Fantasio and Spirou v12 Who Will Stop Cyanide cover detail
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Spirou & Fantasio v12: “Who Will Stop Cyanide?”

This is the ne plus ultra of my cartooning likes. I love the whole Marcinelle School style.  I like Franquin’s work when he draws like he did on Gomer the Goof. I’m always entertained by the drawings of the artists he influenced, which is an awfully large number.

I just like the style, period.

Spirou and Fantasia background gags
“Return of the Jedi” was a hot new movie when this book was drawn. But also check out the Smurfs, Lucky Luke, Bluecoats, etc. references on that bed!

The work Tome and Janry do together in “Spirou and Fantasio,” some 25 years after Franquin’s run, pushes that style as far as it can possibly go.  They throw every trick in the book onto the page, from the rumpled clothes to the loose hairs hanging out of heads, to the bent knee stances and large hand gesticulations.

The inks waver between extreme thicks and thins, adding a lot of depth and detail to every panel.  It’s beautiful to look at.

There are some nits I can pick with the storytelling in some places, but the style, itself, is the end result of pushing Franquin’s beloved style to the brink. It’s wonderful. If you’re looking for some inking inspiration for Inktober, I would recommend the “Spirou and Fantasio” books that Tome and Janry did together.

But let’s start with a bit about the story:

 

Stop Me If This Sounds Familiar

A small town is fearful that the robots are about to take over.

Electronic devices begin attacking residents.

the new automation plant in Spirou and Fantasio Who Will Stop Cyanide by Tome and Janry

Furthermore, the new business in town has automated everything.  People fear for their jobs in a world where their lifetime experience has been replaced by robots.

Robots, automation, jobs, world conquering…  Dupuis published this book originally in 1985. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

 

Meet the New Characters

Fantasia doesn't like having his picture taken

This plot has to do with a curious device Fantasio brings back to the office with him.  It’s basically R2D2 with protruding lips.  It’s BB-8.  It leads our title characters and their pet Squirrel to a small town outside the city, where they are confronted by a predecessor of Ada from last season’s “Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD.” (Except she looks like Marilyn Monroe, which is French cartooning shorthand for “beautiful woman.”  That white dress comes up an awful lot…)

French shorthand for beautiful woman: Marilyn Monroe in the white dress

The bad robot leads them on a merry chase and some wanton destruction while they try to clear their name and save the town.

Cyanide has the power to control all electronic equipment.  This leads to lots of visual gags where she commandeers things to keep people away from her, or to hurt people she doesn’t like. It’s quick, effective, and creative. It’s also very visual, so there’s something to draw the reader’s eye across the page at all times.

For an example of Cyanide’s powers: If there’s one thing I’ve learned from watching too much “Bar Rescue,” it’s that the punching machines are bad and you should get rid of all of them.  This is especially true when Cyanide is on the loose:

Cyanide controls a punching machine to punch back

Ouch!

It’s not that the story stops dead in its tracks for those moments, either.  It’s always pushing forward, but never leaving behind the character moments and the fun gags that make the book so memorable.

I enjoyed reading it, though I think in the hands of a less interesting artist, this book would suffer mightily.  But it is that combination that puts this book over the top.  And let’s never forget that the art of comics is a mix of the writing and the art…

 

How Did They NOT See This Coming?

In Cyanide’s origin story, we learn this:

In Cyanide's origin story, she names herself after poison.

Cyanide chose her own name.  She chose to name herself after poison.  I guess someone else took “Arsenic” first?
 

Storytelling

The plot isn’t that complicated and it doesn’t rely on any twist or surprise.  With 50 pages or so to play with, Tome and Janry get the chance to create lots of little comedic moments along the way.  Sure, they could edit the story down a bunch, but that would service plot over general entertainment. Without those bits of humor and action, the book would be bland.  It’s worth slowing down the story to service the reader’s entertainment.  I like that they can have the little breathing room to do a random car chase scene in the middle of the story.

Like I said at the beginning, if there are any shortcomings to this book, it’s in the panel to panel storytelling.  There are a few isolated sequence that I reread an extra time to follow correctly.  There are also times when the panel is zoomed in too tight to the action. A little breathing room might have made following the events easier as well as opening up the page a bit more.

Here’s a quick example from the bottom of the very first page.  It’s a funny gag, but there’s just too big a gap in the action between the second and third panels.

The camera explode into little pieces

I missed that Fantasio didn’t push the button between those two panels the first time.  He’s holding out the trigger to the camera store employee in the second panel to pass it off.  I thought it was a set-up at that point for when he pushed the trigger.  Maybe I assumed too much.  Maybe the sight of the employee’s hand reaching into the panel from the right to grab the trigger would have been the extra clue I needed to make the smooth transition to the third panel.

It’s a great gag, but it needed more to sell it.  It needed an extra panel, or it needed to make the second panel wider so we can see more of the hand-off.

 

Recommended?

Spirou and Fantasio v12 Who Will Stop Cyanide cover

Yes, this is a fun and harmless book with great cartooning work and none of the racial caricatures that plague previous volumes I’ve reviewed.  I love the style. There are great comedic moments, and a fun and crazy sense of action in places.

(This is Pipeline BD 100 review #69.)

 

Buy This Book

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Izneo.com Preview

 

Coming Up Next…

The next book in this series that’s due out soon from Cinebook is “Z is for Zorglub.”  Why does that excite me?

Zorglub is a villain for Spirou and Fantasio who recently starred in a book that Jose-Luis (“The Campbells”) Munuera wrote and drew.  With his introduction out there, I’d love to see that book translated for this series sometime sooner rather than later…  And then I can get greedy and ask for reprints on the other four books in this series that Munuera drew?  Please, Cinebook?

I assume it’s only a matter of time, but I don’t want to wait through another 30 books first…

Zorglub by Jose-Luis Munuera

 


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3 Comments

  1. I really enjoy your site, and seeing a different perspective on the European BDs is pretty cool.
    I’m French Canadian, so between Europe and USA I’ve always had the best of both worlds for comics.

    I got into Spirou in the early 80s, borrowing them from the public library, just before Tome & Janry started their run which I got to followed as they were coming out brand new.

    So to try to explain and clear it up for you as to who/what Spirou and Fantasio are…
    I can’t say for sure exactly what they did when they were first created, but once Franquin took over, they were these random reporters/adventurers in the Tintin style. When Franquin created Gaston Lagaffe (Gomer? wtf…) he set it in a fictionalized cartoon version of the real Edition Dupuis who publish Spirou and all these other BDs, Spirou became this sort of meta-mascot, and Fantasio -while still being a reporter in the Spirou series- became one of the editors/bosses to act as a foil for Gaston. Once Franquin quit doing Spirou, Fantasio was no longer under his creative control so he was phased out of Gaston, and supporting character/staff member Prunelle took over as the new Gaston foil.

    By the way it really sucks if all those series are published out of order, because there is so much continuity involved. Even for Gaston Lagaffe which is constantly evolving despite being a strip gag serial, that one you reviewed was like volume 4 in French.

    Personal opinion of the Spirou series:

    Franquin run, books 1 to 19, 24, plus some pre-numbered stuff: First half is on-and-off, but second half starting at 9 is still unequaled in its greatness.
    Fournier run (20 to 29): enjoyable yet mostly blah, but I haven’t read them since the 80s.
    Nic & Cauvin run (30-32): …eeeeh, they’re kinda there I guess. Weakest run by far.
    Tome & Janry run (33 to 46): return to greatness, LOVED them! Well except maybe for 42-44, (I hope you like those New York gangsters…) Then their last one was… a game-changer that nearly killed the series, too long a story to get into here.
    (sidebar: The series was slowly getting a grittier style so-to-speak with the gangsters and stuff, something Tome really went into with his other series Soda -with a few different artists- about a man pretending to be a priest so his mother won’t know he’s a cop, a great series by the way, I’m behind a few volumes on that one.)
    Tome & Janry’s Le Petit Spirou spinoff (closing in on 20 albums I think): fun stuff starring a kid Spirou with new supporting cast, but haven’t kept up in in years.
    Morvan & Munuera run (47-50): if you like Munuera maybe you’ll enjoy it more than I did, which was not much at all. Didn’t feel much like Spirou to me with the manga vibe, but at least they put their own style on it.
    Yoann & Velhmann run (51 to 55, now): back to a more classic feel, in-between Franquin and Tome/Janry, there’s some great stuff in here, but it’s still missing something to really make it great.

    Or maybe I’m getting old.

    Then there’s the “Le Spirou De…” elseworlds-style series, I haven’t read all of them, but I absolutely loved the ones by Schwartz & Yann that set the story in late WW2, then post war in their second two-volume story.

    So anyway, sorry if this was long-winded… keep up the great work!

    1. Thanks for the long-winded reply. Sorry I didn’t reply sooner, but I just finished reading it. (Kidding.)

      I did peek at the final Tome & Janry Spirou book. Yes, I can see they were doing something different there entirely. I kind of liked it, even if I don’t know exactly what happened in it. Someday, I will. =)

      I’ve heard good things about Soda, and that Lethal Lullaby looks interesting, too.

      I think I’ll like Munuera’s Spirou more, yes. I see a lot of complaints about it because it doesn’t stick to the same Franquin-ish style. I don’t have quite the same attachment to that. I like Franquin’s stuff, but I also like some of the recent crazier interpretations of the characters. (I also like the Glenat Disney books where you get artists drawing Mickey and Donald in their own styles.)

      I’ve not read any Yoann/Vehlmann stuff yet, but the art I’ve seen from it looks good. I agree on the in-between look there. It’s a nice compromise between the two. Tome and Janry could get really wild and extreme sometimes…

      And, most of all, thanks for the further explanation on Fantasio and his role. =)

  2. Well said.
    One of the great things about Spirou as a character is that, like Batman, it’s generic/iconic enough that it can adapt to all kinds of contexts and stories. For a long time it was confined to silly romps but now is attempting to push the boundaries of genre. Risky and courageous at the same time.
    And the fact that Augie likes the Marcinelle school so much is a testament to the perfect blend of slapstick comedy and action/adventure. Those artists have the right skillset to both appeal to kids with the big nose stuff and are master storytellers to still be enjoyable for adult readers; these are not just pretty drawings, they expertly service the script to convey the story. Which is why I’ll take Franquin or Maurice Tillieux over Jim Lee or Greg Land any day.