Spirou and Fantasio v13 Z is for Zorglub cover detail
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Spirou and Fantasio v13: “Z is for Zorglub”

Writer: Andre Franquin and Greg
Artist: Andre Franquin (with backgrounds by Jidehem)
Lettering: Design Amorandi
Translator: Jerome Saincantin
Published by: Dupuis/Cinebook
Number of Pages: 67
Original Publication: 1961

 

This is Franquin in his prime, with a villain who steals the show.  Spip and Marsupilami appear on nearly every page.

This is a very good book, indeed. It’s my favorite Spirou book so far.

 

It’s the Whole Family

The gang is all together in Spirou, including Fantasio, Spip, and Marsupilami

The first thing I like about this one is that it features the whole Spirou gang.  It’s nice to have Spirou, Fantasio, Spip, and Marsupilami all together in some combination on every page.  And it’s not treated like a special occasion. It’s business as usual, and that’s pretty cool.  Marsupilami even gets sucked into the main story near the end.

I’m reading this series out of order, so perhaps this is the usual course of events for these books, but it’s the first time I’ve seen it.

This is kind of like a Bat Family title, where Batman, Robin, and Batgirl are hanging out in the Batcave with Ace the Bat-Hound and Nightwing just lounging on a couch in the background.

 

Straight Out of 1960s Sci-Fi Central Casting

There’s something about this book that feels almost like prototypical science-fiction stories of the 1950s and 1960s.  It has a lot of gadgets, including a mind control zappy ray gun thing and, of course, the handheld device that will help negate those rays.  You also get frequent talk about the fear of radiation.  There’s radio hijacking and subliminal messaging to control crowds.

Franquin hits on every trope of 60s sci-fi all in one comic, seemingly.

There are cool ships and planes. You have a bad guy bent on world domination for very little good reason, other than it seems like the career path of his type.  You get mad scientists and adventurous young men looking for adventure.

Fantasio rides the chairs on tracks

Everything looks the part, too, from the obvious fashions and car designs down to the moving chairs, the brainwasher that you stick your head into, the instant hair shaver half-bowl, and so much more.

It’s even in the environment of the scenes.  Those clean metal panels, the uncomfortable looking chairs, the flashing light panels, etc. This book feels like something made for a World’s Fair of the time. It turns out to be a time capsule in the past that shows us their expected future.

The one part that does crack me up, though, is Zorglub’s chosen mode of transportation. It’s a hovercraft kind of ething, but it’s not the kind that runs along the ground on a blown up airbag.

Zorglub flies a drone

No, Zorglub is 50 years ahead of his time and is flying a drone. It’s four fans blowing air straight down to achieve take-off, strong enough for passengers in the middle.  I can’t tell if there’s a camera pointing down to get great B roll footage for YouTube videos, though…  Guess Zorglub didn’t think this one all the way through.

It’s a classic piece of work.  It ages well because it looks like the best parts of that era.  There’s not a mocking tone behind the sci-fi/fantasy parts.  This is all taken seriously, even when it’s done for laughs.

 

The Mad Science Archetype

Zorglub is just a fascinating character.  He’s a genius scientist with a short temper and overly large ambitions, minus a sense of morality that would keep him on the straight and narrow.

Zorglub walks in, looking a little like Gargamel

He looks a little like Gargamel, but dressed with a suit jacket always draped over his shoulders.

He’s more Doctor Doom, the super smart scientist who takes the wrong path with his super science skills.  That just makes Spirou and Fantasio’s friend, Dr. Champignac, out to be Reed Richards, of course: his equal but opposite.  He’s the one who studied in school and played things by the book and didn’t cross any ethical lines.   Zorglub was much more self-involved and showed more contempt for “the system.”

Champignac believed in Zorglub too much, leaving him open to being hoodwinked.  There’s a gentility between the two men, where they can talk like perfect scientists and friends while discussing the most hair-brained schemes you can imagine.

Champignac and Zorglub discuss their plans

Zorglub and Champignac are the stars of this issue.  It’s their back-and-forth moments that drive the story and are the most interesting, from a character point of view in a plot-driven story.

You almost want to root for Zorglub, but he does some mean things to people and has a crazy plot that needs to be foiled. Thankfully, that’s what Spirou and his pals are there to do.  The ending is stupidly brilliant in a most a-dork-able way.  Sometimes, it’s the smallest details that can make things to go wrong.

 

Recommended?

Spirou and Fantasio v13 Z is for Zorglub cover

Heck, yes.  This is my favorite volume in the series so far.  Andre Franquin (with Jidehem on backgrounds) is in his prime here.  Every character on every panel on every page is interesting to look at.  I love all the hand gestures and poses, and particularly the way Zorglub floats along like a mad scientist perfectly in control of his evil scheme.

— 2018.053 —

 

Buy It Now

Buy this book on Amazon Click here to buy digital BD comics albums through Izneo.com  Buy this book on Comixology

Izneo.com Preview

 

 


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11 Comments

  1. One of the few and first Spirou by Franquin comics that I’ve read, my expectations were probably a bit too high, because I wasn’t crazy about it. But I consider it a good comic with a great ending. A couple of years ago there was some discussion about this ending on the European comics subreddit (back when it only had like 200 subscribers or something). I wrote about it because I was so surprised by it! To me it’s the most unexpected ending to a story ever. https://www.reddit.com/r/bandedessinee/comments/3yedrq/this_ending_to_a_classic_comic_book_is_the/

    1. Yeah, it is a completely bizarre ending, mostly because we’re all so used to never seeing corporate logos in fiction anymore. It’s always obscured or changed to something similar, but not legally questionable. Thanks for pointing to that Reddit thread. There’s a lot of great info on there to dig through….

  2. Some say with good reasons that this is the zenith of Spirou, the high level that was never reached again; they would probably be right. This is the era where Michel Greg joins Franquin on the series and you can feel his zaniness in the script, starting famously with his invention of Zorglub, which is the quintessential Bond villain, inspired by Dr. No (the book, not the film since it only came out in ’62). I’m probably biased here since Greg’s masterpiece, Achille Talon, is my favourite series of all time, but you can also see his craft in other wonderful series from Spirou and Tintin Magazines like Olivier Rameau or Bernard Prince which he also wrote around the same period. Well worth checking out. Here, he meets Franquin’s artistic genius for comedy and this is as good as it will ever get. You point out Franquin’s love for designing futuristic cars and gizmos, it’s so brilliant that there was a whole line of toys based on that a few years ago.
    The Marsu had become very popular with kids at that point so it was hard for them to avoid putting it in everything. You know it was good since Marsu is the only licensing that Disney ever bought from Europe, you know, other than plundering our fairy tales and turning them into dull patronizing syrup. Of course, he’s not central to the story since he works better as a comic relief, on the side. I never could understand how Franquin’s heirs were able to put out so many solo volumes and make so much money, but hey that’s the reason I’m not in charge of marketing anywhere.

    1. The Franquin/Marsupilami vs. Disney story is a great one, and one that I’ve planned to write an extensive post on for the last year. I’ve been trying to get my hands on some of the legal documents to back it up. That’s been the delay. But I’ll be detailing that story here eventually.

      The trick with the Marsupilami albums is that they’re usually about the new people in the jungle primarily. Marsupilami is the trickster who works against their efforts to do bad things. Because, you’re right, there’s not much to Marsupilami past the great visual of his tail and all the things it can do.

      Thanks for the background on Greg. I didn’t realize all of that. Personally, I’m hoping we see Jose Luis Munuera’s “Zorglub’s Daughter” book translated into English sometime soon….

      1. It’s essentially Franquin’s estate since I think he was already dead by then. I’d definitely read it when you post that.
        Michel Greg has had an incredible life, one that mirrors Goscinny’s in a way. Someone should write a biography if that hasn’t been done already. He lived in Hollywood for a while and at some point in the seventies he was writing material for French characters on the Love Boat TV show. It’s too bad Achille Talon can never be translated in other languages, it would give our good friends Bell & Hockridge a massive stroke 🙂

        1. In the case of Franquin vs. Disney, Franquin was still alive at the start of the lawsuit. He died a few months before the final judgment in the case awarded him $10 million. Or, I should say, the judge awarded his company $10,000,000, because he had formed Marsu Productions before all of this began…

          And there’s another story there to talk about with the American adventures of Morris, Franquin, and Jije, complete with a comic book that was almost blocked by one of their family’s. (I forget whose, off the top of my head.)

          sigh, I need to quit the day job…

        2. I’ve occasionally contemplated what it’d be like translating an Achille Talon. Usually while I’m reading one – it’s kind of an automatic process now; read a bubble, enjoy the book, have a cordonned-off section of your brain do the translating by itself …

          Usually I do a couple of sentences then half my little grey cells shut down in protest while the other half burst into flames.

          I wouldn’t dare compare myself to Bell & Hockridge, mind you, but yeah… Even they would find the job just a TAD difficult, I reckon!

          1. That’s how I read a comic, too, all too often: Read a panel, enjoy a page, wonder how it’s going to fit into my eventual review. I try to shut that down, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t thinking about what I was going to write as I’m reading. It’s a sickness.

            I need to look up more on Achille Talon. I don’t know much about it. Wait, here I go:

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achille_Talon

            Sounds like fun. The Canadians once did an English translation. Izneo has all the French books, it looks like. They do look like a lot to translate, and I’m sure there’s a ton of cultural references in there, too… But, hey, there’s close to 40 books worth of material there. Just translate the “easier” pages. 😉

  3. Did you know there’s a basketball team named after Spirou called Spirou Charleroi in the town in Belgium where Marcinelle is a suburb of?