Le dictateur et le champignon

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Spirou et Fantasio #7
Le dictateur et le champignon

Cover of the Belgian edition

Publisher	Dupuis
Date	1956
Series	Spirou et Fantasio

Creative team
Writer(s)	Franquin Maurice Rosy, idea
Artist(s)	Franquin

Original publication
Published in	Le Journal de Spirou
Issue(s)	#801 - #838
Date(s) of publication	1953 - 1954
Language	French
ISBN	ISBN 2-8001-0009-5

Chronology
Preceded by	La corne de rhinocéros, 1955
Followed by	La mauvaise tête, 1957

Le dictateur et le champignon, written and drawn by Franquin, is the seventh album of the Spirou et Fantasio series. After serial publication in Le Journal de Spirou, the story was released as a hardcover album in 1956.

1 Story
2 Background
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Story

In The Dictator and the Mushroom, Spirou and Fantasio realize that the Marsupilami does not belong in civilization, and set out to return him to his home in the Palombian jungles. After an eventful journey by cruise ship, they find that Fantasio's shady cousin Zantafio has reinvented himself as General Zantas and become the country's ruthless dictator. The now power-mad Zantafio, intent on invading a neighbouring country, offers them top positions in his army, and when they indignantly refuse throws them in jail. The pair decide to feign a change of heart, and plan to foil the invasion using one of The Count of Champignac's curious inventions...

[edit] Background

Three characters introduced in previous stories return for the first time in this one: the resourceful Seccotine, and the very shifty Zantafio who was last seen repenting on his scoundrel ways at the end of Spirou et les héritiers, but later evolved into an even worse villain. Franquin expressed regrets at twisting the character back and forth like this, but later did the same again with Zorglub.

One of Champignac's most memorable mushroom-based invention, the Métomol, a powerful metal-softening gas, is introduced in this album and used again in several others.

The sequence where Spirou and Fantasio melt a whole army's gear is an early, still quite gentle, expression of Franquin's anti-militarism, which he would let loose much more ferociously in Gaston Lagaffe and Idées noires.