| Marsupilami | |
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Marsupilami shouting his catchphrase
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| Publication information | |
| Publisher | Marsu Productions (since 1987) |
| First appearance | Spirou magazine (31 January 1952) |
| Created by | André Franquin |
| Voiced by | Steve Mackall (Raw Toonage and 1993 series) Bruno Buidin (2000 series) Richard Dumont (My Friend Marsupilami) Marc Saez (Marsupilami Hoobah Hoobah Hop! and Our Neighbors the Marsupilamis) |
Marsupilami is a comic book character and fictional animal species created by André Franquin. Its first appearance was in the 31 January 1952 issue of the Franco-Belgian comics magazine Spirou.[1] Since then it appeared regularly in the popular Belgian comics series Spirou & Fantasio, as a pet of the main characters, until Franquin stopped working on the series; the character's final appearance in the series during Franquin's lifetime was in 1970.
In the late 1980s, another character of the same species, distinct from the pet Marsupilami owned by Spirou and Fantasio, got its own successful spin-off series of comic albums entitled Marsupilami, written by Greg, Yann, and Dugomier, and drawn by Batem. The 1987 release of the first Marsupilami album marked the debut publication of the publishing house Marsu Productions, which was named after the character.
Marsupilami has since become a multimedia franchise, with multiple animated series, a feature film, a Marsupilami Sega Genesis video game[2][3][4] and a variety of other merchandise. The asteroid 98494 Marsupilamiisnamed in its honour.
Marsupilami's adventures had been translated to several languages, like Dutch, German, Greek, Catalan, Spanish, Portuguese, English, Italian and several Scandinavian languages. The most recent English translations are published by the British publishing house Cinebook. More than three million albums of the Marsupilami series are claimed to have been sold by Marsu Productions.[5]
In 2013, Dupuis bought Marsu Productions and its characters, thereby allowing a new production of Spirou & Fantasio adventures including the Marsupilami. The Marsupilami returned to the Spirou & Fantasio series in the album La Colère du Marsupilami, released in 2016.
The name is a portmanteau of the words marsupial, Pilou-Pilou (the French name for Eugene the Jeep, a character Franquin loved as a child) and ami (French for friend).
The species' binomial name is given in Franquin's Spirou et les héritiersasMarsupilamus fantasii.[6] Its specific epithet refers to the character Fantasio, who was tasked with finding a specimen by his late uncle. He successfully found one on his expedition to South America with Spirou and subsequently brought it to Europe,[6] where it later became the pair's pet.
InHouba Banana, a 1997 album from the Marsupilami spin-off comic series written by Xavier Fauche and Eric Adam, its binomial name is given as Marsupilami franquini, referring to the real-life creator of the species, Franquin.
The marsupilami is a black-spotted yellow leopard-like creature with dog-like ears.[6] Male marsupilamis have an incredibly long, strong, flexible, prehensile tail, used for almost any task. Female marsupilamis have a much shorter tail, but still long compared to real animals. Both the male and female are able to use their tail as a weapon, by tightening the end into a fist and the remainder of the tail into a springlike spiral for maximal force. This attack was responsible for the Danish and Norwegian translators choosing words similar to "spiral" over "marsupial" as the creature's name. Unlike the males, the females also walk on the tips of their toes. When the animal rebounds, he makes the noise: "Boing". Males are also drawn with their eyes not completely separated, as if the sclerae of both eyes have merged, while females are often drawn with two completely separate eyes. Female marsupilamis also have a different voice compared to the males. Males say "houba" most of the time, while females say "houbi". According to the L'Encyclopédie du Marsupilami, they are monotremes like the platypus and echidna, which explains why they lay eggs while having mammalian features.[7] Like parrots and some corvid birds, the Marsupilami can also mimic human speech, and like an amphibian is able to breathe underwater as well as on land.
The appellation "The Marsupilami" originally referred to the individual captured and then adopted by Spirou and Fantasio, which they never bothered to name because he was the only known specimen. The Spirou & Fantasio album Le nid des Marsupilamis introduces more marsupilami characters, none of whom are in captivity; the album is mostly concerned with a documentary-within-the-comic about the life of a family of marsupilamis living in the wild in Palombia. The later spin-off series Marsupilami, drawn by Batem, stars this family, and the title of the series, "Marsupilami", refers to the father in this family, who is also unnamed, and not to the pet Marsupilami owned by Spirou and Fantasio.
In these series, Marsupilami's wife is referred to as Marsupilamie (a female version of the name) but their three young are named, respectively, Bibi, Bibu and Bobo. Mars the Black is another specimen, which first appears in the album Mars the Black. A former captive marsupilami, he first finds it hard to live again in the forest. After failing to seduce Marsupilamie, he becomes jealous of Marsupilami and nearly gets into a fight with him. Later, he meets a black female marsupilami, named Venus, who becomes his mate. In Baby Prinz, another specimen, an elderly male who lives in a zoo, is featured. Altogether, that comes to eight specimens in Palombia, plus Spirou and Fantasio's pet.
Marsupilamis have been shown with multiple different fur colourations – yellow, yellow with black spots, black, white, white with black spots, and black with yellow spots. The most frequently seen fur colours are yellow with black spots, yellow with no spots, and black all over, as these are the variations seen within the main Marsupilami family in the Marsupilami comic series; these are also the fur colours that are regularly seen in the French animated series featuring the same family.
The following albums of Spirou & Fantasio feature the Marsupilami:
By the late 1960s, Franquin decided to retire from drawing the Spirou & Fantasio series, which was passed to a new artist, Jean-Claude Fournier. Franquin did not give permission for the character to continue appearing in the series after the first Fournier story, Le faiseur d'or ("The Gold Maker"),[8] in which Franquin drew the Marsupilami himself. Spirou's Marsupilami ceased to feature in the comics after that, and was absent from Spirou & Fantasio until 2016.
In 1987, Franquin launched a new series centering around the Marsupilami with the new publishing house, Marsu Productions. This series featured the Marsupilami family which had appeared in Le nid des Marsupilamis.
The first four volumes were illustrated by both Franquin and Batem. From the fifth volume onwards, Batem is the sole illustrator of the series.
The stories in the first two volumes were written by Greg. Afterwards, Greg stopped working on the series, and the next seven volumes were written by Yann. Various others have written for the series since; the most recent writer is Colman, who has received writing credits in the twelve most recent volumes.
The first published album of the series is La Queue du Marsupilami. In 2002, an album #0 was published, consisting of short stories featuring the Marsupilami, drawn by Franquin before 1987.
An early example of an English-language translation of Spirou & Fantasio was published in 1960, when the Franquin story Le nid des Marsupilamis was printed in the weekly British boys' magazine Knockout, under the title Dickie and Birdbath Watch the Woggle. In that early localization, Spirou was called "Dickie", Fantasio was "Birdbath", Seccotine was "Cousin Constance", the Marsupilami was "the Woggle", and the female Marsupilami was "the Wiggle."[15]
One album of Spirou & Fantasio featuring Marsupilami, number 15, was translated to English by Fantasy Flight Publishing in 1995. Plans on releasing number 16 ended halfway through the translation process, due to bad sales.
In 2007, Egmont's subsidiary Euro Books translated the Spirou & Fantasio albums numbered 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 14 into English for the Indian market.[16][17] The Marsupilami was renamed "Beastie" in these translations.[18]
The British publishing company Cinebook have published English-language translations of Spirou & Fantasio, including some of Franquin's albums featuring the Marsupilami. The first of Franquin's albums that they translated was The Marsupilami Thieves, which they released in 2013.[19] In 2017, Cinebook began to release English translations of the spin-off series Marsupilami.
Disney's version of the Marsupilami first appeared on television in Raw Toonage in 1992, and was then spun off into his own eponymous show on the CBS network and Syndication in 1993. Marsupilami's supporting characters included among others Maurice the gorilla, Stewart the elephant, Eduardo the jaguar, Leonardo the lion, and Norman the poacher. The original Marsupilami stories by Franquin never featured a gorillaorelephant in the Marsupilami's wild habitat, since those species are native to Africa, whereas the Marsupilami species in the comics was said to come from South America. Another change is that Marsupilami can speak; his comic counterpart can only mimic sound like a parrot. In this version, Marsupilami is voiced by Steve Mackall. Shnookums and Meat was a secondary segment on this show.
There were thirteen episodes in the series, and the series lasted one season. Reruns of the show were aired on The Disney Channel (from October 1994[20] to June 1995[21][22]), and later on Toon Disney.
Animators Tony Bancroft and Michael Surrey are in the character design ending credits.
A second animated series, this time produced in France, premiered in March 2000 and ran for 26 episodes[23] on the French television channel Canal J. Produced by Marathon Productions and Marsu Productions, this series more closely followed the character in the original comic.
In this first season, there's a more comedic side. Marsupilami went on adventures alone or with his family (his wife Marsupilamie and their three young, Bibi, Bibu and Bobo). For example, in one episode he saved a group of circus animals, got them back to the city and saved the circus from closing. In another, he had to go to the city again to save one of his young, captured by their constant enemy, the hunter Bring M. Backalive.
In the 26-episode[24] Marsupilami and his family become best friends with a human family, The Newmans, that comes to live near them. Amanda is a Marsupilami researcher, while her husband David is a computer technician that works from home and they have two children, Leo and toddler Zoe. Leo and Marsupilami become best friends and they have many adventures, with both new friends and old enemies, like Backalive.
The third series, which premiered in 2009, features a preteen boy named Hector Forster and his aunt Diane Forster, who are going to live in the jungle for one year to study its fauna and flora. They become best friends with the Marsupilami family. Their main enemies are megalomaniac industrialist and jungle-hater Felicia Devort, who plans to level out the Palombian jungle and build the Devort City megalopolis in its place, and her two henchmen, Stroy and Blouprint.[25] Their old enemy, hunter Bring M. Backalive, also appears.
Samka Productions replaces Marathon beginning with this series.
The fourth series featured the Marsupilami family living with veterinarian Bernard Vanderstadt and his four children Sarah, Iris, Isidore and Zoe. Their mother, Caroline, frequently contacts them by phone, but appears in the last three episodes. Once again Backalive makes an appearance.[26]
Marathon's Marsupilami series has been broadcast in 37 countries. Among the countries to have received at least one season are Germany (Super RTL), Algeria (Programme National), Belgium (RTL TVI), Canada (Télé-Quebec and Teletoon), Estonia (ETV), Bulgaria (Super7), United Kingdom (Channel 4), Spain (Antena 3, Disney Channel, Toon Disney and TV3), Finland (MTV3), Cyprus (CyBC), Greece (Alter Channel), Ireland (RTÉ), Italy (Italia 1), Portugal (Prisvideo), Switzerland (TSR), Russia (THT Network), Hungary (Minimax), Slovenia (RTV), Serbia (Happy TV and Minimax), Montenegro (Happy TV and Minimax), Bosnia and Herzegovina (Minimax), North Macedonia (Minimax), Morocco (2M TV), Turkey (Yumurcak TV), Sri Lanka (Rupavahini), Mexico (Canal 22), Brazil (Rede Globo and SBT), Venezuela (RCTV), Indonesia (Rajawali Televisi and RCTI), Malaysia (TV3 and TV9), the Africa Pansat (CFI), Latin America (ZAZ), the Near East and Middle East (TV5 and E-Junior), Vietnam (HTV7), Thailand (United Broadcasting Corporation), South Korea (EBS), Iceland (Sjónvarpið), and South Africa (SABC).
In 2019, it was announced that a new animated series was in development from Belgian studio Belvision. The new series focuses on three marsupilamis named Marsu, Pila and Mi. It will set to air in 2025. [27]
Houba! On the Trail of the Marsupilami is a live-action, animated, comedy adventure film directed by Alain Chabat and released in 2012. Chabat himself stars in the movie alongside Jamel Debbouze, Frédéric Testot, Géraldine Nakache, Lambert Wilson, Patrick Timsit, Liya Kebede, Aïssa Maïga and The Great Khali. Though Marsupilami and his family are featured prominently, the movie features new characters rather than any of the established cast from the comics or television shows. The central focus is on French reporter Dan Geraldo (Chabat) and Palombian vet Pablito Camaron (Debbouze), whose name humorously translates to Little Pablo Shrimp, as they go searching for the indigenous Paya people led by Queen Paya (Kebede). The duo end up in a complicated plot involving the Marsupilami, an evil botanist (Testot) who discovers the elixir of youth, and a major, (Timsit) whom the botanist teams up with to overthrow the Palombian president (Wilson) and said president's love for Celine Dion.
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| Spirou et Fantasio characters |
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| Spirou and Fantasio albums |
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| Gaston Lagaffe albums |
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| Marsupilami albums |
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| Other albums |
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