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Spirou and Fantasio (Spirou et Fantasio)

Spirou and Fantasio is one of the most popular classic Franco-Belgian comic strips. The series, which has been running since 1938, shares many characteristics with other European humorous adventure comics like Tintin and Asterix. It has been written and drawn by a succession of artists.

Spirou and Fantasio are the series' main characters, two adventurous journalists who run into fantastic adventures, aided by Spirou's pet squirrel Spip and their inventor friend the Count of Champignac.

The strip has been translated to several languages, among them Dutch, German, Portuguese, Spanish, Japanese, Finnish, Scandinavian languages, Serbo-Croatian and Vietnamese. Two books, number 15 and 16, were translated into English, by Fantasy Flight Publishing in 1995. These editions are out of print as of 2007. Egmont has printed and released English translations of Spirou in 2007 in India through its Indian subsidiary ("Euro Books"). So far, albums no 1-11 and 14 have been translated.

The comic strip was originally created by Robert Velter (Rob-Vel) for the launch of the Le Journal de Spirou on April 21, 1938, published by Éditions Dupuis. The main character was originally an elevator (lift) operator for the Moustique Hotel (in reference to the publisher's chief magazine, Le Moustique), and remains dressed in his red bellhop uniform to this day although there was no relevance to his original occupation for many years. Spirou (the name means "squirrel" (lit.) and "mischievous" (fig.) in Walloon) has a pet squirrel called Spip, the series' first supporting character, who was introduced on June 8, 1939 in the story arc titled L'Heritage de Bill Money and liberated in the following week's issue, remaining a presence in all Spirou stories since.

Adding to the difficulties of magazine publication that came with the outbreak of World War II, Velter joined the army effort, and his wife Blanche Dumoulin, using the pen name Davine, continued the work on the Spirou strip, with the aid of the young Belgian artist Luc Lafnet. Spirou became the property of the publisher Dupuis, atypical of most European comics characters, who bought the character from Rob-Vel in 1943, and since then the series has belonged to no specific author. The title has therefore subsequently been passed on to several different artists and writers.

The first succession came in 1943 when Joseph Gillain, known by the pen name Jijé, was given charge of the character. In 1944 Jijé introduced a new character, Fantasio, who would become Spirou's best friend and co-adventurer. Holding many artistic commitments at Le Journal de Spirou, Jijé sought to delegate much of his work, and in 1946 he handed the series to his understudy, the young André Franquin, in the middle of the production of the story Spirou et la maison préfabriquée.

Franquin developed the strip from single gags and short serials into long adventures with complex plots, and is usually considered as the definitive author of the strip. He introduced a large gallery of recurring characters, notably the Count de Champignac, elderly scientist and inventor; the buffoonish mad scientist Zorglub; Fantasio's cousin and aspiring dictator Zantafio; and the journalist Seccotine, a rare instance of a major female character in Belgian comics of this period.

One Franquin creation that went on to develop a life of its own was the Marsupilami, a fictional monkey-like creature with a tremendously long prehensile tail. The Marsupilami appears in the majority of the Franquin stories, starting in 1952 with Spirou et les héritiers. In the series, it is adopted by the duo and follows them everywhere they go. Marsupilamis in the wild take centre stage briefly in Le nid des Marsupilamis (1957) which presents Seccotine's documentary featuring a family in their natural habitat, the jungles of the fictitious South American state Palombia.

Starting with Le prisonnier du Bouddha (1959), Franquin began to work with Greg (writing) and Jidéhem (backgrounds). As in some of his later series (Bruno Brazil, Bernard Prince), Greg staged his stories in a realistic geopolitical context. Le prisonnier du Bouddha is set in mainland China, with veiled references made to the Cold War. As for QRN sur Bretzelburg, it takes place in two imaginary European countries which bring to mind pre-reunification Germany. Lastly, it is with Greg that Franquin created famed villain Zorglub in the diptych of Z comme Zorglub and L'ombre du Z.

However, as Franquin grew tired of Spirou, his other major character Gaston began to take precedence in his work, and following the controversial Panade à Champignac, the series passed on to a then unknown young cartoonist, Jean-Claude Fournier, in 1969. One side effect of this is that the Marsupilami would only appear in one last story, Le faiseur d'or. This is because Franquin decided to retain the rights to that character; all the other characters remained the property of the publisher. Starting with Du glucose pour Noémie, there would be no more appearances of the Marsupilami in Spirou et Fantasio, with the exception of a few discrete references. Only in the 1980s did the Marsupilami reappear in its own series, and later television cartoon and videogame.

Fournier authored nine books in the series, which saw Spirou evolve into a more modern character. Where Franquin's stories tended to be politically neutral (in his later works, notably Idées noires, he would champion pacifist and environmental views), Fournier's stint on Spirou addressed such hot topics (for the 1970s) as nuclear energy (L'Ankou), drug-funded dictatorships (Kodo le tyran) and Duvalier-style repression (Tora Torapa).

Fournier introduced some new characters such as Ororéa, a beautiful girl reporter with whom Fantasio was madly in love with (in contrast with his loathing for Seccotine); Itoh Kata, a Japanese magician; and an occult SPECTRE-like criminal organisation known as The Triangle. None of these were reused by later artists until some thirty years later when Itoh Kata appeared in Morvan and Munuera's Spirou et Fantasio à Tokyo.

However, at the end of the 1970s Fournier's pace began to slow down and the publisher, Dupuis, sought new authors to replace him. For a time, three separate teams worked on concurrent stories. Nic Broca (art) and Raoul Cauvin (writing) took on Fournier's lead without adding much to the characters. Their primary addition to the Spirou universe, namely the "Black box", a device which annihilates sound, is in fact an acknowledged rehash from an early Sophie story by Jidéhem (La bulle du silence). Strangely, the authors were not allowed by the publisher to use any of the side characters and because of this, the duo's three stories read somewhat like a parenthesis in the series.

Yves Chaland proposed a far more radical make-over. His (very short) stint on Spirou is an ironic re-staging of the strip as it was in the 40s. This homage to Jijé and early Franquin was seen at the time as too sophisticated for the mainstream readership. It was prepublished in 1982 in Le Journal de Spirou, n°2297 to n°2318, printed in two-colour, but was interrupted before it was completed. This unfinished story was first collected in an unofficial album in 1984, À la recherche de Bocongo, and then, legally, under the name of Cœurs d'acier (Champaka editor, 1990). This last edition includes the original BDs, and a text by Yann Le Pennetier, illustrated by Chaland, that finishes the interrupted story.

But it was the team of Philippe Tome (writing) and Janry (art) which was to find lasting success with Spirou, both in terms of sales and critical appeal. Graphically, the authors' work was seen as a modern homage to Franquin's classic work, while their plots involved such modern topics as biotech (Virus), robotics (Qui arrêtera Cyanure?) and even time travel (The diptych of L'horloger de la comète and Le réveil du Z, the latter featuring a future reincarnation of Zorglub). Their position as the official Spirou authors made them the flagship team to a whole new school of young, likeminded artists, such as Didier Conrad, Bernard Hislaire or Frank Le Gall, who had illustrious careers of their own. For a time, Spirou also acted as a side character in Frank Pé's short-lived absurd humor strip L'Élan.

With La jeunesse de Spirou (1987), Tome and Janry set out to imagine Spirou's youth. This idea was later developed into a spin-off series, Le Petit Spirou ("Young Spirou"), which details the antics of the character as an elementary school boy. A lot of the gags center around the character's interest in the opposite sex. It is generally acknowledged, however, that the Petit Spirou doesn't have very much in common, psychologically speaking, with the adult character.

A new villain, the unlucky Mafia boss Vito "Lucky" Cortizone, based on the character Vito Corleone from the The Godfather movies, was introduced in Spirou à New-York, while Spirou à Moscou (1990) sees Spirou and Fantasio pay their first visit to the USSR, just as it was about to collapse (the country was dissolved in 1991).

In Machine qui rêve (1998), Tome and Janry tried to once again renew the series with a more mature storyline (wounded hero, love relationships, etc.), coupled with a more realistic graphic character. At any rate, the controversy caused Tome & Janry to concentrate on Le Petit Spirou, and stop making albums in the main series.

Then, after a 6 years break, which only saw the publication of L'accélérateur atomique, a Spirou spoof by Lewis Trondheim not included in the official series (but which received Dupuis' approval), the series went back to a more classical storytelling mode with seasoned cartoonists Jean-David Morvan (writing) and José-Luis Munuera (art). The latter kept close to the spirit of Franquin's graphical style, while bringing its own touch of manga-inspired modernism. Morvan and Munuera's Spirou is partly remarkable in that it uses background elements and secondary characters from the whole history of the title, and not just from Franquin's period.

The duo's latest album, Spirou et Fantasio à Tokyo was released 20th September 2006. Spirou and Fantasio uncover the story of two children with telekinetic powers (similarly to the manga Akira) that are forced to construct an edo and meiji period theme park. Dupuis has also released as Spirou et Fantasio 49Z, a manga story by Hiroyuki Oshima after an idea by Morvan. This story tells Spirou's adolescence as a groom in a 5 star Tokyo hotel.

Due to a significant decline in sales, Dupuis decided to cease Morvan and Munuera work in Spirou in January 2007. No successor has been named yet.

Belgium, 1988, Spirou

Belgium, 2008, Spirou and Fantasio

Belgium, 2009, Comic Characters

France, 2001, Gaston Lagaffe

France, 2001, Gaston Lagaffe

France, 2003, Marsupilami

France, 2006, Fantasio, Spip and Spirou

France, 2006, Spirou

France, 2006, Fantasio

Belgium, 2008.04.12, Turnhout. Spirou et Fantasio