Spirou & Fantasio Book 3: Running Scared

Spirou & Fantasio Book 3: Running Scared, by Tome & Janry, Cinebook

A COLLECTION of age-old slapstick antics are played out and trumped with fresh new takes over the opening four quite brilliantly choreographed pages of this book. They call to mind the comic timing of the comedian and writer Eric Sykes with his classic movie The Plank.

The reason for reporter Spirou’s madcap rush across town during three of those pages? To make it in time to give a lecture on his adventuring deeds... Not that everyone stays to yawn their way through to the end!

Dr Placebo, however, thinks Spirou & Fantasio may just prove the cure to a little something he calls spasmodia maligna, or basically the hiccups to you and I.

His theory is that a great fright will cure people, and no better place to get such a fright would be on one of the duo’s adventures. To this end he funds their expedition to find out of what happened to missing explorers on the border to Nepal back in 1938; but he does so under the condition they take him and his patients – an oddball collection if ever there was one.

Drawing in part from Rudyard Kipling’s The Man Who Would be King, coming across like a more absurd modern day Indiana Jones, readers of Garen Ewing’s The Rainbow Orchid graphic novel series might feel they’re dipping their toes into similar waters, though both the humour and adventure aspects are treated differently. There’s even cause for concern among the absurdity of it, with the storyline to be concluded in the next volume, titled The Valley of the Exiles.

Over the space of three books published in English this series has picked up immensely, and if you’re new to Spirou & Fantasio I can recommend you start right here.

For more information Spirou & Fantasio visit Cinebook.

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