UPSIDE-DOWNS, The

Muse, Jul/Aug 2005 by Kangas, Nancy

Dear Reader,

The cartoon maneuver you are about to see has rarely been attempted-before or after the year 1903, when it first appeared. It is a cartoon with an extremely high degree of difficulty-a cartoon that requires the artist to create characters that look like one thing right side up and another something upside down. Duck legs have to turn into tree trunks, fish have to morph into ducks, et cetera! Not only that, the plot itself must carry on in the usual way from the first to the sixth panel, and then continue making sense flipped around.

The man who took on this challenge was Gustave Verbeek. (Actually, when he was born in Nagasaki, Japan-his parents were Dutch and doing missionary work there-he was Gustave Verbeek. But at some point, and reports conflict on why and when, he changed his name to Verbeek, which may have nothing to do with our story, but there you have it.)

After studying art in Paris, he moved to the United States, where he began drawing cartoons for magazines such as Harper's and the Saturday Evening Post. And then, on October 11, 1903, he launched his now-famous strip, "The Upside-Downs of Little Lady Lovekins and Old Man Muffaroo," which appeared in the New York Herald. (In French it's called "Dessus-Dessous: Avec Lady Lovekins et Père Muffaroo," which is just fun to say.) As you will see, the story quite often involves the fearless heroine, Lady Lovekins, getting into a spot of trouble, followed by some sort of rescue by Old Man Muffaroo, the two sometimes inhabiting the very same body. (You, dear reader, have the option of turning the magazine around to finish the strip, or leaving the magazine stationary and standing on your head.)

We are happy to report that Verbeek was not harmed by this particular daredevil cartooning endeavor, which he did for 64 straight weeks. He went on to draw the comparatively conventional cartoons "The Terrors of the Tiny Tads" and "The Loony Lyrics of Lulu." He eventually retired from cartooning to paint "serious paintings." He died at age 70 in 1937.

So without further ado, we are happy to present the little-seen, rather bizarre, and truly twisted world of Lovekins and Muffaroo.

-Nancy Kangas