Les chapeaux noirs

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Creative team
Spirou et Fantasio #3 Les chapeaux noirs
Cover of the Belgian edition
Publisher	Dupuis
Date	1952
Series	Spirou et Fantasio
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 the comics magazine Spirou between 1949-50, combine to make up the third Spirou et Fantasio hardcover album that was released in 1952.

1 Story overviews
2 Background
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Story overviews

In The Black Hats, Spirou and Fantasio go on assignment for Le Moustique and travel to USA, on assignment to report on the status of Wild West. Upon arrival they are disappointed to find 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 while trying his luck in the tourism industry. But as crime flourishes abundantly in the area, they eventually find themselves in a dangerous maritime adventure.

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

[edit] Background

The title story draws upon Franquin's experiences in USA, when he joined Jijé and Morris on a journey 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, another short story featuring a fairly harmless drug, and from there started work on Il y a un sorcier à Champignac. Since this became the launch of the series' stories told in long, in-depth context, this last prior work marks the end of the Spirou short story period.