InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "im free,*stix toung out*"

nezchan (nezchan) wrote in scans_daily,
@ 2009-07-05 12:43:00

Current mood:	cheerful
Entry tags:	char: spirou, creator: janry, creator: philippe tome, publisher: dupuis

Spirou: Machine Qui Reve
Machine Qui Reve is a bit of an odd book in the Spirou series, and certainly the most controversial. Not so much because of its subject matter, but becaus it was so dramatically different from the other books in the series, even the ones by the same artistic team. From what I can gather, Tome & Janry wanted to modernize the classic character, and bet the farm on this book. As sales ended up not being great, it was a failed gamble in a way, but it did get a lot of people thinking about what the essence of Spirou really was.

The story does certainly have faults. The art and tone are quite bleak, and a bit jarring when compared to what had gone before. As well, the story is a bit short to do more than a casual treatment of the underlying issues of bioethics and identity. For all of it though, the book remains one of my favourites.

The story starts with Spirou and Fantasio (pink shirt, so cute!), at what seems to be Fantasio's apartment. Odd, considering in the other books they share a house, but nevermind. They've just finished watching a movie about a man on the run, and Fantasio is getting ready to go on vacation, leaving Spirou the keys, when Seccotine, a fellow reporter and sometimes rival, calls asking for Fantasio's help.

It turns out Seccotine (who for some reason is now calling herself Sophie, although it's never come up before or since, far as I know) needs someone to infiltrate a laboratory for her. She suspects there's something fishy going on behind the scenes, but they only accept males as "voluntary test subjects". So since Fantasio left for his vacation after all, then Spirou will do nicely. On the way they're stopped by a police officer who turns out to be a fan of Spirou's, and Spirou gets a thank-you kiss, which doesn't really seem to have much impact on him.

Entering the lab turns out to be a simple matter, and he is led in by one of the assistants, Jenny Simmonds. She tries subtly to warn him, but it turns out to be too late.

The very next page, things suddenly take a turn for the unexpected.

Not knowing how he got there, Spirou heads home to find armed men waiting for him. But Spirou, no stranger to having guns aimed at him, manages to escape.

Best use of a garden gnome as a weapon since Half Life 2 ep 2, by the way.

Trying Seccotine's place, Spirou gets a similar welcome, and ends up on the run once more, although he does have a flashback of being accosted by men in hazard suits and injected with something by Ms. Simmons. So he tries her place, only to find the opposition has grown to something more than a bunch of simple thugs.

Now a wanted man, with even the cop who was his fan attempting to shoot him, he returns to the labratory where it all started, spurred on by odd flashbacks. As he enters the labs, SWAT teams assemble outside to finally take care of him. But one of the police is more than he seems...

Cop Spirou reveals that, in fact, the Spirou we've been following was a clone of the original, or in his terms "a machine that dreams of life". The shady business of the lab involved extracting DNA from test subjects, then duplicating them for some poorly explained reason (I've been through the volume lots of times, and I still don't really get why they're cloning people). Clone Spirou escaped, being based on one of the most resourceful men in the world, and the researchers felt it was their right to kill him, on grounds of protecting the public from an experiment gone wrong. Seccotine/Sophie arrives and takes the clone away, as Spirou uses dynamite he'd smuggled in to destroy the lab.

The scientist in charge of the lab, Dr. Birth, is outraged at all this, claiming Spirou is standing in the way of progress, but is cut short by Ms. Simmons who turns out to be an undercover police officer who'd been monitoring the lab for some time. And as to the clone?

Clone Spirou, somewhere in the Gulf of Oman, is still trying to sort out his identity. But Seccotine/Sophie says she'll stay with him, giving a bit of hope for the future.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how a Clone Saga should be told.

Standard Disclaimer: My understanding of French is a bit crude, so I would appreciate any corrections on my reading of the story, particularly the rationale behind making the clones.

(Post a new comment)

khamelea
2009-07-05 07:14 pm UTC (link)

Fantasio looks really weird with a more realistic style of art for his face while he still has that iconic haircut.

I really like the sequence with the keycard, and Spirou's unfortunate reflex.

"My understanding of French is a bit crude, so I would appreciate any corrections on my reading of the story, particularly the rationale behind making the clones."

The scans really don't seem to mention anything about the rationale, though?

Spirou's explanation of everybody trying to kill android-Spirou implies that the authorities also decided on killing him once the researchers couldn't keep the secret covered up, but I think it's hard to tell with some of the context missing.

A really minor correction: Spirou's line that refers to the title of the album is in a different tense than the title itself. The title would translate as "The Machine That Dreams", but Spirou's line might be better rendered as "the machine that dreamt life."

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	nezchan 2009-07-05 09:58 pm UTC (link)
	Argh, I should have clued in about the fact that the page with the doctor wasn't posted, but I was up against the page limit already. I did figure it was something like that with the authorities, though. That's a useful insight about the similar but subtly different title and line about dreaming machines. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

khamelea
2009-07-05 10:29 pm UTC (link)

"That's a useful insight about the similar but subtly different title and line about dreaming machines."

It's a shame I kind of missed some of the differences, as per runespoor7's comment below.

"I did figure it was something like that with the authorities, though."

I said that assuming that the cops and SWAT teams you refer to between scans are legitimate and knew what android-Spirou was. It's kind of a dark thing to do in a Spirou story, isn't it? Having authorities be evil by philosophical error?

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

nezchan
2009-07-05 10:43 pm UTC (link)

Best I can figure, the cloning was justified simply as "the march of science" and progress and so forth. Not really sure what they were doing with the clones, presumably studying them and then destroying them. The scientists didn't seem to recognize him as human, and even the cop who was Spirou's fan showed no hesitation in trying to shoot the Spirou look-alike on sight.

I like the volume, but I'm really glad it didn't turn out to be the new direction of the series.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	runespoor7 2009-07-05 10:49 pm UTC (link)
	Well, they're not calling replica-Spirou as clone (even Spirou), they use words such as 'replica', 'android', and IIRC there are points where the art calls into question his being a living being of flesh and blood - his 'blood' looked like there were tiny particles in it. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	khamelea 2009-07-06 02:39 am UTC (link)
	In the scene posted with the lab, it gave me the impression that the things in the tubes are 'blank android' shells, rather than growing clones. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	nezchan 2009-07-06 02:44 am UTC (link)
	That all makes a lot of sense. I guess I shouldn't have used "clone" as shorthand for "duplicate" after all. Still makes more sense for a Clone Saga than the Spiderman version. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	khamelea 2009-07-06 02:46 am UTC (link)
	"The scientists didn't seem to recognize him as human, and even the cop who was Spirou's fan showed no hesitation in trying to shoot the Spirou look-alike on sight." Something that's nicely summed up by the "machine that dreamt" line. What I meant to say was that even if that's not a portrayal of those people as consciously evil, it's still pretty dark. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	runespoor7 2009-07-05 10:06 pm UTC (link)
	The translations would be more like "Dreaming Machine" and "a machine that dreamt life". </ nitpick> Because it's creepier if the article is indefinite. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	khamelea 2009-07-05 10:10 pm UTC (link)
	True, my translation of the title was excessively literal. As for the definite article, I guess I made the same mistake I was attempting to correct, taking the definitiveness from the title and applying it to Spirou's line. The shame, the shame of it all! (Reply to this) (Parent)

	midare 2009-07-05 09:00 pm UTC (link)
	Damn, do I love that art. Funny, two Spirou posts did more to motivate me to learn French than two years of having classes at school. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	nezchan 2009-07-05 09:59 pm UTC (link)
	I'll be posting more, maybe one of the classic Franquin stories would go over well. They were loads of fun. Pity I don't have any Belladone volumes, I'm really into Pierre Alary's art lately. (Reply to this) (Parent)

lonewolf23k
2009-07-05 10:17 pm UTC (link)

Unfortunetly, we never really find out what happened to Clone Spirou, as Seccotine came back, calling herself Seccotine again, in a later book by a different creative team, and has become more a part of the main cast since then.

...And then came "Aux Sources du Z" (At the Source of the Z), which involved a lot of time travel, and ended up duplicating Spirou again, the older version leaving and being replaced by a younger, pre-adventures model. Whether or not this'll stay in continuity remains to be seen.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

nezchan
2009-07-05 10:32 pm UTC (link)

The older version in the latest volume gives me SO MANY HEADACHES. Basically in 1938, the now-old mad scientist trio were the same age as Spirou. But somehow he and Fantasio never aged while they did. So he goes back, and ages again, making him effectively twice as old as Champignac, Zorglub and Flanners. So why didn't Spirou age at all the first time through?

Mind you, we now have the setup for a Spirou-only menage a trois, so I guess there's compensation.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

nezchan
2009-07-05 10:41 pm UTC (link)

I just took a look and yeah, Seccotine shows up in Paris in the very next volume, Paris Sous-Seine for a couple of panels (Spip calls her "ponytail", which I thought was cute). Then she shows up on TV from "Durbai", and Fantasio recognizes her by name in Aux Sources Du Z. Guess the whole "Sophie" thing and the clone weren't really welcome back in continuity, although I don't know if that was Morvan/Munuera's decision or if it came from editorial. They did bring back a lot of cool characters like Abra Cadabra and Zorglub who hadn't been around in a while.

Would have been nice to see more of the clone, though. The scientists' bad luck, cloning the most resourceful man on the planet.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

	khamelea 2009-07-06 02:42 am UTC (link)
	Sophie is a Seccotine duplicate! (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	nezchan 2009-07-06 02:44 am UTC (link)
	Wait until you see the Army of Fantasios!! (Reply to this) (Parent)

	salamangkiero 2009-07-06 03:55 pm UTC (link)
	I'm getting a combination "Sixth Day" and "Blade Runner" vibe out of all this...very nice. (Reply to this)

alexiel-neesan.livejournal.com
2009-07-07 09:08 pm UTC (link)

Best Spirou Story Ever, and it's really a shame that we never got a glimpse of Clone!Spirou again. (Though I seem to recall this comic was 'too dark' when compared to the rest and that it was one of the reason the most excellent Tome&Janry team was replaced)
The storytelling is quite excellent, with the insert of the film at the beginning which set the tone for all that's going to happen next, and the flashback and the background color of the pages (black but the last, quite a rarity in european comic).

As for 'the rationale behind making the clones' - as I read it, it looks like the lab was experimenting without any kind of authorizations or ethics, and for (lost) money. That the police (International police maybe, as the 'Ms.Simmon' name made me think) was involved in undercover inside the lab seems to imply all of this was a very vast operation. But no, they never state obviously if there was a rational other than making fat load of money.

Should I mention I love this comic? And I thank you for spreading the Spirou-love outside French-speaking countries :)

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	nezchan 2009-07-08 06:54 pm UTC (link)
	I love it too, although I'm glad it's the only one that went in this direction. It's going to be interesting to see what Yann & Vehlmann do with the character, I think the first of their volumes is due in October. (Reply to this) (Parent)