Spirou #1145

History

By early 1960, Spirou under editor Yvan Delporte had reached a mature 52-page weekly format, packed with serialized adventure strips and gag pages. André Franquin was simultaneously producing the Spirou et Fantasio serial (in its 'Z comme Zorglub' phase, scripted by Greg with backgrounds by Jidéhem) and the Gaston Lagaffe half-pages, whose cast had just been expanded with the introduction of M. De Mesmaeker in the preceding issue (#1144). Morris and Goscinny were deep into their celebrated collaborative era on Lucky Luke, which had begun in 1955 and was regarded even then as the series' creative peak; their story 'Sur la piste des Daltons', which opened in #1138, introduced Rantanplan into that already-rich cast. The mini-récit format, launched around 1959–1960, was also in active use by #1145, with Pat Mallet debuting the strip 'Xing et Xot' in that fold-out format.

Trivia · 9 facts

• Rantanplan, the dim-witted prison guard dog of Lucky Luke fame, made his first appearance in the Lucky Luke serial 'Sur la piste des Daltons,' scripted by René Goscinny and drawn by Morris — the story was running in Spirou during early 1960, with issue #1145 dated February 1960.
• Rantanplan was conceived by Morris and Goscinny as a comedic inversion of the famous movie dog Rin Tin Tin — as stupid as Rin Tin Tin was clever — and served as foil to the Dalton Brothers' repeated prison escapes.
• Rantanplan eventually starred in his own spin-off album series beginning in 1987, and a 76-episode animated television series produced by Xilam in 2006.
• Spirou #1145 also launches the Vieux Nick serial 'L'Île de la Main ouverte' (running through issue #1166), which introduced the character Barbe-Noire into that strip.
• Pat Mallet's mini-récit 'Xing et Xot' debuted in this issue, reflecting Dupuis's then-new policy of using the fold-out mini-story format to showcase and develop emerging cartoonists.
• André Franquin's Spirou et Fantasio was in its 'Z comme Zorglub' serial (co-produced with writer Greg and background artist Jidéhem), placing Spirou, Fantasio, Spip, the Marsupilami, and the comte de Champignac all in active ongoing stories at this moment.
• The Gaston Lagaffe strip by Franquin was a current weekly feature, with M. De Mesmaeker having just been introduced one issue earlier (Spirou #1144), meaning the classic Gaston cast was essentially complete contemporaneously with this issue.
• Lucky Luke had been serialized in Spirou since 1946 and would continue until 1967, when Morris moved the strip to Goscinny's Pilote magazine; in 1960 the Morris-Goscinny collaboration was considered the definitive creative peak of the series.
• Jijé's Jerry Spring western strip and Jijé himself — the 'patron' who had trained Franquin, Morris, and Will — was concurrently running in the magazine, as was his protégé work across multiple features.

Cast · 15 characters

Full credits

Key issues in Spirou