The Purple Smurfs (Les Schtroumpfs noirs) | |
---|---|
Creator | Peyo |
Date | 30 November 1963 |
Series | The Smurfs |
Page count | 64 pages |
Publisher | Dupuis |
Original publication | |
Published in | Spirou magazine |
Issues | 1107 |
Date of publication | 2 July 1959 |
Language | French |
Chronology | |
Followed by | King Smurf (1965) |
The Purple Smurfs (original French title: Les Schtroumpfs noirs, "The Black Smurfs") is the first album of the original French-language Smurfs comic series created by Belgian artist Peyo. It was first published as an album in 1963, but the stories it contained had already been published in Spirou magazine. The main story Les Schtroumpfs noirs was first published in number 1107 (July 2, 1959) as the first "mini-récit" in the magazine. This was a special supplemental page which readers would remove and fold up in order to create a small booklet. Mini-récits were not included when the issues of Spirou were collected in the quarterly hardcover volumes, so this story is absent from volume 72 of Spirou, though the page containing instructions for creating the booklet is there. [1]
Apart from the titular one, it contains two other stories: The Flying Smurf (Le Schtroumpf Volant) and The Smurfnapper (Le Voleur de Schtroumpfs).
In a little mushroom village live the Smurfs, diminutive blue-skinned humanoid creatures. One day, one of them gets bitten by a Purple fly that turns his skin jet Purple, reduces his vocabulary to the single word "gnap!", and causes him to go angry and berserk. He bounces around and bites other Smurfs on their tail, which turns them into evil Purple Smurfs as well. Soon, almost everyone in the village has become a nasty Purple Smurf, and Papa Smurf, the leader, tries to find a cure and cease the tail-biting epidemic. The cure is found in magnolia pollen, which is gathered in great quantity and loaded in fireplace bellows to be used as impromptu ranged weapons against contaminated Smurfs. The Purple Smurf has to inhale the pollen, which, after a loud and powerful sneeze, causes him to revert to his usual blue-skinned bonhomie. A great battle is fought outside the village, as the Purple, tail-biting horde closes in, threatening to destroy Smurf civilization for good.
The first Purple Smurf to have been transformed, meanwhile, recovers some semblance of ingenuity and paints himself blue to avoid being sprayed by the pollen-powered antidote. This allows him to ambush several normal Smurfs and reverse the outcome of the clash. In the end, only Papa Smurf still stands. He rushes to the lab to reload his bellows but is bitten while doing so. As he turns, he lets the large pollen jar fall into the fire, which causes the whole lab to explode. The resulting pollen cloud descends on the raving Purple Smurfs, reverting them to normality once and for all.
This is one of the few Smurfs comic books where a Smurf is seen without a hat. Papa Smurf has his blown away by the final explosion, revealing a bald head. In a later adventure, "The Egg and the Smurfs", it is revealed that Grouchy Smurf's moody and unsociable personality is because of the lasting effects of the fly that bit him.
This story was later used as the basis for an episode of the Hanna-Barbera Smurfs cartoon, though their skin color was changed from black to purple, in order to avoid possible racial connotations. In the cartoon, Lazy Smurf is bitten by the fly first, and then bites Hefty. Hefty is the one who paints himself blue to avoid being sprayed by the antidote, and later causes the fire who makes the pollen jar explode (though this takes a while to happen, which gives time to Hefty to bite Papa Smurf and seemingly turn every Smurf purple).
Followers of zombie fiction have remarked the similarities between the plot of The Black Smurfs and that of George A. Romero's 1968 film Night of the Living Dead , which introduced a new archetype of zombies that would be later used in other fiction works: plagues of zombies that infect the living people, turning them violent, irrational and uncontrolled, as the black Smurfs. [2] [3] However, there had been other fictional works that could also be considered precedents of this zombie archetype.
A blue Smurf desperately wishes to be able to fly in the air, and tries various means to defy gravity and accomplish his dream, such as sticking feathers to his arms, building a hot-air balloon and eating much yeast.
A reclusive sorcerer, Gargamel, wants to create the philosopher's stone. In his magic recipe book, he finds out that one of the ingredients for making it is a Smurf. He succeeds in catching a Smurf and locks him up in a cage. Papa Smurf and the others quickly go to rescue the imprisoned Smurf, but opening the cage proves a case of easier said than done.
This is Gargamel's first appearance in the Smurfs canon, and his motive for stealing Smurfs is made clear here, although it was slightly inconsistent in later stories and adaptations.
The comic was re-released in 2010 for the US market as "The Purple Smurfs" by Papercutz in September 2010, [4] with artist Diego Jourdan Pereira in charge of the re-coloring (and partly redrawing) of all black smurfs into purple ones with red eyes. [5] [6] [7] Translated by Joe Johnson, this contains a different third story, called The Smurf and His Neighbors. The Smurfnapper was instead issued in a special preview comic published by Papercutz in July 2010. [8]
Smurfette is one of the protagonists from the comic strip The Smurfs. Smurfette was created by the evil wizard Gargamel, the Smurfs' archenemy, in order to spy on them and sow jealousy. However, she decides that she wants to be a real Smurf and Papa Smurf casts a spell that changes her hair from black to blonde as a sign of her transformation. She was the only female Smurf until the creation of Sassette. A Granny Smurf was also later introduced, although it is unclear how she was created. Thierry Culliford, the son of the comics' creator, Peyo, and current head of the Studio Peyo, announced in 2008 that more female Smurfs would be introduced in the stories. Smurfette has stereotypical feminine features, with long blonde wavy hair, long eyelashes, and wears a white dress and white high heels. She is the love interest of almost every Smurf.
Johan and Peewit is a Belgian comics series created by Peyo and named after the two main characters. Since its initial appearance in 1947, it has been published in 13 albums that appeared before the death of Peyo in 1992. Thereafter, a team of comic book creators from Studio Peyo continued to publish the stories.
The Smurfs and the Magic Flute is a 1976 Belgian animated film starring the Smurfs, directed by their creator, Peyo. Although the film premiered in 1976 in Belgium, it was not released in the United Kingdom until 1979, and in the United States until 1983, in the wake of the characters' newfound popularity.
The Smurfette is the third album of the original French-language Smurfs comic series. The story has also been made into an episode of the Smurfs animated cartoon show, where the only known significant difference is that Smurfette stays in the village for the rest of the show's run. Apart from the titular story, it contains another one called La Faim des Schtroumpfs.
Gargamel is a fictional character: the main antagonist of the Smurfs show and comic books. He is a wizard and the sworn enemy of the Smurfs.
King Smurf is the second comic book adventure of the Smurfs, and the name of the main fictional character who assumes power in the absence of Papa Smurf. The story was written and drawn by Peyo with Yvan Delporte as co-writer.
The Smurfs is a Belgian comic series, created by cartoonist Peyo. The titular creatures were introduced as supporting characters in an already established series, Johan and Peewit in 1958, and starred in their own series from 1959. More than forty Smurf comic albums have been created, 16 of them by Peyo. Originally, the Smurf stories appeared in Spirou magazine with reprints in many different magazines, but after Peyo left the publisher Dupuis, many comics were first published in dedicated Smurf magazines, which existed in French, Dutch and German. A number of short stories and one page gags have been collected in comic books next to the regular series. By 2008, Smurf comics have been translated into 25 languages, and some 25 million albums have been sold.
Schtroumpf Vert et Vert Schtroumpf is the ninth comic album adventure of the Smurfs, written and drawn by Peyo with Yvan Delporte as co-writer. The story is considered a parody on the still ongoing language war between French- and Dutch-speaking communities in the authors' native Belgium. The plot is similar in a way to King Smurf, an earlier adventure, in that the usually harmonious community of Smurfs falls into disarray due to the failure of father-figure Papa Smurf to exercise his leadership.
The Egg and the Smurfs is the fourth album of the original French-language Smurfs comic series created by Belgian artist Peyo.
The Smurfs and the Howlibird is the fifth album of the original French-language Smurfs comic series created by Belgian artist Peyo.
The Astrosmurf is the sixth album of the original French-language Smurfs comic series created by Belgian artist Peyo.
The Smurf Apprentice is the seventh album of the original French-language Smurfs comic series created by Belgian artist Peyo.
The Smurflings is the thirteenth album of the original French-language Smurfs comic series created by Belgian artist Peyo.
Smurf Soup is the tenth album of the original French-language Smurfs comic series created by Belgian artist Peyo.
Baby Smurf is the twelfth album of the original French-language Smurfs comic series created by Belgian artist Peyo.
The Olympic Smurfs is the eleventh album of the original French-language Smurfs comic series created by Belgian artist Peyo. It was first published in Spirou in 1980 and appeared in book format in 1984.
Finance Smurf is the sixteenth album of the original French-language Smurfs comic series created by Belgian artist Peyo. It is Pierre Culliford's last comic book work before his death on December 24, 1992.
The Smurfs is a Belgian comic franchise centered on a fictional colony of small, blue, humanoid creatures who live in mushroom-shaped houses in the forest. The Smurfs was created and introduced as a series of comic characters by the Belgian comics artist Peyo in 1958, wherein they were known as Les Schtroumpfs.
The Aerosmurf is the fourteenth album of the original French-language Smurfs comic series created by Belgian artist Peyo. Apart from the titular one, it contains other four stories: The Gluttony of the Smurfs, The Masked Smurfer, Puppy and the Smurfs and Jokey Smurf's Jokes.
The Strange Awakening of Lazy Smurf is the fourteenth album of the original French-language Smurfs comic series created by Belgian artist Peyo.