'Wups und Waldi' (Felix #446, 1967).
Franz Roscher was a German comic artist, illustrator and printer, mostly active in the German comic industry during the 1960s. He was in the art department of Rolf Kauka's Fix und Foxi magazine, and drew the comic features 'Plop' in Max + Molly (1964) and Plop! (1968-1969), as well as the funny animal comic 'Wups und Waldi' (1966-1968) in Bastei Verlag's Felix comic.
Kauka art staff
Born in 1928, Roscher joined the art department of Rolf Kauka, the publisher of Fix und Foxi magazine. In this capacity, he illustrated the magazine's jokes section with the several Kauka characters, and also drew some comic stories with them. At one point, he was chief illustrator, and served as a mentor for other young artists. His story art was often done in collaboration with other artists, for instance Charilaos Theodorou.
Fix und Foxi - 'Der Putsch in Spinnesien' (Fix und Foxi #272, 1961). Artwork in collaboration with Helmuth Huth.
Plop
By 1964, Roscher and several other Kauka artists joined the former Kauka editors Max Reindl and Josef Dachsel in the launch of the new magazine Max + Molly, published by Libro-Verlag. Running between April and December 1964, Roscher's contribution was the feature about the fantasy creature 'Plop - Das Ding vom anderen Stern' ("Plop - The Thing from Another Star"). In addition to his comic, Roscher also provided Max + Molly with several cartoons, which he signed with a difficult-to-decipher "Ro". Although its initial run was short-lived, the Plop character returned in 1968-1969 in a magazine of its own, Plop!, published by Moewig Verlag. Lasting 22 issues, Franz Roscher was one of the main artists for the magazine, along with the Atelier Reindl Dachsel.
Cover illustrations for Plop!.
Wups und Waldi
In between his 'Plop' tenures, Roscher appeared in Felix, a comic magazine published by Bastei Verlag. Again through the Atelier Reindl Dachsel, he drew the funny animal comic 'Wups und Waldi' (1966-1968), created by his colleague Heinz Körner. Starting in Felix issue #377 of 1966, Roscher drew a weekly short story starring the two mischievous dog characters, their uncle Barry and their father ("Pappi"). The main victim of their shenanigans was the unlucky neighbor, Sigi Spitz, who became the comic's standout character. In the Netherlands, the 'Wups und Waldi' comics were published directly in book format by the publisher Nooitgedacht, under the title 'Wip en Woep'.
Later career and death
Until the early 1970s, Roscher also wrote and drew several comics about the mascot of the German comic magazine Felix, based on the Joe Oriolo design of Pat Sullivan and Otto Messmer's cartoon cat Felix. In addition to comic magazines, Roscher also worked for Munich newspapers, for instance creating the daily 'Michel' strip (1968-1969).
By the end of the 1960s, Roscher largely withdrew from the comic industry. For many years, he ran a modern screen printing business with his wife. As an artist, he worked as an illustrator for advertisements and books, for instance 'Das kleine Adventbuch' (1984) by Josef Dirnbeck. With the same author, he also created the comic strip 'Sankt Nimmerlein' (1989) for the Bamberger St. Heinrichsblatt, a Catholic Sunday paper. In 1998, the Valentin-Karlstadt-Musäum in Munich hosted the overview exposition 'Geschichten in Comics - Originalzeichnungen von Franz Roscher'. The artist died somewhere during the 2000s.
Felix 'Am Tag, als der Regen kam…' (Felix #775, 1972).