The double fantasio

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The double Fantasio (OT: La mauvaise tête ) is a comic from the Spirou and Fantasio series , drawn and written by the Belgian comic artist André Franquin . The eighth volume in the series was first published in Spirou magazine from May to December 1954 .

action

Spirou visits his friend Fantasio, who is totally annoyed because he has lost six passport photos. When the two play Jokari a little later and Fantasio accidentally hits the ball over the fence, Spirou goes looking for it in the bushes. He finds one of the passport photos but thinks nothing of it. When Spirou is in town later that evening, he hears calls for help from a jewelry store. The seller was knocked down and twenty gold watches were stolen. Shortly after the police arrive, Fantasio also shows up. He says he got a call from Spirou and went straight to the jeweler. However, Spirou did not call him. The seller recognizes Fantasio as the culprit, but he can first talk his way out so that he is not arrested. Shortly afterwards, Spirou sees Fantasio on television handing over the Etchetete's gold mask to the Historical Museum. Shortly after Professor Wulf Wulffen has taken the mask out of the box, Fantasio pushes himself into the picture and tears the mask from the professor's hand and flees.

The next day Spirou wants to visit Fantasio, but he is only just coming back by car because the editor had called an American weekly magazine and asked Fantasio for a report. This drove off immediately but when he arrived he found that the address the man had given does not exist. He does not know anything about the theft in the museum that he allegedly committed. Shortly afterwards the police turn up at Fantasio's and want to arrest him because of the incident in the museum, but Fantasio escapes. Spirou worries because he can't believe his friend Fantasio is a thief. The first thing that comes to Spirou's mind is that Fantasio has been hypnotized. Spirou suspects Fantasio's new neighbor with whom he saw him in town, but whom Fantasio said he has never met. Spirou searches the neighbor's house and finds a skin-colored mass and a plaster bust of Fantasio's head. This suggests a rubber mask that was used as a Fantasio to commit the thefts. On the first floor he sees a Chinese man with the gold mask, but he escapes and Spirou finds Fantasio's neighbor lying on the floor. He said he was a sculptor and made the rubber mask for the Chinese and his accomplices. The sculptor knocks down Spirou so that he doesn't take him to the police and leaves a message stating that the Chinese and his accomplice are probably at 27 Schinderstrasse in Lachberg.

Spirou finds Fantasio in the trunk of his car, who was hiding there from the police. The two now want to go to Lachberg to get the rubber mask and thus prove Fantasio's innocence. As the police discovered Fantasio's car, Fantasio had to take the train to midfield. Spirou is supposed to pick him up there and take him to Lachberg. But he is recognized at the train station and so the police can follow him to midfield. When Spirou arrives in midfield, he notices that midfield is a stage town of the Tour de France ( called Tour of the South in the booklet ). Spirou initially hides Fantasio and at the start of the race, Fantasio rides the stage with the cyclists, as he is the least noticeable. The route is too strenuous for the untrained Fantasio and so he takes a shortcut backwards driving down the mountain and is the first to cross the finish line. Fantasio is then caught by the police, Spirou can still escape. He drives to the address in Lachberg and finds the Chinese man tied up in the bushes. In the house he finds the accomplice Zantafio (known from An Exciting Inheritance and Mushrooms for the Dictator ), who tied the Chinese because he didn't want to share. Spirou pursues him, but the latter can barricade himself in a hut. He tries to outsmart Spirou by inflating the rubber mask with gas and hanging the bag with the mask on it. He notices the balloon floating on the outside of the house and tries to pull it down, but the rope breaks and the balloon floats away. Spirou chases him until he falls. The rubber mask and the bag fall onto a ledge that Spirou climbs to. He manages to grab the bag, but falls down and lies at the foot of the mountain. Three months later, Fantasio is in the middle of his trial, but his lawyer manages to postpone the trial for eight days. Meanwhile, Spirou is in a private clinic and has lost his memory. At the sight of a balloon everything comes back to him.

Fortunately, the bag and the mask were found and taken away. He immediately goes to court to save Fantasio. To convince the judge, he goes into the courtroom with the Fantasio mask and Fantasio is acquitted.

background

Franquin was easily inspired by his idea of ​​having part of the chase played during the Tour de France: The idea was simply good to let a criminal case take place during such a race. I find this handy to go undetected. In addition, the backdrop of the world's largest cycle race, the Tour de France , offered the draftsman the opportunity for comical moments, for example with the scene in which Fantasio steers the defective bike backwards down a mountain slope, or the final of the race with a hysterical sports reporter who swallowed his microphone in a hurry.

Publication by Carlsen Verlag

In the 2003 edition there is the additional story Guardian Angel of the Robins about the Marsupilami . On the last pages there are also three covers of the Spirou magazine, a story that was enclosed in a brochure as an advertisement for the magazine and a story with Spirou that Franquin published as an advertisement on the occasion of a competition for the margarine brand Brabantia .

Others

After the previous stories of Spirou and Fantasio had played in more exotic locations, Franquin wanted to make a pure crime story. However, he himself judged in an interview: I wanted to write a kind of detective novel, but I failed.

swell

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