The Future of Spirou?

A couple months back, I wrote a piece titled “Spirou and Toxic Fandom.”  The current creators of the series lamented that the fans will never be happy, because they all want something different.  It led to a discussion of toxic fandom and how, in many ways, the French and American markets are similar.

But there’s another half to that article, and that’s the part that talks about the formatting of Franco-Belgian comics.  Sales are down on Spirou (by more than half since the 90s), and the creators were hinting at leaving the title after an eight year run.  Was it time for a more radical change?

The other shoe dropped this week.  We now have an idea of what Spirou’s future is.  And it’s half superhero.

Just when I tried to get out, they keep pulling me back in…

 

The Belgian X-Men

Supergroom answers the call for help!

I had to put that in big bold type, just because it amuses me so and, let’s face it, Marvel doesn’t have a good representation track record with Belgians.

Spirou’s publisher, Dupuis, is putting the “Spirou” series on hold for now.  In its place, the current creative team of Fabien Vehlmann and Yoann will be working on a new Spirou series, where he is Supergroom the superhero.  They will publish the books at a smaller size with stories that are “more airy” and have a “narrower narrative.”

Yup, sounds like American superhero comics.

The Spirou Reporter has most of this story right all the way back in February 2017.  The rumored plan back then was that they’d alternate between Supergroom and standard Spirou albums.

The plan now is to put the standard books on hold.

Supergroom in the Batguy Car
Supergroom meets All Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder’s Batman

The thought is that they need to recapture the younger readers in France, who are big into manga and American superhero books.  Vehlmann and Yoann did some of this style of work already and it must have gone over well.  Some of it was collected in “The Crazy Adventures of Spirou” album.  Now, Dupuis is betting on it for the next couple years.

They also plan to continue on with Emil Bravo’s World War II Spirou series, which works in a more ligne claire style. That series has a new book this fall, with plans for three additional ones after that.

Emil Bravo draws Ligne Claire Spirou

And that’s it.

These publishing plans are only covering the next two years.  After that, everything’s up for grabs again, but hopefully, they’ll have a good idea of their market and make the proper adjustments.

 

Overproduction

The other problem they hint at in the article is over-production.  There have been too many Spirou-related titles in recent years.

Besides the main series, there’s also “Spirou By…”, a series of one-shot albums by different creative teams.  Give a creator a chance to write and/or draw one Spirou tale in their style and stand back and watch the fun. (It worked for Lucky Luke, too.)

I’ve flipped through some of those “Spirou By” books and they look great.  There aren’t any names on the list that might sound familiar to readers of this website — except Lewis Trondheim, who wrote one — but it’s a great group of artists with wildly different styles.

Here are some of the covers, to give you an idea:

Also, the great Jose-Luis Munuera (of “The Campbells” fame) did a Zorglub book last year and has another one coming out this year.

And, recently translated is the “His Name Was Ptirou” book, which is a graphic novel history of how Spirou came to be created.

Plus, you have other series like “Marsupilami” and “Le Petit Spirou” that spin out of Spirou proper.

Did Dupuis over-saturate the market?

From an American point of view, that almost seems like a silly idea.  There’s one main series.  There’s a second series, effectively, that’s an anthology so it’ll never sell consistently. There’s a kids book.  There’s a couple random spin-offs that don’t share a lot of the same characters.

Yeah, that’s just your typical week at Marvel and DC once one character sells a lot.

 

It Hits Home

It’s hilarious to me that as I would love to see the American comics market move more towards the European style of deluxe original graphic novel releases in lieu of serialized stories and cheap small trades, the French market is playing around with one of its biggest characters, and pushing him in a more American direction of publishing — both in formatting and content.

Supergroom questions Batguy's methods
Let me translate this for you: Supergroom asks Batguy if he thought about questioning the suspects….Batguy thinks that’s a cultural difference.

Well, not entirely. Spirou as a superhero is planned to be happy and lighter.  Now THAT’S something that doesn’t play well in North America!

Liberation, the source of this story, also cracked me up because it takes such pains to explain to its audience that Spirou is not owned by its creators.  Given the way the book was created initially 80 years ago, the publisher, Dupuis, is the owner of it.  That’s why they’ve been able to continuously publish it for so long, rotate out creative teams, and publish an assortment of other Spirou titles along the way.

Compare that to Asterix, which Albert Uderzo owned until relatively recently.  He only put a book out every so many years.  He didn’t fill the inbetween years with spin-offs.  He’s since sold to a publisher, and they have, with his blessing, moved the series on to Ferri and Conrad with an every other year kind of schedule. But you haven’t seen a Corsican spin-off book, or a Julius Caesar one shot, or an “Asterix Kids” series on the side.

Wait, has anyone seen Tome and Janry lately?  Are we absolutely sure they’re not working on that at the moment?

 

Different Country, Same Old Movies

Les Aventures de Spirou et Fantasio

The article also lays out to the Franco-Belgian readers that when a Spirou movie was made last year, they never consulted Vehlmann and Yoann on anything.

Can you imagine?!? 

But they don’t own the book, and they’ve only been doing it for less than ten years. Every creative team change leads to new direction in the series.  And it’s not like Franquin, Jije, or Rob-Vel are still around to consult…

 

Fun To Watch?

Spirou #4080 cover

I hope this turns out to be fun to watch, and not a train wreck.  I’ll be watching.

I’m afraid Emil Bravo’s style isn’t my thing.  Much to my own chagrin, I’ve yet to get into any ligne claire title.  I’m more Marcinelle School.  If they ever translate it, though, I’ll give it a chance.

 

Further Reading

Early Supergroom adventures are not available in English yet, but you can buy the French edition digitally at Izneo.

For further reading, Lambiek offers a history of Spirou.

It doesn’t update often these days, but The Spirou Reporter is a great site for Spirou-related news.

There’s also an official Spirou website.


What do YOU think? (First time commenters' posts may be held for moderation.)

9 Comments

  1. Hmmmm this is a really an interesting development, that I didn’t see coming; thank you for catching me up on this. Because of my job at the moment, I’m so disconnected from the Comics world that you’re officially my number one source for BD news right now! Pat yourself in the back for me willya 😉 Downside is when you post something like this early morning I end up late for work; that’s on you pal 😀

    Your “Marvel doesn’t have a good representation track record with Belgians.” comment made me laugh at loud for a solid minute; heck, Marvel has a lousy track record with cajuns, southerners, canadians, gays, lesbians, straight women, Brits, you name it!

    The comparison you make with regular Marvel or DC fare seems apt, but on second look, reading from the dialogue in some of the panels you reproduce, it seems to me that this series will be played entirely for laughs, which made me think, more appropriately, about that time when Disney introduced SuperGoof and DarkWing Duck. That was pure unapologetic brand diversification, like New Coke and Clear Pepsi, just in case the regular flavour would happen to wither and die of old age. This is a typical case when an IP is owned by a corporation and not an individual set of creators. The fact that the magazine you mention goes to great lengths to explain this particular case of rights ownership is clearly the indication that in Europe, this is an exception. Hence the complete disconnection when it comes to the movie’s inception, as film directors are also considered artists in their own rights over here (don’t tell that to Michael Bay).

    Speaking of movies, a new one coming out these days is about Becassine, a beloved illustré character from the early 20th century, which would be rightswise in a similar situation, so I’m curious to see how that plays out.

    Circling back to Spirou, I don’t think that anyone under 85 has ever seen a traditional hotel groom in real life, costume and all, even in the most remote parts of Europe. So when it comes to youngsters, I am really puzzled how this branding is going to click. The way I see it, the traditional Spirou concept is clearly obsolete, but the positive point is that its blandness opens up to an infinity of potential interpretations by modern creators, so… Why not! It worked for Batman, sort of.

    Interestingly it’s the opposite approach to Tintin, just as bland as a concept (a generic reporter has all sorts of adventures) but the original creator was wise enough to quash any attempts at transmission before he died, thus preserving the brand’s quality, because it is scarce and genuine.

    For me, Spirou works best as a period piece, so it’s good that they want to explore that aspect as well. My all-time favourite Spirou story is the retro tale written and drawn by Yves Chaland in the 80s but sadly he died before its serialization was brought to closure, so I doubt this will ever been translated into english. That’s really too bad.

  2. I said (to myself only, maybe) that I wanted to expand out this site this year to cover more than just reviews. News is part of that. Thankfully, things like this land on my lap from time to time. Glad to hear people like it. =)

    I don’t know how representative of Supergroom those panels are. That short story was a direct spoof. I think other stories with Supergroom are light-hearted, but not quite as satirical/spoof-like. I believe the stories are being serialized in the Spirou magazine these days. I need to go look through a few of those to get some ideas…

    The problem you outline about Spirou and timeliness reminds me of Disney Ducks. I was deeply involved in that fandom in the 90s, and the discussion there was always whether to modernize the Ducks or keep them locked up in the 40s/50s/60s when Carl Barks was making those comics. Don Rosa always set his stories in the 50s and it worked well for him. Modern Ducks usually seem weird to me, but I’m sure the current generation growing up with the new DuckTales series would prefer the modern version of the Ducks.

    I’m old and still learning how to deal with that. 😉

    1. Join the club 😉 Next time I’m in a bookstore (next week maybe) I’ll check out the book and look at the other stories. I’ll get back to you.

        1. I found the solution. You’re logged in with two different email addresses. One has the Gravatar attached; the other doesn’t. I have the same problem. It all makes sense now….

  3. I recently read the “Folles Aventures De Spirou” short story collection at the public library and ehhh…
    Supergroom works well enough as a silly 8 pager I guess (and barely at that for most of the other stories in the book if you ask me), but I sure as hell don’t want to read a full series of it.
    Kinda like making movies out of SNL skits; other than The Blues Brothers (a true cinematic masterpiece) and maybe the first Wayne’s World, were any of them remotely good?

    The thing is, regular Spirou hasn’t really been up to par since Tome & Janry, and they’ve been utterly outclassed by Le Spirou De (still have to read them all, but the Schwatz/Yann ones are amazing!), basically this reeks of desperation on Dupuis’s part.

    If you want funny superhero from France -published in Spirou by Dupuis by the way-, check out Imbattable by Pascal Jousselin, it’s absolutely hilarious with an ingenious use of the panel grid as a storytelling tool.
    Here’s a link to an article with some sample strips to give you an idea
    http://bdzoom.com/113166/interviews/%C2%AB-imbattable-%C2%BB-un-entretien-hors-cadre-avec-pascal-jousselin/

    1. Yeah I’ve seen this. It’s very funny & meta, but the same joke structure over and over again. Not sure this can be sustained for more than a few pages.

  4. I just watched the 2018 live-action Adventures of Spirou movie that is just out on video and streaming. It’s actually not that bad (not great, sure, but…) in a Chevy Chase / Johnny English for kids kind of way, it’s watchable. the authors are trying to channel some of the classic Franquin-Greg volumes and from a visual perspective it’s bearable.

  5. Now 76/81 of the Lucky Luke books have been translated into English by Cinebook. If all 81 Lucky Luke books are translated into English. What do you think Cinebook’s next big series will be once they’ve translated all 81 Lucky Luke books? Possibly Spirou and Fantasio, or The Bluecoats possibly?