Taking Goethe's Concept of 'Weltliteratur' ('world literature') as a starting point, this essay looks for today's possible multi-cultural approaches to Goethe and his era, with special emphasis on the comic strip version of the first part of his 'Faust' written by Flix. Taking a closer look at 'Weltliteratur', the aspects of an acceleration in media development (the emergence of periodicals), of the reflection on internal and external differences between cultures and the notion of a selection of the most excellent works are discussed. The result is somewhat sceptical, which does not only draw on today's 'Web literature': A comic strip demonstrates only a limited capacity of multi-cultural translation, and the concept of 'Weltliteratur' - which Goethe did not accidentally develop in aphoristical fragments - appears as a conservative utopia closely tied to the early lieberaliyt period.