Leroy Douresseaux on THE PURPLE SMURFS

THE SMURFS GRAPHIC NOVEL #1: THE PURPLE SMURFS
PAPERCUTZ/NBM

CREATOR: Peyo
WRITERS: Peyo, Ivan Delporte
ARTISTS: Peyo, Peyo Studio
TRANSLATION: Joe Johnson
LETTERS: Janice Chiang
ISBN: 978-1-59707-207-6
56pp, Color, $10.99 U.S., $12.50 CAN

The recently released summer film, The Smurfs, from Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Animation, has made those blue elves, the Smurfs, hot again. People who know the Smurfs likely know them from the animated Saturday morning television series, The Smurfs, produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions and aired on NBC from 1981 to 1989. Since its cancellation, the series has appeared on various cable networks and currently airs on Boomerang.

However, the Smurfs began life in comics, created by the late Belgian comics artist, Peyo (the pen name of Pierre Culliford). The Smurfs debuted in 1958 in Peyo’s Johan and Peewit comics series, in the storyline, The Flute with Six Holes (now entitled, The Smurfs and the Magic Flute). The Smurfs were immediately popular and started appearing in their own comics series in 1959.

Eventually, those Smurf comics were reprinted in graphic albums (novels), and the first was Les Schtroumpfs noirs (The Black Smurfs). Although the Smurfs graphic albums were eventually published in English in the United States, they had long been out of print. In 2010, Papercutz, the all-ages graphic novel wing of NBM, brought the Smurfs back to American comics.

The first release is The Smurfs Graphic Novel No. 1: The Purple Smurfs. This is an English edition of The Black Smurfs, but with the black Smurfs re-colored purple. The Purple Smurfs contains three stories: “The Purple Smurfs,” “The Flying Smurf,” and “The Smurf and His Neighbors.” There is also a preview of The Smurfs Graphic Novel No. 2: The Smurfs and the Magic Flute, as well as an after word by Papercutz Editor-in-Chief, Jim Salicrup.

I’ve wanted to read the original Smurf comics for over two decades, and even after that long wait, I am not at all disappointed. These are delightful children’s comics, but there is an oddness and an eccentricity about The Smurfs comics that will make them enjoyable for older readers.

The Smurfs are at once tribal and social, but are also fiercely independent. Most of the time, they refer to one another as Smurf (as in “Hey, Smurf” or “Find that Smurf”), but they also clearly recognize each other’s individualism and unique personalities.

The Smurfs are little problems solvers, but they often make their own problems. The lengths to which the Smurf who wants to fly is willing to go to fly yields comedy gold. The title story (“The Purple Smurfs”) is surprisingly a thriller dressed as slapstick comedy. “The Smurf and His Neighbors,” an ode to the yearning to escape the noise of civilization for the quite and solitude of the wild, is like a little morality tale. I can’t pick a favorite of these three stories; each is fantastic in its own right.

This little hardcover, the size of a standard comic book, is the kind of comic book to pass on to new, young readers. The stories within, however, will inform readers why the Smurfs have such staying power. Longtime comics readers who are looking for a reminder of why comics are fun to read will want The Purple Smurf.

A

http://www.smurf.com/
http://www.papercutz.com/

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I Reads You Review: THE SPEED ABATER (OGN)

Creator: Christophe Blain (cartoonist) with Joe Johnson (translator)

Publishing Information: NBM/ComicsLit, paperback, Color, 80 pages, $13.95 (US)

Ordering Numbers: ISBN: 1-56163-349-6 (ISBN-10)

Originally published in 1999 by the French publishing house, Dupuis, The Speed Abater is a graphic novel from Christophe Blain. NBM published an English language edition of The Speed Abater in 2003, with translation by Joe Johnson. A French cartoonist who once studied economics, Blain has worked with David B. and Lewis Trondheim and is the creator of the Isaac the Pirate graphic novel series.

The Speed Abater is set during wartime (World War II?) aboard a destroyer, a battleship named the Bellicose. The story primarily focuses on George Guilbert, a young helmsman, who has difficulty adjusting to life on the high seas due to his extreme seasickness. He befriends Louis Bleno, another novice helmsman, and Sam Nordiz, a coxswain with a penchant for claiming to be more well-connected than he really is.

Trying to find a place to get a way from the noise and also the constant motion that causes their seasickness, George and Louis follow Sam deep into the bowels of the Bellicose. An accident causes problems with the Bellicose’ sensitive reduction gears. Catastrophe follows and the men find themselves trapped, while an enemy submarine stalks the Bellicose.

On the surface, The Speed Abater seems like a character drama, and in many ways, it is also a suspense thriller. At its core, however, Christophe Blain’s graphic novel is about the struggle between man and the enormous, complex, and bureaucratic machine that is life on this planet. The Bellicose is this giant, self-contained world and, perhaps, a stand-in for our own world.

For all its immensity and power, the Bellicose is susceptible breakdowns, even those sometimes caused by the most insignificant objects. The Bellicose has a seemingly unending supply of sailors/operators and also parts that keep it operating. With so much that can go wrong, it is a wonder that the ship operates at all. When it comes to the crew members, Blain’s narrative gives the impression that they work at cross purposes. The right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing, indeed.

George Guilbert and, to a lesser extent, Louis Bleno and Sam Nordiz, are tiny souls trapped in this world that is the belly of the beast. The goal is to survive the Bellicose and life – by hook, by crook, or by luck and circumstance. The colorful, odd assortment that is this story’s cast and the riveting storyline that is the story’s driving force are all engaging. Why? The answer is in how this deeply human story unveils George’s path to victory and survival.

The Speed Abater