Magazine / Spirou

1 Following

Spirou, originally published under the name Le Journal de Spirou^note The name was changed to Spirou from issue #443 onwards. It also used the name Spirou Magaziiiine from issue #2634 to #2908 and Spirou HeBDo from issue #3537 to #3652., is a weekly Belgian magazine created by publisher Jean Dupuis, and published for the first time on April 21st, 1938. It is titled after the hero of the same name, who first appeared on the very first page of the magazine's very first issue.

The pages of Spirou are a collection of various gag-a-day and serial Franco-Belgian Comics, most of which are either a mixture of adventure and humor or purely humor-based. Many of the series featured in Spirou have since gone on to become classics, such as Morris' Lucky Luke, Peyo's The Smurfs, The Bluecoats, and of course Spirou & Fantasio. The magazine was also where the "Marcinelle School" style of drawing originated, which contrasted with the "Ligne Claire" style of drawing favored by the competing magazine Tintin.

While comics are the magazine's main focus, a few pages feature other content, such as readers' letters, author interviews, games, and short written stories. Readers who subscribe to the magazine also receive "supplements" with each issue, in the form of gifts or mini-comics. Issues of the magazine have been compiled into "collections", with each volume collecting around ten issues.

The magazine has an official website, which can be found here. See also this page, which documents every comic, story, author and supplement ever published within the pages of the magazine.

Spirou provides examples of:

• 13 Is Unlucky: One of the longest Running Gags of the magazine was the Curse of Page 13. In issue #2958, page 13 featured a 30-year old article from issue #1381. No explanation was given. In every following issue, page 13 featured comics that were either written in a foreign language, distorted beyond the point of legibility, or even part of a series published by a competing magazine. Editorial notes stated that authors that had been published on page 13 had fallen victim to accidents or into insanity. Letters to the editors even reported that some readers had also suffered similar fates. Therefore, in issue #2967, the page was sealed off, and later left blank. It wasn't until issue #2970 that a solution was finally found: renaming page 13 into "page 12bis". Thus, to this very day, every issue has a page 12bis instead of a page 13. Issue #3681, a Halloween special issue, defied that rule by having every page numbered as page 13.
• Abusive Advertising: The cover of issue #3479◊ shows someone holding a pair of scissors open around the paw of a Billy the Cat plushie, with a Cut-and-Paste Note stating "Buy this magazine or we'll cut Billy the Cat".
• Darker and Edgier: Issue #4000 features a gritty re-imagining of Marsupilami, in which the titular character is a serious and violent vigilante who fights criminals in the night, in an obvious Shout-Out to Batman.
• Four-Point Scale: The magazine started out as a comic book magazine. Later on in their lifespan they would also incorporate other stuff as well including a review section for comic books from comic book publishing company Dupuis that came out recently compared to the publication day of the magazine. They use a rating of piccolo hats in order to review how good something is. One hat is not bad and five hats is masterpiece. They never seem to go below this. So if you come across a comic book from Dupuis that was never reviewed its either that it is old or that not even Dupuis themselves would defend that piece of crap.
• Interface Screw:
  • The column "Le Fureteur" was completely hidden◊ by a close-up shot of Goomer Goof in issue #995, with the following page explaining that as the page was being photographed for printing, Goomer had stepped in front of it to get his picture taken. The column was re-printed in the next issue, this time without anything obstructing it.
  • "Le Fureteur" was once again disrupted in issue #1007, with an explosion taking out half of the article◊. The next page would reveal a sheepish Goomer Goof skittishly running away with a chemical set under his arm.
• Lighter and Softer: Opposite to the Darker and Edgier example above, issue #4000 also features an alternate version of Zombillénium in which Aurélien was turned into a unicorn rather than a demon, and is working at "Ponyllénium", a theme park filled with rainbows, fairies and ponies.
• Retraux:
  • Issue #4491 features the debut of a new Spirou & Fantasio adventure set in 1961; for the occasion, the front page reprises the same layout used by the magazine around the 1960s.
  • The cover of issue #4526 features Les Amis de Spirou, a series taking place in 1943, and as such its layout is the same as the one used by the magazine when it debuted in the late thirties and early forties. Said cover, along with the first few pages of the issue, also had a yellowed aspect, mimicking old newsprint paper.
• Reunion Show: Issue #3839 from November 9th, 2011 was comprised almost exclusively of one-shot stories from long-discontinued series, all written and drawn by their original authors and artists. Those included Docteur Poche (which had its last original story published in the magazine in 1997 and its last volume released in 2000), L'Élan (last published in 1987^note aside from a single strip published in a special issue in 2007), Le Gang Mazda (last published in 1996), Les Bogros (last published in 1989), Pauvre Lampil (last volume in 1995 and last published in 2006), Les Grandes Amours Contrariées (last published in 1981), Tom Carbone (last published in 1997^note aside from a total of seven pages published in 2006, 2010 and 2011), Les Crannibales (last published in 2005), Un Papier de Broussaille (last published in 2003^note aside from a single page published in a special non-numbered issue in 2008), Bidouille et Violette (last published in 1985^note aside from a single one-shot story published in 2008), Puddingham Palace (last published in 2004), Les Indésirables (last published in 1982), Le Boss (last published in 2005 and last volume in 2007), and Germain et Nous (last published in 1992).
• Un-Installment: Issues were initially numbered by year, meaning the first issue of a year would be marked as issue #1, then the number would be incremented until the first issue of the next year, which would go back to #1. In 1946, the magazine moved on to a more traditional numbering system, starting with issue #404, which corresponded to the number of weeks that had passed since the magazine creation. However, the events of World War II caused several pauses in the magazine publication^DetailOnly 38 issues were released in 1940 due to the German invasion of Belgium. Then, only 35 issues were released in 1943, and a meek 13 in 1944. Finally, the paper shortage of 1945 only allowed for 44 issues to be published. As a result, issue #404 is actually only the 326th issue to have been published. This was lampshaded in issue #4078, which claimed on the cover to be the real issue #4000. Even though the numbering issue was acknowledged, this didn't stop the previously published issue #4000 from being a Milestone Celebration. invoked
• Variant Cover: Issue #4424 had a cats vs. dogs theme, and thus had two variant covers, respectively cat-themed and dog-themed. The content of each was identical, aside from the inner cover featuring either cat facts or dog facts, and the back cover comic featuring Fantasio explaining why the corresponding pet was the superior one before changing his mind upon discovering they ruined his issue of the magazine.