Origins of Spirou 's Spirou The comic strip was originally created by
Rob-Vel for the launch of ''
(Spirou'' magazine) on April 21, 1938, and published by
Éditions Dupuis. The main character was originally an elevator (lift) operator (in
French: ) for the Moustique Hotel (in reference to the publisher's chief magazine, ), and remained dressed in his red
bellhop uniform for a long time after the occupation was dropped. 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 and liberated in the following week's issue, remaining a presence in all stories since. Adding to the difficulties of magazine publication that came with the outbreak of
World War II, Velter, a French national, joined the army effort, and his wife Blanche Dumoulin, using the pen name Davine, continued the work on the strip, with the aid of the young Belgian artist Luc Lafnet. Spirou became the property of the publisher Dupuis (atypical in France and Belgium where most comic characters are owned by their creator(s)), 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 success 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.
Franquin's Franquin developed the strip from single gags and short serials into long adventures with complex plots and is usually considered the definitive author of the strip. He introduced a large gallery of recurring characters, notably the
Count de Champignac, an 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 Franco-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. 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 the 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 , with the exception of a few discreet references. Only in the 1980s did the Marsupilami reappear in its own series, and later a television cartoon and video game.
A long transition 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 (in contrast with his dislike of
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 . 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 that annihilates sound, is in fact an acknowledged rehash from an early
Sophie story by Jidéhem (). 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's case 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 pre-published in 1982 in magazine, 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, , and then, legally, under the name of (Champaka editor, 1990). This last edition includes the original strips, and a text by
Yann Le Pennetier, illustrated by Chaland, that finishes the interrupted story.
Tome and Janry – the Dynamic Duo It was the team of
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'', featuring future descendants of the Count and Zorglub). Their position as the official Spirou authors made them the flagship team to a whole new school of young, like-minded 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 (originally published in the weekly magazine). 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 center of gags center around the character's interest in the opposite sex. It is generally acknowledged, however, that the Petit Spirou has little 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 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 (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 style. This sudden shift into a darker tone shocked many readers, although its seeds were apparent in previous Spirou albums and in other series by the same authors (
Soda, ). While many considered the change in tone to be courageous and laudable, there was some concern that Spirou lost much of its point when presented as a "realistic" character. At any rate, the controversy caused Tome and Janry to concentrate on , and stop making albums in the main series.
in the 21st century Morvan and Munuera After a six-year break, which only saw the publication of , 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 third album, was released 20 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 a
manga story by Hiroyuki Oshima after an idea by Morvan. This story tells Spirou's adolescence as a bellhop in a five-star
Tokyo hotel. Due to a significant decline in sales, Dupuis decided to cease Morvan and Munuera work in Spirou in January 2007. However, they were allowed to complete one last album, , which was released 5 November 2008, with the help of scenarist Yann.
Yoann and Vehlmann In January 2009, it was announced in
Spirou magazine #3694 that Morvan and Munuera would be succeeded by
Fabien Vehlmann and
Yoann, who had together created the first volume of Their first album in the regular series was announced for October 2009, but was later pushed back to September 3, 2010, and is named . Their last album was , published in 2016. In 2018, Yoann and Vehlmann launched a spin-off series with Spirou as a
superhero – (French for 'Superbellhop') – and have since then been focusing on this version of the character.
Guerrive, Abitan & Schwartz In 2022, Sophie Guerrive and Benjamin Abitan (writers) and Olivier Schwartz (artist) had their first Spirou album () published. ======== In 2006, Dupuis launched a second series of one-off volumes by various authors, under the name ('A Spirou and Fantasio adventure by...'). It has subsequently been renamed ('The Spirou story by...') The first volume, by
Fabien Vehlmann and
Yoann, had a modern storyline and art, not dissimilar in spirit to Morvan and Munuera's work. The second volume, , by
Frank Le Gall, is drawn in a more classic style not dissimilar to
The Adventures of Tintin and
Théodore Poussin, Le Gall's own comic series. The third, , by
Yann and
Fabrice Tarrin, is a slightly modernized homage to Franquin's classic period. The fourth, , by
Emile Bravo, is a novelistic homage to the original
Rob-Vel and
Jijé's universes and stories, and was released to critical acclaim, being awarded at the
Angoulême festival. The fifth, by Yann and Olivier Schwartz, is based on one of Yann's old scripts from the 1980s originally intended to have been drawn by Chaland, while the editor rejected it. Yann picked up the artist Schwartz, working in a similar style, to complete the story. The story takes place among the resistance movement in the Nazi-occupied Belgium. Unlike traditional Spirou stories, but similar to other works by Yann, the story features rather much dark humour and political satire. It was released once again to some acclaim but also attracted controversy for its cavalier approach to sensitive issues. The sixth album, , authored by
Lewis Trondheim and
Fabrice Parme, was released on April 16, 2010. A One-Shot album from 2017, ''Il s'appelait Ptirou
(His Name Was Ptirou
), written by Yves Sente and illustrated by Laurent Verron, which was a fictional "real-life" story of a boy that became the inspiration for Spirou, was repurposed and reissued as the first volume of a new spin-off series, Mademoiselle J'', centered around a girl named Juliette, Ptirou's love interest from ''Il s'appelait Ptirou''. To date, this series has two volumes. ======== In 2024, a new series of
Spirou et Fantasio albums, dubbed
Les aventures de Spirou et Fantasio Classique (
The Adventures of Spirou & Fantasio Classic), premiered with its debut album,
La Baie des cochons (
The Bay of Pigs, which takes place during the
Bay of Pigs Invasion), written by Clément Lemoine & Michaël Baril, and illustrated by Elric. These new adventures are styled after the
Franquin run of the series, especially in art style. ==Characters==