Marsupilami noire

“Marsupilami” is a spin off from the popular Franco-Belgian comic “Spirou and Fantasio”. The fantasy animal Marsupilami, said to live in the rain forests of South America, was introduced into the Spirou comic by André Franquin. After leaving “Spirou and Fantasio”, Franquin had a noire period, during which he wrote and illustrated a comic with bizarre apocalyptic undertones. Later, he (thankfully) decided to resurrect the Marsupilami concept under the moniker Marsu Productions.

No Marsu album seems to be available in English, but I've read a Swedish translation of “Mars le noir”. The story follows a black Marsupilami and his trainer as they escape from the circus (headed by Zabaglione from the “Spirou and Fantasio” album “The Marsupilami Thieves”) and heads back to the jungle. Naturally, Zabaglione doesn't want to part with his most prized possession, and the South American jungles are teeming with other dangers, including piranhas, jaguars and yellow Marsupilamis…

What struck me when reading “Mars le noir” was that the storyline is darker and more political than the old “Spirou and Fantasio” comic. The ingredients include violence, Zivilisationskritik, ecologism and anti-capitalism.

An important part of the plot involves a New York-based multinational which wants to destroy the Marsupilami's native habitat to build a trans-American highway. When the unfortunate animal gets in the way, a professional hit man is dispatched to take care of the problem! The human heroes of the story are all “children of nature”: two White kids who live ecologically in the jungle, a clown, and Indians who refuse to work for the multinational. At the end, it's strongly implied that the greedy American capitalist burns to death when his skyscraper catches fire!

While “Mars le noir” is somewhat tongue-in-cheek (I don't think it would sell otherwise), it is intriguing that some of Franquin's apocalyptic tendencies nevertheless found their way into this comic.

At least that's my speculation about what's going on here…