"Vintage", the new "Spirou" pays homage to Franquin's golden age

Extract from the cover of the new Spirou -

• Spirou's new album, "Spirou chez les Soviets", will be released this Friday.

• It was produced by two Occitans, designer Fabrice Tarrin and screenwriter Fred Neidhardt.

  Together, they worked for almost six years on its conception.

• As fans of the groom, they deliver a “vintage” opus full of references.

A new Spirou comes out this Friday.

And if this album,

, transports this good old groom in the great communist east of the 1960s, it clearly has Occitan accents: its designer, Fabrice Tarrin, is Narbonnais, and its screenwriter, Fred Neidhardt, is Montpellier .

It is under the Languedoc sun, in the spring, while confinement was announced, that the two friends thus completed this comic book, event of this return.

“We started working on this project six years ago,” says Fabrice Tarrin to

.

I came to Montpellier regularly to see Fred, and we called each other all the time.

"It even happened, sometimes, that the duo discussed the album on the beach, in Carnon.

And if the childbirth was so long, it is because the two artists have also worked, during all her years, on other projects, because Fabrice Tarrin was a father ... But above all because they imposed themselves for this album a very special requirement.

Fred Neidhardt and Fabrice Tarrin, screenwriter and designer of the new Spirou - David Crespin

"We quarreled, but we reconciled"

"Each sequence had five, six versions, we reworked them each time, there is a kind of ping-pong between us which lasted a very long time," notes the designer.

We have not stopped turning pages, exchanging proposals and counter-proposals.

We especially did not want to rush.

In the end, we both had to agree, no way one decides more than the other.

There were moments of friction too.

"" We argued, but we reconciled, notes Fred Neidhardt.

If we hadn't had this mutual trust and if we hadn't been so accomplices, it would have been hard.

"

And it was worth it.

Together, they have produced a captivating album, in which Spirou and Fantasio set out in search of the Comte de Champignac, kidnapped by the KGB: in Moscow, a devilish scientist indeed wants the mustachioed genius to help him spread the communist virus. all over the planet.

An opus resolutely turned towards adventure… and nostalgia.

Over the pages, these two have indeed distilled heaps of references that the madmen of the ninth art will love: a nod to the first album of Tintin, which, too, once rubbed shoulders with the Soviets. , to the

newspaper

, the former

, which serves as a cover for Spirou and Fantasio on their arrival on Russian soil, or for Mickey, American “symbol of imperialism”, for the police officers who throw them into the dungeon.

An excerpt from the Spirou comic book at the Soviets - Dupuis / Tarrin / Neidhardt

An excerpt from the Spirou comic book at the Soviets - Dupuis / Tarrin / Neidhardt

"A slightly more vintage Spirou"

The comics also put in the saddle old-style heroes, straight out of their golden age, in the 1950s and 1960s. “Fred really wanted a slightly more vintage Spirou, he wanted to rediscover his childhood memories, when they read the first albums of Franquin [emblematic designer of the series] ”, explains Fabrice Tarrin, who discovered Spirou“ in sea class ”when he was 10 years old.

“And when I was around 14, I bought all the albums,” he remembers.

Since childhood, the stories of Franquin, with

or

, have always fascinated me.

As a teenager, I loved Franquin so much that I turned away from other comic book authors!

"

The Count of Champignac has disappeared!

😲 Direction Russia with Spirou and Fantasio to free their friend and try to save capitalism.

🇷🇺

➡ "Spirou chez les Soviets" by Neidhardt and Tarrin - Available from September 4 in bookstores

➡Discover: https://t.co/H2hb938fdz pic.twitter.com/nbwrkkmMDS

- Éditions Dupuis (@EditionsDupuis) ​​July 27, 2020

Fred Neidhardt was even nicknamed "Spirou" by his boarding school mates when he was a teenager.

“I fell into the pot when I was little,” says the author.

As a child, my father lived in Algeria and was a subscriber to

magazine

.

He often told me that he had to abandon his entire collection when he gained independence in 1962. For my part, I discovered the Spirou from the 1950s with friends of my parents.

It was a real shock.

»A passion that we find throughout this adventure of Spirou and Fantasio, which will be a milestone in the history of the series.

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