Bamse
| Bamse – Världens starkaste björn | |
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Bamse, the title character, carrying a can of honey
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| Publication information | |
| Publisher |
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| Format | Ongoing series |
| Publication date(s) | 1966–present |
| Creative team | |
| Created by | Rune Andréasson |
Bamse – Världens starkaste björn (Swedish for "The world's strongest bear") is a Swedish cartoon created by Rune Andréasson. The highly popular children's cartoon first emerged as a series of television short films as well as a weekly half page Sunday strip in 1966, before being published periodically in its own comic magazine since 1973.
Andréasson did all the artwork himself until 1975 and wrote all comics until 1990. Francisco Tora did all the illustrations from 1976 until he was joined by Bo Michanek in 1983. In the early 1990s several new writers and illustrators were hired, including Claes Reimerthi, Anna Friberger and Tony Cronstam. Andréasson continued to do the magazine cover illustrations until 1992.
The series somewhat changed direction when Bamse had children, specifically triplets, in 1982. In 1986 he had a fourth child, and his friend Lille Skutt having one at the same time. Family life is now in focus, and here also the basic values shine through, like that of gender equality. In 1989 Skalman noticed that Bamse's fourth child Brumma had a mental disability, later defined as Asperger's syndrome, which again brought up the subject of equality. The children did develop in real-time within the magazine, but seem to have been fixed in age since around 1990. They are now around nine years old, in a narratively advantageous eternal state as third-graders.
Both the early Sunday strips and the early magazines have today been reprinted as glossy hard-bound volumes.
In 1998 the themepark Bamses Värld ("Bamse's World") started as an attraction at the Kolmården Zoo, with theater performances, restaurant and houses from the comic.
The magazine has educational goals. On special "school" pages, the characters educate the reader about animals, foreign cultures, the Universe, and other subjects. They often deal with superstition, and Skalman's sceptical views ("I only believe what I know") wins over those of his more naive friends. On the other hand, beings like trolls, tomtar and dragons exist on a very real plane in most of the stories. As the series have evolved, the values expressed have become more general and less ideological. A fact sheet written and published by Andreasson in 1983 following a trip to the People's Republic of China became very controversial as it seemed to praise Mao Zedong's dictatorial rule as a "liberation" and claimed that "nobody's starving anymore" in China under Communist single-party rule. It was later edited heavily when the adventure was reprinted in 2004.
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Wikipedia