And we’re back!

There has been a ton of news to report since the last update, but let’s start with the most recent. Earlier this week, Vehlmann created quite a stir with a comment he posted on Instagram, alongside the picture above:

I’m back to our next (and last) #Spirou adventure, in which our hero “feels a bit blah” – as shown in this beautiful pencil sketch by #Yoann. #longlivevacation

And in a follow-up comment about the duo having been attached to the series for 10 years:

10 years too much, according to the naysayers! Don’t worry, Yoann and I already have an idea for another project together!

Online comment sections promptly exploded with reactions, retrospectives on the Yoann & Vehlmann run, and speculations about the future of the series, until Yoann posted a response on the BD Gest’ forum:

Ha ha! good morning friends (and others!)

Don’t worry! We’re going to redynamite… uh, redynamize, our Spirou! We still have many years ahead of us on the series!

Cheerio, xoxo!

So, what should we think? We should probably see Vehlmann’s comments in light of recent interviews. Interviewed for an article in Les Inrockuptibles, we can read:

To Fabien Vehlmann, there is one very particular objective for the Spirou series: “We need to find a new readership … Currently, a kid isn’t going to spontaneously look for a Spirou album in the bookstore. We’re currently discussing this with Dupuish Publishing: we’re trying to figure out how to – not reboot the series, but relaunch it, so that it has a chance to attract an audience that doesn’t know it.” The writer anticipates changing the structure of the albums, drawing inspiration from TV shows: “Without saying too much, instead of telling one story throughout a whole album, we’ll divide each adventure into chapters, and each chapter will almost be like a short story… It will be like having episodes within a season. You’ll start to see that in the magazine in May.” [May has previously been mentioned as the date of the magazine serialisation of Yoann & Vehhlmann’s next Spirou album, Spirou #56.]

Yoann was earlier quoted as saying they are planning to put the main series on hold to concentrate on Supergroom, which will follow an American comic format.

Whatever we make of all this, it seems clear that the creators and publisher have concluded that the approach to the series in the last few albums is not quite working, and that some radical change is in the works – with or without this team. One change coming sooner than might have been expected is the new visual direction of the series (as seen in the various excerpts from the upcoming Spirou #56 album posted to Instagram and Facebook), in which Yoann is distancing himself from the Franquin-inspired look and bringing it much closer to the duo’s original one-shot, Les Géants pétrifiés (“The Petrified Giants”):

The perceived need for a change is no doubt influenced by sales figures, but what strikes Spirou Reporter as more worrying is the impression that the constant negativity from a small group of vocal detractors is getting to Yoann & Vehlmann. From the interview in Les Inrockuptibles:

If you want to ruin a weekend, the best way is to go and read comics forums. With Spirou, you often feel like an imposter or usurper. The golden age was the Franquin period, the bestselling period was that of Tome & Janry, and it’s really difficult to please different readerships: small kids who don’t know the series at all, older kids who might have seen it in the magazine, and the reactionary fandom for whom nothing is ever good enough. You’re like a politician who has to appeal to both left-wingers and right-wingers in a single speech… as well as the centrists. That runs the risk of turning into wishy-washy double-talk. But as an author you can’t be too diplomatic, you have to be a sort of radical…

The negative tone on certain forums is draining just as a fan, so it’s easy to understand that it would be very demoralizing for the creators targeted. While people have a right to their opinions and there’s certainly legitimate criticisms to be made of Yoann & Vehlmann’s albums, the Internet has a tendency to create a toxic dynamic where the most extreme reactions are magnified and repeated ad nauseam, with people piling on and creating the impression of a consensus when it’s really only an echo chamber.