Les chapeaux noirs

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Spirou et Fantasio #3
Les chapeaux noirs

Cover of the Belgian edition

Publisher	Dupuis
Date	1952
Series	Spirou et Fantasio

Creative team
Writer(s)	Franquin and Jijé
Artist(s)	Franquin and Jijé

Original publication
Published in	Le Journal de Spirou
Issue(s)	#617 - #635 #575 - #588 #686 - #692 #636 - #652
Date(s) of publication	1949 - 1950
Language	French
ISBN	ISBN 2-8001-0005-2

Chronology
Preceded by	Il y a un sorcier à Champignac, 1951
Followed by	Spirou et les héritiers, 1952

Les chapeaux noirs written and drawn by Franquin, and three other stories, two by Jijé: Comme une mouche au plafond and Spirou et les hommes-grenouilles, and Franquin's Mystère à la frontière, all from serial publication in Le Journal de Spirou between 1949-50, combine to make up the third Spirou et Fantasio hardcover album that was released in 1952.

1 Story
2 Background
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Story

In The Black Hats, Spirou and Fantasio go on assignment for Le Moustique and travel to USA, aiming to report on the the status of Wild West. Upon arrival they are disappointed to find quite a modern culture, but by chance meet a man who directs them to Tombstone, a town with all the western myths intact.

In Like a Fly on the Ceiling, Spirou surprisingly finds himself levitating in his apartment. This phenomenon turns out to be caused by the wizard neighbour whom Spirou and Fantasio must outwit in order to stop his mischief.

In Spirou and the Frog-Men, Spirou and Spip take the train to meet Fantasio in the Mediterranean village Cassis-sur-Mer where he currently lives in his boat and tries his luck in the tourism industry. But as crime seems to be everywhwere, they eventually find themselves in danger and maritime adventure.

In The Border Mystery, the heroes investigate a case currently in the papers, hoping to expose a smuggling ring responsible for bringing into Belgium a new drug, Hicoine.

[edit] Background

The title story is a result of Franquin's journey to USA, when he joined Jijé and Morris to absorb Americana. As those two harvested a great deal of material for their western series Jerry Spring and Lucky Luke, Franquin limited his USA inspired work to the shorter story Les chapeaux noirs. Upon completing it, he went directly to work on Mystère à la frontière, a short slapstick story featuring a fairly harmless drug, and from there began work on Il y a un sorcier à Champignac. Since this would be the launch of the Spirou's adventures told in long, in-depth context, this last prior work could be seen as Franquin's closure of a stage.

Another event to note is that in 1950, during Mystère à la frontière's run in Spirou, publisher Dupuis responded to popular demand and chose to double the regular front page Spirou strips, and add another plate, subsequently doubling Franquin's weekly work load.