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Spirou (left) and Fantasio (right), with the Marsupilami and Spip the squirrel.
Spirou et Fantasio is one of the most successful Belgian comic book adventure series, spawning various spin-off series and an Animated Adaptation.
Spirou is an intrepid hotel groom/reporter working for Le Moustique/Le Journal de Spirou/freelance. With his wacky/ Unfunny/now wacky again sidekick Fantasio and his pet squirrel Spip, he has many adventures over the globe, fighting Mad Scientists and evil dictators, but also doing a fair bit of actual reporting on the side ( Take That, Tintin!).
This series has the distinction of being one the few "work for hire" franchises of Franco-Belgian comics (most of them are owned by their initial creators or their estate). As such, various authors worked on the main series over the years :
- Robert "Rob-Vel" Velter was commissionned to create the Spirou character to headline the new eponymous weekly "Le Journal de Spirou" magazine. He wrote and drew Spirou's adventures from 1938 to 1943, after which the war prevented him from continuing ; his publisher bought the rights to the series and has had various creative teams work on it ever since. These adventures have never been reprinted and are mainly known for the introduction of Spirou's pet squirrel Spip.
- Joseph "Jijé" Gillain (already a well-known veteran, now mostly remembered for drawing the Western series Jerry Spring) then took over the series (as well as a lot of publisher Dupuis's strips). He introduced Fantasio, whose garish costumes and gaffes made the perfect wacky Sidekick. Overwhelmed by having to handle too many series at once, he gave most of them to the care of various young artists he had groomed for that purpose.
- Andre Franquin took over Spirou And Fantasio around 1948 (though Jijé did a few stories after the formal switchover). He is credited for creating the most well-known parts of the Spirou universe, including Champignac, the Marsupilami, Zorglub and Gaston Lagaffe. At the end of Franquin's run, the series received the input of Michel "Greg" Regnier for plots, grounding Spirou's adventures in a more realistic geopolitical context. By the beginning of the 70s, Franquin grew bored of the character and left the series (though he kept the rights of a few of his creations, including the Marsupilami and Gaston Lagaffe).
- Young artist Jean-Claude Fournier then took over the series, updating slightly the look of the characters and giving the characters a more militant outlook.
- In the 80s, publisher Dupuis found Fournier too slow and started looking into other creative teams, with three of them working at the same time. Nicolas Broca & Raoul Cauvin's contribution (three albums) were quickly abandoned, as well as Yves Chaland's retro take, in favor of Philippe "Tome" Vandevelde & Jean-Richard "Janry" Geurts. They reached a commercial and critical success by updating Franquin's tradition, often with a slightly Darker And Edgier mood. They also launched the spin-off series Le Petit Spirou (about Spirou's youth), which took a lot of their time : after a failed "realistic" relaunch, they left the main series.
- In the 00s, Dupuis gave care of the main series to Jean-David Morvan and José-Luis Munuera, who tried including elements from each of the previous authors' runs ; the lackluster sales meant they were given the boot after only four albums. A series of out of continuity one-shots written and drawn by different artists started in 2006. Five have been published as of 2009, the more notable being Spirou, journal d'un ingénu, an alternative origin story by Emile Bravo in which Spirou is a young hotel groom in 1939.
The magazine this series was created for, now titled "Spirou", is still being published nowadays. It is now a weekly anthology of various comedy series, as well as serializing various adventure series of Dupuis's catalogue. Throughout the 90s and 00s, its eponymous series barely appeared in it (due to frequent Schedule Slip), though Le Petit Spirou remained a regular presence. This changed with the one-shots, which have been published at thrice the rhythm of the main series so far.
This series contains examples of the following tropes :
- AI Is A Crapshoot : Cyanure
- Animated Adaptation : two of them
- Applied Phlebotinum: Almost all of the Count's inventions are based on mushrooms as a main ingredient or an energy source.
- Also, the Zorglonde, a form of energy designed by Zorglub which can be used to paralyze living things (only the Marsupilami is immune) or to control people's minds.
- Arbitrary Skepticism: In L'Ankou, Fantasio stubbornly refuses to believe that he's dealing with a supernatural creature.
- The Artifact : Spirou still wears a variation of his trademark hotel groom costume, even though he left that job decades ago.
- Lampshaded in Des Haricots Partout, when a UN delegate assumes he's the Count's personal bellboy.
- Spoofed in Le Petit Spirou, where he wears it as a young boy. So do his mom and dad. Maybe it's a family tradition ?
- It is: his grandfather and grandmother wear it too. As do all the family members we can see on the pictures in Spirou's house.
- In one of the multi-page stories, which is narrated by the adult Spirou, he admits that it's possible that his memory might have gotten a few details wrong and that he didn't actually wear the uniform as a child.
- Apocalyptic Log : in La Vallée des Bannis, Spirou finds a very helpful notebook from a previous explorer. Subverted : the guy has actually survived all these years and helps our heroes escape from afar.
- Ascended Extra: Both Gaston Lagaffe and the Marsupilami later became lead characters of their own respective series.
- Author Tract : whenever currents events are alluded to, but especially L'Ankou, an Anvilicious attack against civilian nuclear power production "defiling" the folklorish lands of Brittany.
- Badly Battered Babysitter: Spirou and Fantasio in Panade à Champignac, while babysitting Zorglub.
- Banana Republic: Palombia
- Black Like Me: Played anviliciously straight in Le Rayon Noir, when Spirou is turned black by some of the count's phlebotinium.
- Butt Monkey : Vito Cortizone, whose bad luck reaches abysmal levels.
- Justified by the fact that he's been cursed by his Chinese mafia rival.
- Captain Crash: Madflying the Australian pilot-for-hire in Kodo le Tyran and Des Haricots Partout.
- Censor Box: In Le gri-gri du Nikolo-Koba, the diamond of Koli can make people disappear (they come back when it is placed in its special sheath), but it doesn't affect clothes. When a male villain is returned, the frame includes a narrator box with a pointless line, conveniently waist-height.
- Character Development : early in Franquin's run, Fantasio shifted from a total goofball to Unfunny. With the obvious irony of later having to handle total goofball Gaston Lagaffe.
- Chew Toy: Fantasio in several of the Tome & Janry stories. If a leg needs to be broken, you can bet it'll be his.
- Clear My Name: Fantasio in La Mauvaise Tête.
- Cool Car : the Turbotraction (which somehow disappeared just after Franquin left).
- Crapsack World : La Vallée des Bannis features a Lost World with Everything Trying To Kill You (including liberal amounts of Schmuck Bait). If you manage to survive the initial confusion, the madness mosquitoes will turn most of you into raving maniacs all killing each other.
- Creator Breakdown : Franquin in the middle of QRN sur Bretzelburg. His "last" album, Panade à Champignac, can either be seen as an affective goodbye to the series... or as a big "Fuck you, I'm going to work on Gaston Lagaffe instead".
- Daddys Little Villain: Luna, Vito Cortizone's daughter. She disapproves of some of her father's methods but still ends up on his side in the end.
- Darker And Edgier : a general trend for the series as a whole, and inside nearly each creative run.
- Machine qui rêve, Tome & Janry's last album, tried reinventing the series as an ultra-serious (and decompressed) techno-thriller. It didn't work.
- Deadpan Snarker: Spip is the most consistent example of this, but notably in Tome&Janry's run of the series, Fantasio used to indulge a little snarking now and then as well.
- Deface Of The Moon: Zorglub's pet project was to demonstrate his genius by writing a brand name in giant letters on the Moon. It worked, but not quite the way he expected.
- Dis Continuity : facilitated by the various creative teams working on the series with their own directions, often ignoring their predecessors' work.
- Due to the lack of reprints, most people think the series started with Franquin's run (Rob-Vel and Jijé's contributions are rarely acknowledged).
- Because of a strange editorial edict, Nic & Cauvin could not use Franquin's supporting cast, making their short run very easy to ignore.
- Morvan & Munuera tried to integrate elements from all their predecessors into their run (including Rob-Vel and Fournier), but unfortunately for them many fans wrote off the series after the departure of Tome & Janry.
- Drives Like Crazy: Seccotine is the classic terrible woman driver. Also, the oil sheik Ibn Mah-zout, who turned Spirou and Fantasio's car into scattered pieces of scrap metal in just a few minutes of driving it.
- Easy Amnesia: Zorglub in Panade à Champignac. He gets hit over the head and all his memories come back. Then he gets hit over the head another time and they all disappear. And let's not forget the fact that he's acting like an 8 month old in the first place.
- Ensemble Darkhorse : The Marsupilami.
- Everyone Went To School Together : spoofed in La Jeunesse de Spirou (which has a drunk Unreliable Narrator), averted in Le Petit Spirou (which has none of the other regular characters).
- Everythings Better With Monkeys: In Bravo les Brothers, Gaston gives Fantasio three circus-trained chimpanzees as a birthday present.
- Evil Twin : Zantafio. (Technically he's Fantasio's cousin).
- The Family For The Whole Family : Don Vito Cortizone and his family, of course.
- Family Friendly Firearms: In La Corne du Rhinocéros, the censorship commission made Franquin remove most of the bad guys' guns, which meant they were now pointing their finger at everything.
- Femme Fatale: Luna.
- Gadgeteer Genius : Fantasio in his early appearances. Including the mostly forgotten Fanta-Copter : a functional jetpack!
- Grim Reaper: In L'Ankou, Spirou and Fantasio get to meet the eponymous collector of souls. Because of their unfamiliarity with Breton folklore, they aren't nearly as scared as they ought to be.
- Ho Yay: Spirou and Fantasio, obviously.
- There are things like this picture
 ◊ to keep the rumors alive and kicking.
- The context: Fantasio and Spirou are sleeping in a castle ruin, two separate beds. They used pieces of tarpaulin to keep themselves from the rain, except the one above Fantasio suddenly ripped and unloaded buckets of water on him. He wakes up shouting "The hood! We forgot the hood!" (on the car, to protect it from rain)
- Taken out of context: Fantasio wakes up, apparently in the same bed as Spirou. He's covered in a whitish dripping liquid. He shouts "The condom! We forgot the condom!" (capote means both hood and condom)
- Heads Tails Edge: Luna Fatale.
- Heel Face Turn: Zorglub.
- Heterosexual Life Partners: Spirou and Fantasio. Also Champignac and Zorglub after the Heel Face Turn.
- Hypno Ray: The Zorglonde.
- Identical Grandson: sort of:
- Aurelien de Champignac looks exactly the same as his uncle the Count of Champignac, except his moustache points up instead of down.
- Zorglub's son from Le Réveil du Z looks exactly the same as his father, except he's a dwarf.
- Fantasio and Spirou also have identical family members in Le Réveil du Z
- In Soviet Russia Trope Mocks You : Spirou à Moscou barely had time to do all the jokes before the USSR self-destructed.
- Intrepid Reporter : Spirou and Fantasio themselves, of course. Seccotine is a cross between this and Paparazzi.
- Mad Scientist : The Count of Champignac, although he gets saner after his debut episode and becomes The Professor. Also, Zorglub.
- Mix And Match Critters : the Marsupilamis.
- Also, everything in the Valley of the Banished.
- And the Snouffelaire.
- Omnidisciplinary Scientist: Zorglub and Champignac (although the latter is a mushroom specialist, he can also build submarines So Yeah)
- And if this troper remembers correctly, said submarines were not, for once, powered by some mushroom extract.
- Sort of: Champignac used a mind-enhancing mushroom-based drug (sic) to come up with the design of the submarine (see Techno Wizard below). Besides, a breathable gas used in the submarine was also a mushroom extract which could provoke skin reactions: it later becomes a part of the plot.
- On One Condition : Spirou et les Héritiers has Fantasio and Zantafio face off in three trials mandated by their uncle's will.
- Outdated Outfit : Even in the 1970s, Spirou's Bell-boy Elevator Operator uniform was painfully out of place. Since the 90s, authors have finally decided to do away with it.
- Poorly Disguised Pilot : Le Nid des Marsupilamis, though the spin-off series would not be created until two decades later.
- Ripped From The Headlines : most of the more serious plots
- Robot Girl : Cyanure in Qui arrêtera Cyanure?.
- Ruritania: Bretzelburg is a typical Ruritanian country, with added Father Land trappings.
- Schedule Slip : Nearly all the major runs at their end (hence the changes of creative team), but Tome & Janry's was particularly egregious (up to three years between their last two albums)
- Screwball Serum: The Count once unwittingly drank a toxic drug of his own design, which turned him into a super-intelligent psychopath.
- Senseless Violins: Seen many times in Luna Fatale.
- Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: The mayor of Champignac is fond of speaking in convoluted sentences replete with mixed metaphors.
- Show Within A Show : some adventures show the heroes' documentary films. Le nid des Marsupilamis is mainly such a documentary with the titular heroes as a Greek Chorus.
- Somewhere A Palaeontologist Is Crying: Le Voyageur du Mésozoique. A dinosaur with pink and yellow spots.
- Speech Impaired Animal : Spip, though he does get thought balloons quite often.
- Strangely, while Spip has a quasi-human intelligence (and the cynicism that comes with it), the Marsupilami, who can utter human words like a parrot does, only has animal-level intelligence. He is clever for an animal, though.
- Spin Off : quite a few of them :
- Super Serum: One of the Count's first inventions is a serum that, when injected, grants superhuman strength for a time.
- Techno Wizard : the Count of Champignac. Most of his Phlebotinum involves mushrooms in some form, including in the design stage.
- Temporal Paradox: Dear God. The last album made, Aux Sources du Z, erased the entire series with one of these.
- That Poor Plant: The Count once experimented a serum on a mushroom, causing it to turn into an ugly, misshapen thing.
- They Called Me Mad: Zorglub's backstory - people laughed at his theories in school so he decided to create an army of mind controlled soldiers.
- Time Travel: In L'Horloger de la Comète, Le Réveil du Z and Aux Sources du Z.
- Torture Technician: Subverted with Herr Doktor Kilikil in QRN sur Bretzelburg: his methods involve scraping chalk on a blackboard, or cooking a lavish and fragrant meal in front of a hungry prisoner. He's so good at it, in fact, that he eventually becomes a restaurant cook.
- Under The Sea: Much of Le Repère de la Murène takes place underwater.
- Underwater Base: The villains of Le Repère de la Murène, the underwater city in Spirou et les Hommes-Bulles.
- Villain Decay : Arguably Zorglub, even before his Heel Face Turn. Also the whole point of Le Réveil du Z, where Zorglub's successor only manages to recreate The Theme Park Version of the original's vision.
- Let's not forget Vito "La Déveine" Cortizone, a powerful mafia don who eventually is somehow deported through the little rural town of Champignac with nearly no security.
- The Triangle went from "globe-spanning barely competent criminal organisation" in Du Glucose for Noémie to "half a dozen idiots who can't even operate their secret lair's traps correctly" in L'Abbaye Truquée.
- Villain Exit Stage Left : most of the time.
- Weasel Mascot : Spip.
- Where The Hell Is Springfield : There has been a lot of ambiguity on where Spirou and Fantasio live, with conflicting hints pointing towards the suburbs of either Paris or Bruxelles. Meanwhile, the location of the quaint small town of Champignac is deliberately ambiguous.
- Wouldnt Hit A Girl : Spirou in Paris-Sous-Seine, even though he had mostly got over this in the Tome & Janry era.
- Writing For The Trade : mostly averted, as most creative teams made a point of ending nearly every page with a gag or Cliff Hanger (because the prepublication schedule could be reduced to as little as one or two pages per week)
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