Маленький Спиру: Бельгийский комикс о детстве героя

Belgian comic book series

Le Petit Spirou (De Kleine Robbe; "Young Spirou") is a popular Belgian comic strip created by Tome and Janry in 1987. The series developed from La jeunesse de Spirou (1987), a Spirou & Fantasio album in which Tome and Janry (at the time the authors of the series) set to imagine Spirou's youth. It was developed into a spin off series shortly afterwards and the authors have focused on it ever since the controversy created after their final Spirou et Fantasio album, Machine qui rêve (1998). New albums are among the bestselling French language comics, with 330,000 copies for the latest one. In addition to continuing to develop the character in the spirit of previous Spirou et Fantasio author Franquin, in this series Tome and Janry paid homage to Franquin's manner of animating the gag's signature.

This series details the antics of the character as an elementary schoolboy. A lot of the gags center around the character's interest in the opposite sex, most notably he and his pals coming up with ways of spying on the girls' showers and dressing room. Other topics concern religion and the contradictions and absurdities of the adult world. It is generally acknowledged that, psychologically speaking, the character in Le Petit Spirou has little in common with the clean cut adult he will become.

In La Jeunesse de Spirou, regular characters such as Fantasio, Spip the squirrel and their enemy Zantafio also featured as children. However, when the actual P'tit Spirou series came about it was decided to leave them out and to create new characters, given that, in the original series (started in the 1930s), Spirou had not met them until adulthood.

Mr. Mégot The gym teacher, always trying to organize original sporting events that always end in disaster. Drinks and smokes a lot. "Mégot" is French for a cigarette butt. Abbot Langelusse He always has ideas to pray God's glory and save the souls of his flock, which usually also end in disaster. A word play on angelus. Miss Claudia Chiffre The math teacher. "Chiffre" is French for digit and an obvious play on the name Claudia Schiffer. Melchior Dugenou A timid teacher with big glasses and the boyfriend of Miss Chiffre, which nobody understands why. He is a good head shorter than his girlfriend, Miss Chiffre. Pépé Spirou Spirou's grandfather and his favourite adult. At his age, he is not much wiser than his grandson. He also wears the family's trademark red outfit. Mrs. Gourmandine Pépé's girlfriend. Mrs. Spirou Spirou's mother, dressed in a female version of her son's red outfit. Mr. Spirou Spirou's father, dressed in the standard bellboy outfit. He appears seldom in the series and his face is never seen. Tome claims that this was because he would have looked too much like the adult Spirou. Tome also claims that he did not know his own father well and that he lacked "emotional documentation on the subject".