Flix, whose real name is Felix Görmann, is one of the most successful German comic artists. He is known for autobiographical works such as “held”, but also for classic adaptations such as “Faust”, “Don Quixote” or “Münchhausen”. Four years ago he was the first non-Francophone artist to release a “Spirou” album (“Spirou in Berlin”). With “Das Humboldt-Tier” (Carlsen Verlag), Flix is now presenting a Marsupilami adventure: In Berlin in 1931, the legendary jungle creature befriends a little girl.
SZ: After Spirou, the tireless hero in page uniform, now the Marsupilami – how did that come about?
Flix: I would have loved to have used the miracle animal in “Spirou in Berlin”! Unfortunately, that wasn’t possible because the Belgian publisher Dupuis, who owns the rights, insists that Marsupilami should only appear alone and no longer together with Spirou and his friend Fantasio. When I then did the reading tour for “Spirou in Berlin”, I noticed again and again how great the audience’s interest in Marsupilami is. And this is completely independent of age: everyone loves the Marsupilami.
How did you come up with the idea of setting the action in Berlin again?
A friend told me about his work as a draftsman in the Berlin Natural History Museum. There is a large amount of boxes that researchers have brought back from their travels and are only gradually being opened. Alexander von Humboldt, for example, collected unbelievable amounts, which were first sent to Paris and, when they were no longer wanted there, to Berlin. If there are exotic animals in the boxes, they are drawn rather than photographed, as this is a better way of capturing the characteristics of a species. Well, and then I thought to myself: In such a box there could also be a Marsupilami, which then comes to life.
“It only gets interesting when you transfer the Marsupilami from its homeland to a completely different world”: the comic artist Flix.
(Photo: © Carlsen Verlag by Mari Boman)
You didn’t want to let the Marsupilami act in the jungle?
No way! It only gets interesting when you transport the Marsupilami from its homeland to a completely different world.
In recent years there have been different interpretations of the Marsupilamis. They’ve gone for a more traditional one. Her Marsupilami is the cuddly creature known from André Franquin’s comics.
Franquin’s version is easy for me the Marsupilami.
At the same time you give the Marsupilami slightly anarchic traits. It uses its tail, literally on the fly, to free animals from cages, help a beggar with money, or beat up Nazis.
That’s how I see the Marsupilami too. It’s a little anarcho, but only to do good. It doesn’t matter whether he’s fully aware of what he’s doing; The main thing is that something good happens. The Marsupilami doesn’t like predators, not even human ones, and if it encounters them, they’ll just get punched in the face.
Why does the story take place in 1931?
1952 was originally planned because that was the year Franquin invented the marsupilami. But that’s where the Marsupilami band “Die Beast” (2020), by Frank Pé, is already playing, and Dupuis didn’t want this overlap. Post-war Berlin, the time when the economic miracle was beginning, that would have appealed to me. But the time chosen now gives the story something it didn’t have before. The Berlin of the late Weimar Republic as an “urban jungle” and as a place where strangers are not always welcome – that fits very well with Marsupilami, which embodies something completely foreign.
At the beginning of the album one meets Humboldt, who is traveling in South America in 1801. They paint him as a kind of Indiana Jones caricature: enthusiastic but also quite ruthless.
If he accidentally burns down the jungle, he doesn’t care. But seriously, some things that researchers used to bring back with them today make one wonder if they were right. Seeds and plants okay, it gets more difficult with animals and even more so with cultural objects.
Flix: The Humboldt animal. A Marsupilami adventure. Carlsen, Hamburg 2022. 72 pages, 16 euros.
In “Spirou in Berlin” there were many allusions to the tradition of the series going back to 1938. In “Das Humboldt-Tier” you held back, apart from a few allusions specific to Berlin, for example to Zille and Walter Trier.
The father and son of eo plauen also appear. But since plauen only started to draw the series in 1934, my son is a little younger.
They like to dare to try unusual page designs that go beyond the normal panel sequence, here again, for example when the Marsupilami hops through a nightclub.
Yes, these are my show off pages. In principle, however, it is very important to me that the images are easy to read. So there shouldn’t be too many sites like this, no matter how much fun they are for me. I see myself as a circus director: I don’t need to be entertained by the show in the ring, but the audience does.
First Spirou, now Marsupilami, the only thing missing from this comic cosmos is Gaston, the office boy.
An already finished Gaston sequel has just been forbidden by Franquin’s daughter. Apart from that: One Pager, as before, that wouldn’t be for me. Telling a real story with Gaston for the first time would be something. Something positive should result from his silty denial. Gaston could go into politics and prevent a war from starting out of laziness. Such a story would be a difficult task, but one could develop this familiar character in an interesting way.