Publications update (week 41-42/2013)

The Danish release of Émile Bravo’s Spirou one-shot follows hot on the heels of news of its sequel(s!), along with rumors of two other future Spirou albums, and more.

Cobolt announced on Monday that they have published Splint: Portræt af helten som troskyldig ung mand (“Spirou: Portrait of the Artist as a Naive Young Man”), the Danish edition of Journal d’un ingénu by Émile Bravo. Originally published in 2008, it was honored as an “Essential Selection” at the Angoulême comics festival that year, and has been acclaimed as one of the best Spirou albums in decades.

A little bit earlier, it was reported on the Spirou.com forums that the sequel to that same album, which Bravo is currently working on, will be split in two volumes. The member “grelot”, who runs the unofficial Émile Bravo blog, heard it from Bravo at the Chaland festival in Nérac the weekend before this (the blog also has many more photos from the festival). Thus continues the bitter rivalry between Bravo and Schwartz & Yann as to who can get more entries in the “one-shot” series. Or something like that…

Meanwhile, InediSpirou reports that Téhem has finished 30 pages (of a previously projected 64) of another one-shot, La grosse tête (“The Big Head”, scripted by Makyo and Toldac), and is now waiting for a rewrite of the ending before finishing it. It may optimistically be expected towards the end of 2014. This album, which involves Spirou and Fantasio becoming movie stars when their adventures are turned into films, has been expected for several years now, but was delayed by a previous rewrite. (At some point, we’ll do a run-down of all the expected and rumored future one-shots.)

Dupuis has provided previews (more here) of the upcoming Couvertures des recueils du Journal de Spirou par Franquin book (“Covers of the Journal de Spirou Digests by Franquin”). I’ll let you judge for yourself whether it looks like it’s worth 119 EUR…

Finally, another update on Yoann & Vehlmann’s next Spirou album in the main series. According to InediSpirou, Yoann is still only on page 4. A delay in the release date is looking more and more certain. However, there are also some more details on the content (SPOILERS follow): The album will in fact feature the Franquin characters acquired by Dupuis from Marsu Productions. On one of the early pages, Gaston makes a cameo appearance. (Vehlmann explains that although he’ll appear from time to time in the comic, he’ll only be in the background: “He remains Franquin’s character.”) Also, the Marsupilami will in fact appear, showing up in the “cliffhanger” ending, following the pattern of the team’s other albums. This must mean there has been a rewrite, since according to earlier reports the script was completed before the takeover and with no such appearance.

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