As a Japanese person who is used to reading manga, I find comics outside Japan to be so different beyond size, color, reading direction, and language that I wish there was a book explaining comics of various kinds and how to approach them. For example, I have read The Witch Boy by Molly Ostertag, Magical Boy by The Kao, Hound by Paul J. Bolger and Barry Devlin, An Táin by Colmán Ó Raghallaigh, and the excerpts of Franco-Belgian comics in the guide Invitation au monde de la Bande Dessinée (はじめての人のためのバンド・デシネ徹底ガイド, 2013).
Neither The Witch Boy nor Hound were divided by chapter to my surprise—especially Hound since it was first released in three volumes. Dialogue in Franco-Belgian comics are lengthy compared to what I see in manga, which the academic book Les échanges culturels entre Manga et Bande dessinée : Historie, Adaptation et Création (日仏マンガの交流 ヒストリー・アダプテーション・クリエーション, 2015) has commented on.
Hound was created by at least two Irish people and edited by one British person (Hugh Welchman) but I find this graphic novel to be similar to a certain kind of Franco-Belgian comics like the works of Jean "Mœbius" Giraud. These comics have impressive art and imagery—and I love how Hound portrays Cú Cullan's berserk state and uses dashes of red in an otherwise black and white setting—but they give me little or no idea about what's going on unlike, say, Fullmetal Alchemist by Hiromu Arakawa. I have heard of the international popularity of manga—in France in particular—but I wonder why people outside Japan embrace manga so much when it's not like comics produced in their countries.
Thank you André Franquin for creating such a wonderful villain like Zantafio, it's not often for me come across good three-dimensional character in any media but I always find them.
And Zantafio is one of them. So much so that I would draw fanart of him more then Spirou and Fantasio though I have noticed I've been drawing the anime version of Zantafio as opposed to the original comic book version of him. Still he's quite an interesting character and I enjoy drawing him whatever chance I get in any version of him.
And of course I always end up using the way I draw onto a characters like the Spirou cast to see how they would look in my style of drawing and each time when I do this on fanart, when I move over to doing my own original stuff It improves so there's a benefit for me to do fanart all the time before I work on my original art.
As I'm apparently eagerly jumping back into the bande dessinée fandoms both feet first, here are some more random Spirou headcanons to go with the "Dorian Gray" theory and the Gil Jourdan theory.
Firstly, Spirou discovers he is the Count's hitherto secret son - he'd go from being a bellboy having to deal with the elite bossing him around, to being the noble heir to the countdom of Champaignac who may well be greater than any of them.
Fantasio, of course, would be thrilled for him, but also jealous, as he'd love the chance to be amongst the rich and famous.
Secondly, Spirou and Fantasio aren't the same two people throughout all of the books. They are (and I've three ideas here):
ongoing biological descendants of the previous ones
two aligned spirits who are reborn each generation and always destined to find both adventure and each other
all connected in a secret society - the names and roles are passed on to worthy young men by the current holders when they grow old (so Spirous and Fantasios are made, not born)
Is it just me or does the cover art by Katsuya Terada of the book Invitation au monde de la Bande Dessinée (はじめての人のためのバンド・デシネ徹底ガイド, 2013) look like Tweeny Witches?