Editions Dupuis have announced that they are withdrawing the book from sale.Spirou and the Blue Gorgon” – released last year – featuring caricatures deemed racist and sexist by Internet users. The designer, Danny, admits to regretting his choices.
The book came out last year and caused controversy. The comic book album entitled “Spirou and the Blue Gorgon”, by Danny and Yann, was released last year, in 2023. Today, several people are denouncing the racist and misogynistic caricatures of the characters.
“Strangely, when we see white people, we directly see that they are humans, but when they are black people, they clearly look like monkeys.“, noted last weekend an Internet user in a video published on TikTok, viewed nearly 770,000 times. “And all women are hypersexualized“, she added.
“Our intention was not to shock or hurt anyone. We were quite saddened, but we understood. This is why we have made the decision to withdraw the work from sale. We are sorry“, indicated Thursday the press officer of Editions Dupuis, Ines Cuesta Guerra.
Editions Dupuis reacted to the controversy, stating that “this album is part of a caricature style of representation inherited from another era“. “More aware than ever of our moral duty and the importance of comics as a publisher and more broadly of books in the evolution of societies, today we take full responsibility for this error of assessment.“
“I regret”
Danny, the designer also reacted to the controversy: “I have total admiration for Franquin and I have kept his codes. I won’t do it like this again, I recognize that I made a mistake. I really regret that I could have hurt people“.
The latter says he was inspired by several albums by Franquin published in the 1950s. Faced with this controversy, a question arises: can the caricature survive over time?
“The caricature is to exaggerate the line“, explains Jacques Sondron, press cartoonist. “And so the Chinese, we paint them yellow, in quotation marks, even though they are no more yellow than us. We try to take some of the most obvious characteristics and highlight them so that they are immediately recognizable.“.
Editions Dupuis presented their sincere apologies and recognized the evolution of societies.
spirou dupuis comics racism sexism Spirou and the Blue Gorgon
