After following artistic studies, he worked as an advertising illustrator for ten years. Drawn to storytelling, he started making comics in the late 1970s. His first album, 'Trucker', was published by Becker und Knigge in 1978. In 1981, he started a series of comic adaptations of short stories by the American writer Charles Bukowski, collected in an album by Heyne. In addition, Schultheiss did artwork for several communication and press assignments, and he illustrated the section 'Die Grüne Hölle' in Stern magazine.
