Previewing ‘Spirou & Fantasio Volume 21: The Prisoner Of The Buddha’ — Classic Franquin, Classic ‘Spirou & Fantasio’

One of Europe’s finest series, seemingly no matter who writes and draws it, Spirou & Fantasio Volume 21 returns to its finest era with the genius of Andre Franquin.

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Spirou & Fantasio are absolute mainstays of the Euro comics world and have been so since 1938. Cinebook’s reprinting of the series is jumping around in time, with plenty of the Tome & Janry volumes already done and now seeming to concentrate on the Yoann & Vehlmann versions of the characters. But all through, there’s also been a number of what you could easily call the classic and definitive period for the characters, with Andre Franquin at the helm.

But the thing is, it really doesn’t matter what era of Spirou & Fantasio you pick up first, it’s the work of Franquin that set the tone and the style of it all, a tone and style perfectly on display right here in this volume. It’s got all the adventuring and thrills and spills of Tintin, but it’s lacking some of the, shall we say, all too straight-laced and serious attitude that you can find in Tintin at times. Basically, S&F is far more of a romp, a hell of a lot more fun, with plenty of gaggery and great comedy set pieces thrown into the adventuring.

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I reckon this volume, The Prisoner of the Buddha, originally published in 1960, is something of a sweet spot for S&F, coming with the arrival of writer Greg to script Franquin’s storyline and 13 years into the classic Franquin run on writing and art that spanned 22 years. It’s got everything you need to discover just how wonderfully good S&F’s adventures are, a perfect intro, a set of great globetrotting adventures packed with the sort of comedic moves Franquin simply excelled at.

In The Prisoner of the Buddha, we have a perfect S&F adventure, as the boy reporters and adventurers, along with pet squirrel Spip and the magnificently-tailed Marsupilami head off around the globe and into trouble. First stop is a visit to Count of Champignac where they find he’s harbouring a fugitive…

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Yes, a Russian scientist, creator of the Gamma Atomic Generator – an anti-gravity ray. It’s the sort of thing that you know Franquin’s going to make incredible use of all through the volume, with he and Greg really playing up the slapstick for all its worth whilst also pushing us along in a breathless storyline and fabulous verbal gaggery to boot.

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Anyway, the Russian scientist has decided that his anti-grav ray is just all too powerful, too dangerous to be released to his government, something that already has the KGB on his tail, some to be followed by the British authorities in a glorious little Thomson & Thompson nod/homage/pastiche/whatever.

Worse, the scientist’s former associate, who knows almost as much about the anti-grav ray, has been captured by the Chinese. So, it’s off to China for the two intrepid adventurers, along with Marsupilami, Franquin’s own creation who did tend to get some of the very best gags…

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So, another excellent volume of Spirou & Fantasio from perhaps the finest artist/writer to ever detail their adventures. Franquin’s penmanship, his control of the action, his ability to sell us on all manner of comedy and still keep a rollicking little adventure going so well is what makes it all so very good. Of course, credit has to go to both Greg for the scripting of it all and to Jidehem for the lush and lavish backgrounds. But it’s still Franquin running the show, developing the story, putting in all the character art and just continuing to show us why he was one of Europe’s finest comic makers.

Spirou & Fantasio Volume 21 – The Prisoner of the Buddha –

By Andre Franquin

Backgrounds by Jidehem,

Script by Greg

Translation by Jerome Saincantin.

Published by Cinebook on 24 May 2024

Now, time for a preview…