‘Tu te trompes, Fantasio’: Yves Chaland’s decoding and recoding of Spirou

Framing Yves Chaland’s Spirou as a return to and a quest for origins, this article examines how Chaland creates the illusion that his Spirou harks back to the so-called golden age of bande dessinée. Borrowing from the formal and thematic tropes and codes of the European hero travelling to colonial Africa that were established during this golden age, Chaland constructs the double of Jijé’s and Franquin’s Spirou. This double, structured around a series of mistakes and illusions, appears in turn to participate in the deconstruction of the very codes of heroism around which this golden age was built, and around which it may still be perceived.