as I've seen gooberking's thread about idioms I had a thought - how about a thread about international comic books?

we all probably know American comics, French comics, Japanese comics, but I'd like to know if each country has at least some famous comics authors :) I don't mind if they're in your local language, I just want to see the art style :o)

for the Czech Republic (and for me) it must be Kája Saudek (you can check his famous Arnal here)

it has a very special and lovely style, busty beautiful women, muscular men of honor, but also TONS of tiny jokes and details on every page, usually playing with interjections and pop-culture references :)

Arnal is about an artificial man who's been built as an ultimate weapon, yet he's kind of clueless of what he is and he's easily manipulated (until he finds his love), [url=http://www.fantasyobchod.cz/images/3e4e61995a4decfde5ad876fd9fb3807_01.jpg]Tulian is similar to Robin Hood (set in the Czech settings, and him being an idol to all the pretty ladies he encounters :)

Muriel a Andělé is also very famous, yet I haven't read that yet, but it should be re-released soon so I'll definitely buy that one too :)

Greece has Arkas, who's mildly amusing. Series of dialogue-based humoristic strips. His "Kastrato" (dialogues between a frustrated nymphomaniac female cat and a fat male castrated owned by a very old lady) is kind of fun.

I'm mostly into 1950-1980 french/belgian comics, but those may be too famous to mention (Franquin, Goscinny, Greg, etc). The recent ones that I like (Tardi, Marc-Antoine Matthieu, Larcenet, Trondheim...) are quite rare, and on the artsy side.

I love the art of the argentinian Breccia, but it's more impressive than his actual stories ("Mort Cinder" is more fun to look at than to read). And Quino is just fantastic - I'm not a huge fan of "Mafalda", but his other random drawings are fantastically clever.

I'm not much into manga (except for the odd Junji Ito), and my distaste for superheroes keep me a bit away from most american productions other than "The Walking Dead", "Calvin & Hobbes", "Peanuts"... Or real subversions of superhero comics, but this takes an Alan Moore to do it well ("Watchmen", "Top10"...).

And norwegian Jason's "Hey Wait" is a little masterpiece.

But globally, not much exotic input, there...

Although comics aren't really big over here, or at least they weren't when I was young, so I don't think we have any action comics. We did have a few simple comics mostly for kids and adolescents.
And of course erotic comics, but I won't post any of those.

In no particular order:

F.C. Knudde about a football team.
Stamgasten, about anthropomorphised animals with silly puns and such.
, about an anthropomorphised cow that is a (bad) farmer (also turned into a [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Qmnh0ryhzw]cartoon)
Sjors en Sjimmie, which is about teenagers being idiots.
, about an aristocratic bear (which also spawned [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5tzv6hNDgY]a movie).
Sjef van Oekel which is about a self entitled jerk.. a bit Mr. Magoo-ish if I remember correctly.

These are all from my childhood, I"m not sure if they're still around. Heck, there might even be a huge comic scene nowadays.. although I kind of doubt that.

I wonder that you didn't mention Alois Nebel by Jaroslav Rudiš when it comes to comic from the Czech Republic.

For Germany, I would say that we don't have many famous comic artists. Of course there were Rolf Kauka and Hansrudi Wäscher in the past, but besides that there were near to none famous ones for a very long time.

In the past few years the German scene got more interesting though and now there are many new talents and also some older artists who came from indie and underground fanzines, got well-known and have a certain reputation by now.

I would mention (besides many others) , [url=http://www.mawil.net/]Mawil, Reinhard Kleist, Isabell Kreitz, Levin Kurio, Eckart Breitschuh and Sarah Burrini.

I wouldn't say that any of them are really famous (in a way that you could mention their name and more than 50% of the population know who you are talking about).

Well, on the german side, Joscha Sauer's "Nicht lustig" makes me giggle quite stupidly.

Also, I'm not sure why I forgot the italian Hugo Pratt. Probably too obvious and (rightfully) classic.

Most of the big British names (Grant, Moore etc) are the ones that heped turn around the fortunes of amnay an american series years later.

But if you want to read their work then they were truly British, check out 2000ad (prior to about 1993 would be prime).

Yes, Joscha Sauer is great and maybe one of a few that is really famous. But I didn't mention him, because he only draws one-panel cartoons and not really comics.

But I want to mention a Swiss comic artist as well: David Boller. Haven't read very much of him, but at least his autobiographical comic Endless Sky is quite interesting.

at the late 90's there was a very nice drawn and written comic series from germany called "Helden" ("Heroes"), not to be mistaken with the tv show and the comics that followed from that show.

[url=http://www.ipp-comics.de/en/comics/title:helden/issue:1/page:0]http://www.ipp-comics.de/en/comics/title:helden/issue:1/page:0[/url]/

Well, Wilhelm Busch is often mentioned as a forerunner of comics, at least in Germany (e.g. <i>Max &amp; Moritz</i>).

Then there's the cartoonist Erich Ohser aka e.o.plauen, known for his Vater &amp; Sohn series, published in 1930's newspapers.

Actual comic authors of more recent times who are quite famous in Germany are Brösel (for his 80's/90's series </i>), Ralf K&ouml;nig (for telling gay stories, e.g. [url=http://www.ralf-koenig.com/der-bewegte-mann.html]<i>Der bewegte Mann</i>) and Walter Moers (e.g. Das kleine Arschloch; as a sidenote, he also writes and illustrates his own novels, most of which are fun and also translated in English).

In a similar vein than the ones PaterAlf listed, but probably much less known still (but apparantly, at least partly, translated into other languages): Arne Bellstorf (, [url=http://www.reprodukt.com/produkt/deutscheautoren/babys-in-black/]2), Ulli Lust (), Anke Feuchtenberger ([url=http://files.d-nb.de/presse/bilder/8-hure.jpg]1, ), Line Hoven ([url=http://www.linehoven.de/?cat=4]1, 2).

Known mostly in Berlin: Fil (<i>Didi &amp; Stulle</i>).