Does Spirou have a place in today’s world? This is the question posed by Spirou’s deatha new album by Olivier Schwartz (art), Sophie Guerrive and Benjamin Abitan (screenplay) where the famous boyfriend dies before being replaced by a female character.
A cleverly organized marketing operation to relaunch an 80-year-old franchise, which today struggles to regain its former success. “Given that he has trouble reconnecting with the reader, precisely because he is out of place in our ever-changing world, we had to ask the question on this album,” explains Stéphane Beaujean, album editor at Dupuis editions.
He is already the author of three albums of Spirou (The verdigris groom, the leopard woman Y The Master of the Black Hosts), Olivier Schwartz was not surprised to learn of the publisher’s decision to kill off Spirou. “I thought it wasn’t bad,” he says. “I wasn’t more surprised than that. On the contrary, I love it. It’s fun. And then there was everything with Spirou. We can do anything with him.”
Reference to “The Death of Superman”
Telling the story of Spirou’s death remains a real challenge. In France, Franco-Belgian comic figures never die, with the exception of Buddy Longway, hero of a cult Western by Derib (Yakari). The Americans, on the other hand, are the specialists of the genre: from Phoenix to the X-Men in the dark phoenix saga to superman in the death of supermanthey multiplied the sacrificial stagings of their heroes, to reinforce their aura.
the cover of Spirou’s death It echoes these works, specifies Stéphane Beaujean: “The empty suit floating in an environment is really a reference to Superman’s cape, but we reinterpreted it, because we didn’t want to be literal and didactic.” “I like the idea of Spirou not being on the cover,” adds Olivier Schwartz.
How to stage a moment as important as Spirou’s death? With a form of cruelty tinged with sadness. Olivier Schwartz, Sophie Guerrive and Benjamin Abitan opted for an underwater sequence where Spirou drowns because of Fantasio, who did not share with him a potion capable of making them breathe underwater. A sequence that echoes another, cult, from the album. The Valley of the Banished (1989) by Tome and Janrywhere Fantasio saves Spirou from drowning in extremis.
Drawing the death of Spirou
Killing off such an important character in comic history in such an ignominious way is a provocation, accentuated by the choice not to “play the codes of the great tragedy”, celebrates Stéphane Beaujean. “He dies because he is a victim of the mistakes of his teammates all the time.” Even James Bond had a better death in dying can wait (2021).
“Franquin would never have done anything too tearful,” explains Stéphane Beaujean. “And the authors didn’t give it too much importance, because in teen comics, when there’s a death, there’s sadness, but we don’t dramatize it like a Netflix series or in a comic. We knew it was not necessary. to hammer away sadness and avoid dramatic emphasis.” Spirou’s gaze, at the precise moment of his death, is still heartbreaking. “It was hard to do,” admits Olivier Schwartz. “I fuck it up.”
Surprisingly, Spirou’s death causes little stir in the final pages of the album. Apart from Fantasio, who bursts into tears, the other characters receive the news with resignation. “Her loss of him doesn’t change much. It’s weird,” agrees Olivier Schwartz. Even Spip seems immune to his death. In a particularly cruel scene, Spip walks past Fantasio, dressed as a groom, wondering, “That guy in red tells me something… What’s his name?”
Spirou is really dead
In the Friends of Spirou Facebook group, discussions are in full swing. Many readers report a marketing trick. “If Dupuis tries (with some difficulty) to resurrect Gaston, it is not to definitely kill Spirou in the process. Let’s not be naive,” writes a fan. So Volume 2 will be worth its weight in peanuts (and hazelnuts for Spip) to find out how the writers managed to bring our favorite hero back.
But for the Dupuis editions, Spirou is quite dead. “He’s really dead,” insists Olivier Schwartz. “And it’s not even a multiverse. It’s dead. I don’t know how to explain that without revealing more. It really is dead.” Spirou, for his part, will continue living paper adventures in parallel collections such as “Spirou seen by…” On November 25 he will be found like this in Spirou among the madpastiche by Jul (script) and Lobin (art).
All these titles are brought together under the title of “Spirou-verse”, inspired by the movie Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verseconfesses Stéphane Beaujean: “It’s something that will be built from now on. The world of Spirou was becoming a bit cacophonous for booksellers between the mother series, the ‘Spirou seen by…’, etc. That partly explains the difficulty we have today in rediscovering the success of yesteryear with Spirou. It’s a bit unreadable. We had to find a way to organize this universe.”
Following Spirou’s death already underway. Premiere scheduled for 2023 of volume 57. The rest of the adventure will unfold over two other volumes, which will be complete stories, united by that common thread of the disappearance of the boyfriend. Impossible at the moment to know what these albums will hold. “I can’t talk about it that much,” says Stéphane Beaujean. “There will be many twists and turns. The next volume will offer as many surprises as in Spirou’s death.”
Source: BFM TV
