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

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.

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.

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.

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

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?

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.