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New albums now out in French, English and… Icelandic? Dutch, Finnish, German and Swedish soon to follow, the True History of Spirou continues, and more!
Sniper Alley International
Not long after finishing its magazine run, Le Groom de Sniper Alley (Spirou #54, “The Sniper Alley Bellhop”) has been published in album format in French. The Dutch edition (Een piccolo in Sniper Alley) is expected on 3. December, and a Swedish translation (Skatten i Alexandria) has been announced for mid-December, followed by the German one (title still unknown) on 24. February, 2015 and a Finnish one (Sniper Alleyn pikkolopoika) at some point. No word yet on Danish or Norwegian publication.
And if that’s not enough, there will also be a 120-page special edition (tirage de luxe) of the album, at the low, low price of 149 EUR. Originally announced for 14. November, it’s now apparently pushed back to January (although some online stores still say December)…
Luxury Leopard Woman
There is also a special, limited edition of La femme léopard (“The Leopard Woman”) recently released. At 160 pages, the book includes pencils and final inks of the album on facing pages, 25 pages of sketches, as well as paintings and other extras in extra-large format. Something to get an Olivier Schwartz fan for Christmas?
Rhinoceros comes to England
According to Cinebook, today is the day they expect The Rhinoceros’ Horn in stock. Album #6 in the original order and the seventh from Cinebook, this classic Franquin adventure from 1952–1953 is arguably the best one they’ve published so far. Spirou Reporter urges everyone to support continued Spirou albums in English by buying The Rhinoceros’ Horn!
Spirou & Fantasio in Icelandic
On the topic of classic Franquin adventures published in island nations, Spirou Reporter just learned that an Icelandic publisher, Froskur Útgáfa, is putting out albums with some of the early Spirou stories. In Iceland, where Spirou and Fantasio are known as “Svalur og Valur,” 29 albums were published from the late seventies to early nineties, but nothing since Vito la Déveine (“Vito the Unlucky”), until now.
The new album line started last year with Arfurinn – Vitskerti prófessorinn (“The Inheritance – The Mad Professor”), which included L’héritage and Radar le robot as well as some one-pagers, and was recently continued with Svalur í hringnum, which contains Spirou et les plans du robot (“Spirou and the Robot Blueprints”), Spirou sur le ring (“Spirou in the Ring”) and Spirou fait du cheval (“Spirou on Horseback”). Looks like Spirou’s boxing opponent (Poildur in French) is named Steingeiri in Icelandic, which you have to admit sounds cool.
Given the chronological ordering and the fact that the two albums are numbered #2 and 3, it seems Froskur Útgáfa intends to publish all of the uncollected early Franquin stories. To order, you can contact froskur@myndasogur.is. (Thanks to Stefán Pálsson for the information.)
Fantasio has left the buiding
In an interview with Izneo, Benoît Feroumont speaks about the Spirou one-shot he is working on, previously known as Spirou et les femmes (“Spirou and the Women”), but now with an official working title:
In the pipeline I also have a Spirou de… (“Spirou by…”, i.e. one-shot) project, which is called Fantasio quitte la maison (“Fantasio Leaves the House,” or maybe rather “Fantasio Moves Out”). Actually, throughout the story I wanted to have Spirou face female characters. It’s not about romance, but I find that Spirou is a bit of a boyscout from the 50s; I like to think that he’s not quite adapted to modern women. Therefore I am going to put him around such modern women: girls with ambitions, flaws, a love-life. And if Fantasio moves out, it’s because he’s getting married. Apart from that it’s a rather traditional story with an investigation and adventure, but at every point: women. It’s an exercise in style.
The True History continues
Christelle Pissavy–Yvernault posted an update on the progress of the next volume of La Véritable histoire de Spirou (“The True History of Spirou”). The writing is still in the early stages, but they have been doing interviews (including several days with Fournier), and now have a working cover (designed by Philippe Ghielmetti). Also worth noting that although estimated at around 300 pages, the book will only cover the period 1947–1957, not up to 1960 as previously expected. The scale of the history keeps growing, and now looks to extend across many volumes (if it is ever completed). But this period of this volume is one of the high points of the magazine and the comic, so fans will no doubt appreciate the detail. The release date is set to October 2015.
German collected edition vol. 2 and 3
Following the release of the first volume of the collected edition of Spirou & Fantasio in German at the end of September, Carlsen Comics’ program for the first half of next year shows vol. 2 scheduled for February and vol. 3 for July.
Fun for Franquin fans
Carlsen also announced the return of the Marsupilami album series to the German market after a ten-year absence. The new edition will include Capturez un Marsupilami (“To Catch a Marsupilami”, in German as Jagd auf das Marsupilami), a special “album #0” with stories by Franquin which has previously been published as a Spirou album in Scandinavia and Germany.
Finally, Cobolt Förlag has announced a Swedish edition of Franquin’s Idées noires (“Black Ideas,” which Fantagraphics was supposed to publish as Franquin’s Last Laugh before the death of Kim Thompson), under the title Franquin’s Svarta Idéer, for early next year.
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The Swedish edition of Idées noires has been published earlier, somewhen in the late 80’s, but the irregular original publishing in French (where the remaining pages later was published as a short additional album) left the original album incomplete. I hope this version would be complete.
Cobolt is actually a Danish publisher, but they have already made a mark in Sweden with several Franco-Belgian series that have lacked a Swedish publisher.
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As announced by Carlsen the Marsupilami #0 issue will contain previously not published (in German anyway) strips. With 64 pages it will be much thicker than the “Spirou und Fantasio-Sonderband” of the same title from the 80s which only had 48, but with some “filling” pages at the end.
Interesting! My French copy only has 46 pages, so the German edition must be adding other material. I don’t think there [i]is[/i] 16 pages of unpublished (in German) Franquin Marsupilami stories (according to [url=http://www.comicforum.de/showthread.php?135887-Spirou-Gesamtausgabe&p=4796214&viewfull=1#post4796214]this[/url] seemingly exhaustive list there should only be one, a Noël/Marsupilami one-pager that I’d date ca. 1958 rather than 1955). Maybe they’ll pad it out with sketches and whatnot to make up the page number, plus probably some editorial material.
Another user already pulled the question to the Carlsen editor in the German Comicforum 2 days ago but no answer yet. I’m thrilled to get to know the complete content of the reedition.
Did you notice that the COMIX magazine published the Spirou-comic/Franquin-hommage by Daan Jippes last month?
Indeed. I suppose they’ve more or less run out of stories from the anniversary issue. Makes it interesting what they’ll do next.
The (full five-page) Jippes story has also been published in Dutch in the magazine P@per (#14). Both printings are, to my eyes, no higher quality than the image files used for the Spirou Reporter scanlation, and in fact I would guess they probably use the same source files. But since the script was originally in Dutch (which the German version was translated directly from) while I worked from the French version, I should probably check the translation against them.