Comic Book / Werner

Cover of the first Werner comic book, Oder was? ("Or what?")

Werner is the most successful German comic, with more than 10 million books and even more tickets for the movies sold. Created by Rötger Feldmann a.k.a. Brösel, it started in 1981 as an underground comic, but after the Porsche vs. Horex race in Hartenholm in 1988 and even more after the premiere of the first movie, Werner - Beinhart!, it entered the mainstream.

Werner is a guy from northern Germany who particularly likes two things: beer and heavily customized motorbikes. The movies display him as a plumber apprentice, as does the flashback-like Lehrjahre sind keine Herrenjahre series in some of the books, the first book also shows him in several other jobs which he keeps messing up, often deliberately, and otherwise unemployed and enjoying it. He keeps clashing with governmental agencies, especially with the police, usually represented by the two village cops Bruno and Helmut. In earlier books, he is sometimes seen in company of Ölfuß (based on the real-life motorbike customizer who built the Red Porsche Killer later on), and from the fifth book on, his most frequent companion is his brother Andi (based on Brösel's real-life brother Andi who is also Andi's voice actor in the movies), and he also often meets the bikers from the MC Kläppstuhl since then.

Werner releases:

Comic books:

• Werner – Oder was? (1981)
• Werner – Alles klar? (1982)
• Werner – Wer sonst? (1983)
• Werner – Eiskalt! (1985)
• Werner – Normal ja! (1987)
• Werner – Besser is das! (1989)
• Werner – Ouhauerha! (1992)
• Werner – Wer bremst hat Angst! (1994)
• Was soll der Quatsch? (mostly comics from 1982 released in 1994 plus a few stories from Oder was? and two Bakunini stories)
• Werner – Na also! (1996)
• Werner – Exgummibur! (1998)
• Werner – Volle Latte! (2002)
• Werner – Freie Bahn mit Marzipan! (2004)
• Werner – Wat nu? (2018)

Movies:

• Werner – Beinhart! (1990)
• Werner – Das muss kesseln!!! (1996)
• Werner – Volles Rooäää!!! (1999)
• Werner – Gekotzt wird später! (2003)
• Werner – Eiskalt! (2011)

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Contains examples of the following tropes:

• 2D Visuals, 3D Effects: Volles Rooäää!!! introduces CGI in the opening through which Werner rides on the Satte Literschüssel. The CGI is quite obvious by itself already, but it also appears in a stark contrast to how similar scenes were animated in Beinhart!
• Adolf Hitlarious: A one-page comic in Oder was? claims that the Führer didn't have a Führerschein (driver's license).
• Alcohol Is Gasoline: "Blackberry methyl", a byproduct of Röhrich's illegal blackberry liquor production. Röhrich tells Werner that he can fill it into his moped, then he'll go off like greased lightning. Günzelsen manages to fly all the way to Tonga just powered by half a bucket of methylic alcohol filled into the gas bottle that's stuck in his mouth and ignited by Röhrich. The stuff eventually lends its name to the Metülisator which indeed uses it as the fuel for its radial engine.
• The Alleged Car: Holgi's Porsche 911 S in "Das Rennen", representing its Real Life counterpart. Yes, it's a Porsche. Yes, Holgi calls it "the absolutely fastest car". But it has a leaking gearbox, completely misadjusted carburetors and not left the garage completely or the courtyard at all in two years.
• Alliterative Name:
  • Werner Wernersen.
  • Günter Günzelsen.
• Amusing Injuries
• Art Evolution: Can be watched throughout Oder was? and over the course of the first eight books. The drawings got clearer and more detailed. Eiskalt! let a shade of gray enter. Some stories from Normal ja! on were inked, yet still remained grayscale. Ouhauerha! was the first book in color, and when its successor Wer bremst hat Angst! was released, the art had evolved so much that people decided this wasn't the Werner they knew and loved anymore, also because hardly anything was actually drawn by Brösel himself anymore rather than the staff of artists he had hired meanwhile.
• Art Shift: After the complaints about the books from Wer bremst hat Angst! to Exgummibur!, Brösel sort of went back to the roots and drew almost all of Volle Latte! himself in a much simpler style. The only exceptions are the very beginning which parodies the mainstream-compatible, high-quality Werner drawings and guest drawings by Jörg Reymann who had done a lot of drawing for Brösel before, this time in his unmistakable own style which was intended to clash with Brösel's, also to mock the fact that Brösel couldn't draw women.
• Author Avatar:
  • Some believed that Werner and Brösel are the same person. In fact, however, Brösel's Author Avatar has been a Werner look-alike with glasses in the first few books. Around the time when Beinhart! was produced with Brösel starring as himself in the live-action parts, he drew a more faithful comic version of himself that also appears in later books.
  • At least for the first two movies, Brösel drew just about everyone involved in their production.
  • Also, when Brösel collaborated with Thomas Platt on the latter's Kochbuch für Stümper, he drew both himself and Platt into the illustrations. Besides, they both appear in two comics in which Platt interviews Brösel.
  • Brösel drew both himself and guest artist Jörg Reymann into Volle Latte! He went by the name Ørg to make it less obvious.
• Ax-Crazy: Biernot, Hans Leise's neighbor in "10000 Watt in der Stadt" (Was soll der Quatsch?), uses an axe with a ginormous blade in a fit of rage to shut down the former's new home stereo.
• Beach Episode: Usually involves Flachköpper (head dives in shallow water).
• Bedlam House: "Zur fröhlichen Drehtür" (Was soll der Quatsch?) gives this trope a modern spin. The titular institution outwardly looks like and is marketed as a ginormous Hospital Paradiso for curing mental illnesses. Actually, however, it serves to bring all those who aren't in line with "normal" society, government and industry (especially the pharma industry) down to normal with happy pills, electric shocks, chemical food (for vegetarians) and such.
• Bewitched Amphibians: At the end of Beinhart!, Rumpelstiltskin, now uncursed and turned into a beautiful bride, changes again when Brösel kisses her — into a frog. She's never seen again while Brösel pulls a hard-to-translate ear-slapping Visual Pun with his nurse.
• Big "NO!": Günter ("Spironolactonil-ratiopharm") when he escapes from the second floor of the hospital.
• Brand X: Played straight by fictional brands such as Coma Pils and parody brands like Happlage & Schnappe or Kastrat. Averted with most brand names, though, particularly vehicle brands and models, both existing and defunct (Horex, Harley-Davidson, Lanz, Hanomag, Bentley, Honda, Allgeier...), and beer brands (Flensburger, Faxe, shoving a bottle of Beck's into the fourth wall).
• Butt-Monkey: Meister Röhrich.
• Catchphrase: Many.
  Brösel: And I said, "Werner, don't do that!" But HE doesn't listen.
• Chainsaw Good: The Dolmette, a bike with 24 chainsaw motors! It was designed and built before it entered the comic.
  • In Gekotzt wird später!, Andi uses a chainsaw to top chop the Oldsmobile in one quick swipe.
• Character Action Title: Several earlier stories have these, usually describing actions which aren't that spectacular per se. Some are quite Literal-Minded in this, though, some combine a Character Action Title with the titular character (always Werner himself in this case) announcing the action, and "Werner schmeißt sein Geld zum Fenster raus" ("Werner throws his money out of the window"; Werner: "I'm gonna throw my money out of the window!") does both.
• Cool Bike: Lots. The fact that Brösel is a motorcycle nut and draws extremely realistic (but often still wacky) bikes helps a lot.
  • Werner's bike in the first book, Oder was?, was an entirely fictional Horex Regina made up in the fashion of US choppers of the 1970s, complete with a long springer fork and Iron Cross rear-view mirrors. Werner says he rides Horex because he gets sick from riding BMW. He also has a personal dislike against Harley-Davidson.
    Toddl's T-shirt: On the 8th day, God created Harley Davidson
    Werner: He must've had a bad day.
  • In the second book, Alles klar?, he got the same Horex Regina 400 chopper that Brösel was working on, only in the state the bike would have been in, had it ever been finished the way it was planned, including a candle as a headlight. This was also the first book in which Brösel drew Harleys for almost all the other bikers, sometimes tricked out in ludicrous ways (fuel tank that's half aquarium, sidecar made of a small wooden door, an armchair, footrests, a wheel, and an ashtray, red lantern for tail light, and so on). In one story in the fourth book, Eiskalt!, it was equipped with gimmicks such as the Wurstblinker (sausage blinker - yep, a blinker that shoots sausages and other food items) which reappears in the tuned-up version in the first movie, Beinhart!
  • The fourth book also featured the "Red Porsche Killer", a Horex made for defeating a 1972 Porsche 911 S owned by Brösel's then-publisher and "manager" Holgi in a race. Four (!) Horex Regina 400 engines totally rebuilt out of aluminum and stroked from 400ccm to 610ccm each were built into a dragster frame painted metalflake pink. The "Red Porsche Killer" was built in real life and actually ran three full races against said Porsche.
  • After years of riding Horex, Werner decided to build his very own motorbike in the late 90s. The heart of this machine was a 1000ccm (61cui) single which gave it the name "Satte Literschüssel"; when it was built for real, it turned out this behemoth had a displacement of 1444ccm (88cui), still in one cylinder only. The motor was so big that it became a supporting part of the frame. Other features included a fork mostly made of wood and a shovel blade for a seat. The Name "Satte Literschüssel" is also a wordplay with "Satelitenschüssel" which means Satelite Dish.
  • Around the same time, Andi built the tiniest bike of the Wernersen (Feldmann) fleet, the Notkessel. A motorcycle mostly made of stainless steel, even smaller than a Honda Monkey, but powered by a 175ccm Honda twin which looks almost huge in the tiny frame. Despite being quite tall, Andi can actually ride it, and it appears in some comics, too.
  • As revealed in the documentary book Die Kulteisen der Wernersens, Andi built quite a number of other more or less weird bikes before the Notkessel, for example the Vampire, a bike made of parts Andi just had lying around, including two complete BSA power plants.
  • Then there was the Dolmette (see Chainsaw Good) which wasn't designed by either Feldmann brother for a change but by an engineer from Dolmar (Hamburg). There's little that's cooler than a motorcycle with 24 working engines.
  • Another wacky idea was the Heizölkessel, based on a vibration-free parallel twin engine with two crankshafts prescribed by a doctor and acquired at a pharmacy. Due to a crazy bet against speedbikers, Werner rebuilt it to a turbocharged diesel and fit it into a comfortable chopper frame. This bike sort of came true, too: It is named Neander and built by a Kiel-based company. It does have a working two-cylinder, twin-crankshaft turbo-diesel with lots of horsepower, and it is currently the second most expensive production bike in the world.
• Cool Car:
  • "Besser is das!" (Normal ja!) starts with Andi's Ford P5 20mTS, loaded with way too much luggage to the point of bordering on The Alleged Car...
  • ...and then leads to a 1975 Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight Regency Sedan. Its owner is so awestruck by the old top-of-the-line Ford that he actually agrees to swap his polished land barge for it. It's big for American standards, huge for German Real Life standards and ginormous in comparison to other vehicles in Werner.
  • We see the Olds again as the "Regentenschüssel" in Gekotzt wird später!, matte black and heavily customized with a more pronounced front end, a top chop and Nitro Boost amongst other things. It was Defictionalized around the time the film was made. The very same car has an earlier appearance already in "Volle Latte!" in the book of the same name where Werner rips out the big block engine within seconds to give it to Ørg in exchange for getting a woman drawn. When Werner wants to drive away with said stark naked woman on the passenger's seat, he remembers that he doesn't have an engine in his car anymore.
  • The Metülisator, a car with a radial engine from a World War II warbird(!) running on methyl alcohol.
  • Nobelschröder's Bentley Blower (with a living supercharger) might count, too. After all, it can keep up with the 1,500hp Metülisator in Wer bremst hat Angst!
  • Günzelsen's Dubai V10 with which he runs through a speed trap at 325kph (202mph). He offers it to anyone who can beat it because he hates it when someone's faster than him.
• Cool Shades:
  • The only visual difference between the twins Hörni and Kalli is that the former wears these.
  • Herbert wears them, too, and he's every bit as cool as his shades.
• Crossover:
  • Dex & Dogfort appear in Volle Latte!, drawn by Jörg Reymann himself. In return, Werner appears in the third Dex & Dogfort book, Schlachthofgiganten.
  • In the story about Wilhelm Busch's 150th birthday at the end of Alles klar?, Werner and Wilhelm Busch let loose his characters from Max and Moritz because they find the celebration boring.
  • One Comic Book/Asterix homage compilation contains a story by Brösel himself in which ancient versions of Werner, Andi and the rocker president Dieter meet the Gauls at a chariot race. They eventually join forces in order to beat the Roman chariots in the race.
  • It's worth mentioning that Brösel managed to emulate both Wilhelm Busch's and Albert Uderzo's drawing styles quite well.
• Cult:
  • The Bhagwan sect in Sektenquatsch und Eiermatsch. In the course of this story, former Bhagwan followers even start a new cult around Werner who manages to send the whole bunch to Tibet to find Master Renrew.
  • Werners Platte, a record produced by Brösel and the Fuckin' Kius Band, contains a song named "Bhagwan" which mocks the sect.
• Dada Comics: Some one-pagers can only described as that.
• Democracy Is Bad: In one cartoon from The '80s.
  Random Guy: Hey Werner! For whom are you gonna vote in the election?
  Werner: For no one at all!
  Guy: Why not?
  Werner: If someone offered you three turds, which one would you eat?
  Guy: Well, none of course!
  Werner: Exactly!
• Distracted by the Sexy: Werner's dream woman in Volle Latte! She even spends a considerable amount of time totally naked because when Ørg drew her for Werner, he didn't draw any clothes on her.
• Drives Like Crazy: Naturally a recurring theme in Werner. A few examples:
  • It's impressive how much damage Röhrich can cause with his Hanomag, slow as it is.
  • Werner and Winni on their way to (and into) the Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt in Flensburg. (Oder was?)
  • The drunk cops in "Werner macht die Grünen blau". (Oder was?)
  • Werner's own driving in the main story in Was soll der Quatsch? is so wild that his hitch-hiking passenger Karl-Hugo has to smoke three cigarettes at once. It doesn't help that Werner is driving an open convertible through pouring rain. The car is filled to the brim with water.
  • Werner at the helm of the Oldsmobile in "Besser is das!" (Normal ja!): First he plays around with the power seats and the power windows instead of paying attention to the road, hitting a guard rail. The car is patched up the same night by him and Andi. Then, while testing at which speed the car begins to emit any noises into the interior, they slam into a VW Golf convertible and push it all the way to the Swiss border, grinding up its lower side (the Olds is so huge that Werner and Andi can't even see the Golf ahead of them).
  • All the bikers in the title sequence of Beinhart!
  • Both Werner and Andi with the Metülisator and Nobelschröder with his Blower Bentley in the main story in Wer bremst, hat Angst!
• Drugs Are Bad: Many of the stories compiled in Was soll der Quatsch? are about how both drugs and addictions of all kind are bad. This includes the main story in which a character named Karl-Hugo is sent to a hospital by his mother and put on medication just because he doesn't want to watch TV. His mother herself is absolutely addicted to Prime Time TV^note which has to say something in a time when Germany only had three stations with some six or seven hours of air time per day each; at the same time, it was perfectly normal and thinks she's the normal one.
• Drunk Driver: Happens less frequently than you may think.
  • Everybody except Werner in "Ordnung muß sein!" (Oder was?). They all get away with it because they're high officials including the mayor.
  • In "Werner macht die Grünen blau" (Oder was?), Werner tricks two cops who are after his driver's license into ingesting a whole lot of alcohol. He doesn't abstain himself, but it takes a whole lot to get him drunk, and he doesn't drink nearly as much as the cops. As he leaves the bar, they try to give chase. Hilarity Ensues.
  • Nobelschröder in Das muß kesseln! under the influence of methyl alcohol. Before he even gets back to driving his Blower Bentley, he fills it to the brim with barf.
• Dumb Blonde: Günter Günzelsen's first wife, featured in Ouhauerha! and Das muss kesseln!
• Epunymous Title: "Wernervthierschonwieder" (Wer sonst?; roughly translates to "Who's going on my nerves again?").
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Some of the story titles, mostly Character Action Titles. Especially funny with Literal-Minded stories like "Werner throws his money out of the window".
• Fanservice: Averted. Werner is a typical guys' comic, but considering that, it contains very few beautiful women. As said: He can't draw them. Well, couldn't.
• Flanderization: Meister Röhrich just was a bit peculiar at the beginning, but later he reached The Ditz levels of stupidity. (The funny work-related accidents he went through during the series may have helped, though)
  • Same applies to the two policemen, Bruno and Helmut.
• Four-Fingered Hands
• Funetik Aksent: All dialects in the comics are written the way they're pronounced. And there are a lot of dialect speakers.
• Guilty Pleasures: After Werner provoked an all-out brawl on a bazar by throwing a soccer ball and commented the brawl, pretending it to be a soccer match, he said the following after the "match":
  Werner: "Nicht ganz fair, aber fein" (German for something like "Not quite fair, but quite neat").
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Dieter, the "Präsi" (president) of the MC Kläppstuhl biker club.
• Henpecked Husband:
  • Herr Hüpenbecker.
  • Karl-Hugo's father in the main story in Was soll der Quatsch?. All his wife ever does is scream and yell and complain about everything she can, seemingly at once, at least without taking a breath, to both her husband and her son. Karl-Hugo says she doesn't even realize how she terrorizes her family.
• Homage:
  • The book Einer wie ich contains homages to Werner by numerous other comic artists such as Uli Stein or Harm Bengen.
  • Brösel showed that he can imitate other artists' styles when he celebrated Wilhelm Busch's 150th birthday with a homage to Max and Moritz at the end of Alles klar?. It's basically about an anniversary event which even Busch himself finds boring, so he and Werner let most of the cast of Max and Moritz out of the book and loose upon those who made the event so dull. The drawings are Brösel's own style except for the characters from Max und Moritz for whom Brösel emulated Busch's style, but like Busch's "proto-comics", the story is written in verse plus illustrations instead of being a regular comic.
  • Brösel also contributed to the second Asterix homage issue, not by drawing an Asterix story Werner-style, but by creating a crossover with an ancient take on Werner that also pokes fun at the Formula One. Needless to say that he emulated Albert Uderzo's style for all Asterix characters.
• Horny Vikings: The actor in the Faxe beer TV commercial gone wrong around the end of "Sektenquatsch und Eiermatsch" in the book Alles klar?
• Hospital Hottie: Brösel's nurse in Beinhart!. Averted by the pesky nurses in Wer sonst?, though.
• Hurricane of Puns: A story that Hörni and Kalli come up with for the next Werner book while drunk. As is the nature of puns, they don't translate into English at all, but the story is essentially about the author Semmel Lagerlöff who wants to be signed by the Semmel-Verlach where the Werner books are made at the time and ends up in the carton storage. That said, the story is so lame that the two discard it again the next morning when they're sober again.
• I'll Take Two Beers Too: Probably one of Brösel's favorite jokes. Started in "Pioniere des Metülzeitalters" in the book Ouhauerha!: Werner orders two beers, Andi wants two, too. Werner then orders four beers straight away, Andi orders another four for himself. This repeats with four liquors (times two) and another four beers (times two). It's taken to the extreme in the fourth movie, Gekotzt wird später! with seven beers and another seven for everyone else.
• Impact Silhouette: After filling methanol into their sidecar bike, Werner and Andi can't help but crash through a closed barn door. Bauer Horst finds the resulting hole quite amusing because he believes they've cut it out to install a window.
• Impossible Task: In order to join Werner's "club", Hugo has every single former Bhagwan member try to open a bottle of beer with a raw egg. The result gives "Sektenquatsch und Eiermatsch" half of its title.
• Incessant Music Madness: "10000 Watt in der Stadt" (Was soll der Quatsch). Hans Leise (subversion of a Meaningful Name: "leise" means "quiet") gets himself a new home 10,000-watt stereo system with a huge "bass expotential box" and cranks it up in his apartment, much to the dismay of his neighbor. He eventually switches to headphones, but he forgets to turn off the speakers, making his neighbor go Ax-Crazy.
• Inherently Funny Words: Schnüffelstück, Metülisator, Satte Literschüssel, Exgummibur.
• Ink-Suit Actor: Brösel's brother Andi (the voice actor) and Werner's brother Andi (the character) are pretty much the same person.
• Lemming Cops: Bruno and Helmut during their first appearance in "Werner macht die Grünen blau" when they both still look the same and have about the same amount of brain. Punch drunk, they try to chase Werner and end up driving against the traffic on the wrong side of a six-lane Autobahn, hitting several cars on their way, and eventually stopping the entire traffic because they believe everyone else is driving the wrong way.
• Literal-Minded: Werner often really celebrates this. Unfortunately, it can't always be translated.
  • Werner and his biker friends deliberately act like this in one story. Until someone tells them "Kiss my ass", upon which they exclaim "As if we would do everything you tell us!"
  • "Wassagen", starring mostly Hörni and Kalli.
    Hörni: Say something.
    Kalli: Something.
    Hörni: You shall not say something, you shall say something.
    Kalli: Something.
  • "Werner schmeißt sein Geld zum Fenster raus" (Oder was?) is a one-pager all about Werner tossing all his cash out of the window. The German term itself actually means senselessly spending your money.
  • "Alle Welt giert nach Geld" (Was soll der Quatsch?) is a one-pager about Werner being asked to pay his debts at the bar. Any term used for debts or money immediately turns into its literal meaning.
  • "Werner und Penner haun sich 'ne Stunde aufs Ohr" (Eiskalt!). The term "aufs Ohr hauen" refers to hitting the mattress while literally meaning "beating one's ear"—which is what Werner and Penner do.
    • This recurs both in a sketch on Werners Platte and at the end of Beinhart! when Brösel and his nurse slap each other's ears.
  • Hüpenbecker gets this when he's in hospital with injuries from a gas explosion caused by Röhrich. He is rather distraught upon the latter's offer to water his garden in his absence because the German term for watering a lawn means the same as blowing it up.
• Malaproper: Günter in the Psychopharmaca Thriller in Oder was? His father is in pain, and his mother sends him to the pharmacy to get a pack of Spironolactonil-ratiopharm. Trying and failing to get the name of the drug right, Günter slowly goes insane himself.
  "Spironolocktan Ratiniloplan!!"
• Meddlesome Patrolman: Bruno and Helmut.
• Medium Awareness:
  • Schinderwerner (Wer sonst?) who tears up book pages and stains them with ink.
  • Dex And Dogfort are aware that they're in a comic at the end of "Volle Latte!" when they freeze Werner's dream woman with the frame she's currently in.
  • The end of "Werner macht die Grünen blau" (Oder was?) tops this even. After seeing the outcome of making Bruno and Helmut drunk, Werner says that he would have loved to see that comic in color. Those early Werner comics weren't even grayscale, and shading had to be done with hatching before Eiskalt!.
• Miniature Senior Citizens: The unnamed old lady who provides Werner and his buddies the opportunity to brew their own beer; Werner's grandma from the movie.
• The Movie: Five so far. Beinhart! and Eiskalt! are mixtures of animation and live action, all the other ones are pure animation.
• My Beloved Smother: Karl-Hugo's mother in the main story in Was soll der Quatsch?, minus the actual "smother" part. She's the same to her son as she is to her husband: all screaming and yelling and complaining.
• Naked People Are Funny: Meister Röhrich, after the occasional explosion. In the Werner universe, people are nigh-indestructible. Clothes are not.
• Nitro Boost:
  • Installed in the movie version of the Regentenschüssel. The bottle is welded into the middle of the hood.
  • Methanol ("Metül") has the same effect on internal combustion engines in the world of Werner, only permanent. According to Röhrich, it makes mopeds go like greased lightning.
  • In the title story in Freie Bahn mit Marzipan!, in order to beat the 325 km/h (202 mph) reached by Günzelsen's Dubai V10, Werner decides to get the Red Porsche Killer back from retirement and install a nitrous injection on it.
  • The earliest instance of this in Werner is in a calendar and an impossible-to-translate [[Pun]]: Werner has installed nitrous on the sidecar Horex which ended up with so much power that it dug its own rear wheel into the tarmac.
• One-Steve Limit: Broken with the name Günter. The protagonist in the Psychopharmaca Thriller is named Günter, one of the TÜV inspectors is named Günter, and then there is Günter Günzelsen.
• Only Six Faces: Brösel once revealed in an interview that his characters are mostly based on a very few faces with a very few variations.
• Pointy-Haired Boss: Meister Röhrich, Werner's boss. That said, he isn't really incompetent, but ever since Werner's gas/oxygen bomb in "Lehrjahre sind keine Herrenjahre" part 1, he got increasingly chaotic.
• Protagonist Title
• Pun-Based Title: Lots, but usually difficult to explain in English.
  • Example: "Werner macht die Grünen blau" (Oder was?). The literal translation would be "Werner makes the greens blue". Now, "die Grünen" ("the greens") refers to the police who wore largely green uniforms in those days, and "blau" ("blue") doesn't mean sad but drunk.
• Punny Name: Günzelsen's secretaries Fräulein Vondeblotz (see Dumb Blonde), a German spoonerism for "blonde cunt", and Fräulein Fellschnick, another German spoonerism for "quick fuck".
• Precision F-Strike: The Fuckin' Kius Band from the author's early entourage.
• Reconstruction: Werner - Volle Latte is nothing but. It starts out with Werner chewing out Brösel for everything that went wrong with the comic over the years, from the squeaky-clean art-style to Werner's commercialization. All of it presented in glorious greyscale (with a bit of Splash of Color).
  Werner: My life was more colorful when it was black and white!
• Red Live Lobster: The "lobste' c'ab" in "Exgummibur!". Whether it's still alive or not is hard to tell.
• Repeat After Me: Hörni and Kalli are pretty drunk.
  Hörni: Hey Karl, say something.
  [beat]
  Kalli: Something.
  Hörni: You shan't say "something", you shall say something.
  Kalli: Something.
• Right Behind Me: Werner and his buddy make silly rhymes like: "The idiot, the idiot / wore a sweater that was red" ("rot" in German). Of course, The Brute who wears a red sweater sits behind Werner and proceeds to beat out his lights. While making a rhyme himself. Note: The original comic was b/w, so Brösel had to scribble "RED" all over the sweater instead.
• Sdrawkcab Name: Master Renrew who is claimed to be in Tibet and able to teach the former Bhagwan members how to open a bottle with a raw egg. He's of course Werner's invention to get rid of the Bhagwan horde.
• Self-Deprecation: In the title story in Volle Latte!, Werner wants Brösel to draw a woman for him and ends up complaining that Brösel can't draw women. Up to and including this book, Brösel really couldn't draw beautiful women. Werner's dream woman had to be drawn by Jörg Reymann both in the making of the comic and In-Universe.
• Serious Business: Brewing beer, tuning bikes
• Shout-Out:
  • A black guy who can't pronounce the letter "R" selling seafood.
  Black guy: "F'esh fish! C'awfish! C'abs!"
  White guy: "Caps? Give me one!"
  (He gets one small crab, puts it on his head and looks at himself in a mirror. Beat Panel.)
  Black guy: "He'e, take a lobste' c'ab, dose a'e bigge'!"
  (He gets a lobster, puts it on his head and looks at himself in a mirror. Cue the black guy laughing his butt off.)
  • The ET "phone home" parody in Wer sonst? to the point that Werner actually throws all the parts of E.T.'s phone at the guy who wants to phone home.
  Sound Effect: Ooinkoioionnk!
  • The Shrink scene in the main story in Was soll der Quatsch? is a Shout-Out to Faust and incredibly deep for early Werner standards.
• The Shrink: Psychotherapist Faust (Was soll der Quatsch?) is one of the harmful kind, not a Psycho Psychologist, but blindly following the books and the rules, plus he's so lazy that he sends Karl-Hugo (whose main fault according to his mother is that he doesn't want to watch TV) to a hospital so that he doesn't actually have to deal with him. He's quickly berated by Mephisto who's the actual good guy in this scene.
• The Slacker: Werner and his friends (except for when they're brewing beer or tuning bikes, then they're very industrious)
• Stuff Blowing Up: Often at the climax of the story. Very often if Röhrich is involved.
• Take That!: For a long time, Werner's publisher "Holgi" featured prominently in the comic. After he changed the publisher, the character appeared for a last time (only named as "Porsche driver"), to have his Porsche crushed first by the Metülisator and then by Nobelschröder's Bentley.
  • Holgi's reply: He had a comic book drawn with himself as the main character named Holgi - Räum das Feld, Mann!
• Talking Animal: Appear in some stories, the grebe jokes and bear jokes in particular.
• Technology Porn: Brösel can't draw women (at least, he couldn't for most of his career), but boy, can he draw machines and vehicles!
  • The Red Porsche Killer concept drawings in Eiskalt!, provided by the real-life Ölfuß, definitely count, too. While he drew them, he kept stating that it's possible to actually build all that. He did, and it worked.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: In "Lehrjahre sind keine Herrenjahre 3: Knallhart verrissen!", Röhrich loads his front-loader rifle with everything he can find in his workshop to kill the rats in his pigeon shack. He fires it and destroys everything from his pigeons to his clothes to every single window pane in sight. Needless to say he doesn't even manage to harm a single rat.
• Those Two Guys: The policemen Bruno (the fat one) and Helmut (the long, thin, stupid one, although Bruno ain't Einstein, either)
  • On the other side, Kalli and Hörni.
• Toilet Humor: Inevitable in the Lehrjahre stories, but not at all absent outside them either.
• Unusual Euphemism: The term "kesseln" (literally "to kettle") has been used in various, not always entirely clear contexts before, but Volle Latte! used it for sex.
• Vanity License Plate: Non-vanity real-life license plates are a minority in Werner. Although they are much rarer in Germany compared to the US in Real Life.
• Vomit Indiscretion Shot: Pretty much standard, considering the amount of drinking going on.
  Hörni and Kalli: UUUÄÄÄÄÄRGL BLAAAAAAK
  • Among the reasons for Werner to throw up are riding a BMW motorcycle and seeing a German motorcycle cop dressed in green coveralls on the old white and green police bikes. His brother Andi sometimes has to hurl upon spotting Japanese sports bikes.
  • In "Dieselterror" in Volle Latte!, riding humongous singles gets the better of Werner. He is so shaken that he feels he can't drink beer anymore. When he does, he immediately throws up several cubic meters of foam.

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