The Black Smurfs
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The Black Smurfs (original French title Les Schtroumpfs Noirs) is the first album of the original French-language Smurfs comic series.
Apart from the titular one, it contains two other stories: The Flying Smurf (Le Schtroumpf Volant) and The Smurfnapper (Le Voleur de Schtroumpfs).
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[edit] Plots
[edit] The Black Smurfs
In a little mushroom village live the Smurfs, diminutive blue-skinned humanoid creatures. One day, one of them gets stung by a black fly that turns his skin jet black, drives him insane and reduces his vocabulary to the single word "gnap!". He bounces around and bites other Smurfs on their tail, which turns them into black Smurfs as well. Soon, almost everyone in the village has become a black Smurf, and Papa Smurf, the leader, tries to find a cure and cease the tail-biting black epidemic.
[edit] The Flying Smurf
A Smurf desperately wishes to be able to fly in the air, and tries all means to defy gravity and accomplish his dream, such as sticking feathers to his arms, building a hot-air balloon or eating yeast.
[edit] The Smurfnapper
An recluse sorcerer, Gargamel, wants to create the philosopher's stone. In his magic recipe book, he finds out that one of the ingredients for making it is a Smurf. He then decides to go look for Smurfs in the forest to kidnap some.
[edit] Trivia
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- Apparently due to the title and the nature of the black-skinned Smurfs, this comic issue was not translated for the English-speaking market, which saw it as giving a racist message, and possibly making an analogy for immigration from Africa to Europe.[citation needed]
- In the Hanna-Barbera cartoon, the black Smurfs have been made purple-skinned in order to soften any racist connotation. Also, Smurfette appears in the animated show version whereas she was nonexistent in the original story.
- This is the only Smurfs comic book where a Smurf is seen without a hat. Papa Smurf has his blown away by an explosion, revealing a bald head (which may simply be due to his old age).
- Gargamel makes his first appearance in The Smurfnapper, and his motive for stealing Smurfs is made clear here, although it was slightly inconsistent in the animated series.
