594/1/HommesVerbeckDissFINAL_2.pdf |publisher=University of Pittsburgh |language=en}}</ref><ref name="ForgottenGenius22" />

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]]'', and produced a series of weekly comic strips for newspapers. In the 1910s he abandoned cartooning and became a fine artist.<ref name="Nadel_317"/> He was noted for his [[expressionism|expressionist]] [[monotypes]],<ref name="Nadel_317" /> which were the subject of an article in ''[[The Century Magazine]]'' in June 1916.<ref name="nonsenselit">{{Cite web| url=http://www.nonsenselit.org/nec/verbeek.html| title=Etomite »| website=www.nonsenselit.org| access-date=2006-01-09| archive-date=2006-04-30| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060430205536/http://www.nonsenselit.org/nec/verbeek.html| url-status=dead}}</ref>

He was ill for two years, and died on December 5, 1937, at the [[St Barnabas Hospital (Bronx)|Home for Incurables]], on [[Third Avenue]] and 183rd Street in the [[Bronx, New York City]]. He had been a patient there for two months.<ref name=obit>{{cite news |title=Gustave Verbeck, Ex-Cartoonist, 70. His Work Appeared for Eleven Years in the Old New York Herald |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1937/12/06/archives/gustave-verbeck-excartoonist-79-his-work-appeared-for-eleven-years.html |quote=Gustave Verbeck of 125 Sherman Avenue, an artist whose cartoons were published in the old New York Herald for eleven years, died yesterday in the Home for Incurables, Third Avenue and 183d Street, the Bronx, where he had been a patient for two months. He had been ill for two years. ...|newspaper=[[New York Times]] |date=December 6, 1937 |accessdate=2015-09-14 }}</ref>

==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.<ref name="strippers">{{Cite web|url=http://strippersguide.blogspot.com/2006/12/obscurity-of-day-easy-papa.html|title=Stripper's Guide: Obscurity of the Day: Easy Papa}}</ref>

[[File:Verbeek-rocanoe.gif|250px|thumb|Verbeek's strips could be seen differently when viewed upside down (this image will flip upside-down automatically)]]
{{multiple image
 | width = 150
 | footer = ''The Upside Downs of Little Lady Lovekins and Old Man Muffaroo '', comics by Gustave Verbeek containing [[reversible figure]]s and [[ambigram]] sentences (March 1904).
 | image1 = Ambigrams by Gustave Verbeek (1904) - comics The Upside Downs of Little Lady Lovekins and Old Man Muffaroo - At the house of the writing pig.jpg
 | caption1 = ''At the house of the writing pig''.
 | image2 = Ambigrams by Gustave Verbeek (1904) - comics The Upside Downs of Little Lady Lovekins and Old Man Muffaroo - The bad snake and the good wizard (panel 5).jpg
 | caption2 = Fourth panel of the story <ref>[[:c:File:Ambigrams by Gustave Verbeek (1904) - comics The Upside Downs of Little Lady Lovekins and Old Man Muffaroo - The bad snake and the good wizard.jpg]]</ref>  ''The bad snake and the good wizard''.
}}
Verbeek is most noted for ''The Upside Downs of Little Lady Lovekins and Old Man Muffaroo'', a weekly 6-panel [[comic strip]] 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 (mythology)|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]] with a steering wheel and seating in its back as in an [[automobile]]), a "pelicanoe" (a [[pelican]] in which a rider could sit and paddle like a [[canoe]]), and a "samovarmint" (a [[samovar]] 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.<ref name="Nadel_317" /> 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''.<ref name="nonsenselit" /> These strips are about a girl who encounters imaginary creatures and writes (inoffensive) [[limerick (poetry)|limerick]]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.<ref name="muppetlabs">{{cite web |title=Gustave Verbeek, Little Lady Lovekins, and Old Man Muffaroo |url=https://www.muppetlabs.com/~breadbox/books/verbeek.html |website=Muppetlabs |accessdate=11 April 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200407102405/https://www.muppetlabs.com/~breadbox/books/verbeek.html|archive-date=7 April 2020}}</ref>
* 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. {{ISBN|0911204016}}.
* Niet Te Geloven Ondersteboven!, Erven Thomas Rap (Amsterdam) in 1976. {{ISBN|9060051106}}.
* Dessus-Dessous, Pierre Horay (Paris) in 1978. {{ISBN|2705800778}}.
* 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. {{ISBN|1903230004}}.
* ''Unten ist Oben'', Comic Companie ( Frankfurt/Main 1; Germany) in 1985. {{ISBN|3820101802}}.
* 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. {{ISBN|4782510713}}. Edited by 坂根厳夫 (Itsuo Sakane).
* ''The Upside-Down World of Gustave Verbeek'', [[Sunday Press Books]] (Palo Alto, CA) in 2009. {{ISBN|0976888572}}.

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' ({{ISBN|978-91-7089-524-1}}) 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==
{{Portal|Comics}}
{{Reflist |refs=
<ref name="ForgottenGenius22">{{cite book |last1=Marschall |first1=Rick |author-link1=Rick Marschall |title= The Forgotten Genius of Gustave Verbeek |date=December 1984 |publisher=[[Fantagraphics Books|Fantagraphics]] |pages=21–38 |edition=10 |work=[[Nemo, the Classic Comics Library]]}}</ref>
<ref name="Nadel_317">{{cite book | last1 = Nadel | first1 = D. | year = 2006 | title = Art out of time: Unknown comics visionaries, 1900-1969 | location = New York | publisher = Abrams | isbn = 0810958384 | url-access = registration | url = https://archive.org/details/artoutoftimeunkn00nade }}</ref>
}}

==External links==
{{Commons category}}
* {{Gutenberg author | id=37203| name=Gustave Verbeek}}
* {{Internet Archive author |sname=Gustave Verbeek}}
* {{cite web  | url  = http://britton.disted.camosun.bc.ca/verbeek/adventure_of_dragon.pdf  | title  = The Thrilling Adventure of the Dragon  | access-date  = 2010-11-17  | archive-url  = https://web.archive.org/web/20110409021911/http://britton.disted.camosun.bc.ca/verbeek/adventure_of_dragon.pdf  | archive-date  = 2011-04-09  | url-status  = dead  }}
* {{cite web | url  = http://www.toonopedia.com/upside.htm   | work = Toonopedia   | title = The Upside Downs }}
* {{cite web | url = https://library.osu.edu/discover#/dc?q=Upside%20downs%20of%20Little%20Lady%20Lovekins%20and%20Old%20Man%20Muffaroo&from=0&size=100&facets=%5B%5D&articleFacets=%5B%5D&webFacets=%5B%22events%22,%22exhibits%22,%22locations%22,%22news%22,%22pages%22,%22strategic%22,%22units%22,%22cartoonsblog%22,%22cartoons%22,%22chinesecollections%22,%22copyrightblog%22,%22frp%22,%22director%22,%22maps%22,%22japanese%22,%22koreancollections%22,%22it%22,%22manga%22,%22mhcb%22,%22musicdance%22,%22perspectives%22,%22rarebooks%22,%22researchcommons%22,%22medieval-slavic%22,%22theatreresearchinstitute%22,%22archives%22%5D | work=Ohio Library | title = Ohio Library comic collection }}
* {{cite web | url  = http://www.muppetlabs.com/~breadbox/books/verbeek.html   | title = List of strips and collections    | work = MuppetLabs.com}}
* {{cite web | url  = http://cartoons.osu.edu/digital_albums/newspaperartists/verbeck/verbeck.html   | title = Gustave Verbeck, 1867–1937   | work = [[Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum]]}}
* {{LCAuth|no00014049|Gustave Verbeek|4|}}

{{ACArt}}

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