What do you mean? Dead ? Passed from life to death, Spirou? No way. Since 1938 he has survived everything, robots, tyrants and mafiosi, all these madmen who want to be masters of the world, all these inventions intended to submit humanity, the zorglonde of Zorglub, and even the death of many of its parents, successors and successors. We buried the original Rob-Vel, and then Jijé who gives Spirou a Fantasio friend for life, and then the brilliant Franquin with his Marsupilami, his Turbotraction, a whole universe. Think! Franquin left the courageous Fournier to manage with this hero from the twentieth title of a series which now has more than fifty.
But who are these murderers, to whom do we owe this crime against humanity, good humor and mushrooms? The duty grabbed two of the three lads, which are actually four. In police custody, even in a well-guarded interview, the designer Olivier Schwartz and one of the screenwriters, a certain Benjamin Abitan. The co-screenwriter Sophie Guerrive is still running, and the publisher Stéphane Beaujean, the real Machiavelli of the case, is absent subscribers.
Alibis and affidavits
Misters Schwartz and Abitan, explain yourselves! In whose brain did this inadmissible idea, this frightening title, germinate? Abitan accuses. “It’s one of Sophie’s first ideas. It really pleased Stéphane, who, as a good editor, saw in it a reference to The Death of Superman which had revived interest in the hero and boosted sales. For my part, I was absolutely against this title. I was disappointed that my first Spirou either a kick in the totem, on the contrary I would have liked to do something perfectly academic. »
The art of clearing oneself: the absent are always wrong. “Looking back, I find that very good. Do we still need heroes like Spirou today? We really have to put this need to the test, shake the scaffolding before climbing back on it, and thus check whether Spirou is still able to talk about his time. In this sense, killing Spirou was the best way to wake him up. It smells of the living dead, all that. Schwartz specifies that his accomplices did not come from the world of comics, it was he who “took care of the cutting”, and it is to him that we owe the terrible sequence on page 51, where Spirou escapes to Fantasio and sinks into the abyssal depths, without a bubble to breathe.
And if it was true ?
“Readers don’t want to believe it, this death,” observes Schwartz. They are waiting for the solution. And at the same time, they have a slight doubt…” Indeed, who knows? Abitan is quiet on this. A large page at the end of the album announces a great upheaval: “Find soon the adventures of Seccotine Fantasio and Spip in the Journal Spirou. “Disguised as a voluntary retirement, we understand, the disappearance of the character allows the publisher, in the last pages of this fateful volume 56, to relaunch the “mother series” with the journalist-heroine instead of the groom-hero .
From there to think that we will have a series of episodes with Seccotine at the forefront of the action, before resuscitating Spirou, possibly for the centenary in 2038, there is only one step, crossed cheerfully by the spiroutistes who did not fail to propose scenarios… Schwartz sneers. “I like this idea that you don’t guess everything. Sophie and Benjamin are very skilled in maintaining a certain existential suspense. » Abitan adds without having the soles of his feet tickled with a torch: « We have finished a draft of volume 57 and Olivier has started to draw the first boards. I don’t know if the solution has been found, but I must say that the readers with whom I spoke and who shared their predictions with me sometimes had more original ideas than ours. But I think volume 57 is a good way to continue this reflection on the dialogue of the times. »
The retrofuturist way
Because that’s what it’s all about. The revival of the parent series is intended to be retrofuturistic and current. It feels like a Spirou of the 1950s, but with a whole lot of reference to Google, to tourism by holograms… The Spirou Schwartz style, already well established in the three episodes of the parallel series of the “Vert-de-gris Groom” created with the excellent Yann , among the very many volumes of the “Spirou par…” collection (dozens of enjoyable avatars), finds his groom’s outfit, but consults his state-of-the-art tablet.
“We live in a scary world right now, and Spirou’s death seems to be part of this movement where everything is dying. At the same time, it’s an album full of action and humor, explains the designer. Older readers have told me that they have the impression of rediscovering their Spirou, that this album also gives them hope. Which pleases me. This is not a sealed Spirou. My wish is also to give us energy and change things for the better. » The link that can be made with album 17 from the great Franquin period (Spirou and the Bubble Men) is not trivial, not a coincidence either.
Return to the Bubble Men
Abitan sits down to eat: “It was obvious to the whole team what to do next bubble men was a good way to revive the series. In my opinion, this is linked to the fact that it immediately raises the question of inheritance. In Spirou and the Bubble Menwe discover an underwater refuge for the rich who want to escape the noise of the world, built secretly with private funds and without any consideration for the environment, moreover around the time when Cousteau and Louis Malle do The silent world with its dynamite fishing scenes. What to do with that? What would we do with such a place if it existed, and by extension, what to do with this planet? What has happened to this need for silence and isolation in a world that is increasingly noisy and anxiety-provoking? Today, there are bubbles everywhere, and the question arises very concretely of knowing whether to save the world or whether to flee it. It’s Cousteau’s legacy in the world of Zorglub, sorry, of Elon Musk… The dialogue between eras is all found. »
Wink that does not go unnoticed either in a more playful register, it is the return of the team of Spirou from the Gaston period: we come across Mher Jeanne, Lebrac… everyone except the blunderer himself. We catch a glimpse of him at the final party, in the shadows. “Hello censors, comments Schwartz, straight up. Gaston was much more present. I replaced him with Morris in a goof scene. Nowadays, it is especially necessary to be careful with the rights holders. »
The leeway
Isabelle Franquin, it should be remembered, has stopped the publication of her father’s Gaston, which is being taken over by the Quebec designer Delaf. And the heirs of Joseph Gillain (known as Jijé) forced Schwartz and Yann to abandon the rest of the project Gringos Locos, which very freely narrated the team of Jijé, his family and his young colleagues Morris and Franquin in America and Mexico. The meeting in New York with Goscinny would have been the frame of Crazy Belgians. “In the 1970s, we could have done this with our fingers in our noses. At the same time, it’s amusing to see how we manage to circumvent these taboos: in “The verdigris groom”, there are references to Tintin. It’s Müller, the torturer… And despite the very tight surveillance at Moulinsart, it passed like a letter in the post. »
The parent series of Spirou is indebted only to Dupuis. Inheritance, more corporate than family, allows great leeway: only sustainability matters. Kill Spirou? No problem, as long as the series continues. Abitan pleads guilty: “Each author, each period brings something new, moves the lines a little. Everyone also ends up trying to destroy the series in their own way, but so far it has held on… We, in a way, even started with that. »