Globi

From Swisscomics

Globi was created in 1932 to mark the 25th anniversary of the Globus department store. The firm, which at the time had subsidiaries in Zurich, Basle, Sankt Gallen, Chur and Aarau wanted a character who would welcome and entertain children during the fifteen-days' anniversary programme. This is how this strange bird came into being; J.-K. Schiele and Robert Lips had him hatched in the middle of the Sahara and reach Switzerland in a few flaps of the wing. Globi embodies the archetypal individual full of resourcefulness, positive thinking, generosityand curiosity. Though sometimes mischievous, he is never cruel. After more than 65 years and sixty-odd albums, Globi is the longest-lived Swiss comic strip. While the character has lost some of its infantile traits during the course of its existence the overall design of the comic strip has remained the same: pages divided into regular spaces, no balloon captions, versified and typewritten text (when there are texts), and black-and-white drawings that do not aim to achieve a realistic effect. When Robert Lips stopped drawing his hero's adventures after 34 albums, Werner Büchi took up the torch; he was followed Peter Heinzer, who continues to entertain a third generation of young readers.