InsaneJournal

There's been some Spirou posts here in the past, so I guess those who are interested are already somewhat familiar with the characters. But I'll still copy/paste this introductory text that I'd written back when I posted this for my buddies, because it enlightens some smaller jokes in these pages. Reading this TL;DR bit is not necessary though, and you may just skip to the scans:

There are several comic artists whom I've admired and whose works have inspired me. If I had to pick only one name, I would most probably pick the late André Franquin.

Franquin became famous by doing the humorous long adventure comics of Spirou and Fantasio. Inside that comic, he invented the characters of Gaston Lagaffe and Marsupilami, which later spinned off into their own comics.

I was searching any Franquin stuff on Amazon, but didn't have much luck. I understood that the first comic of Franquin's Zorglub trilogy is the only Franquin comic that has been published in English. So, I got the idea of translating some of the first pages of "QRN sur Bretzelburg" into English; it's my favourite Spirou comic.

Spirou comic is published in the magazine called "Spirou". The comic has some metalevels; the characters of Spirou and Fantasio are reporters working for that same magazine. Spirou's the kind and heroic main character, Fantasio's a bit short-tempered comic-relief of the two (and my favourite). Spirou usually dresses up in a piccolo outfit, but that's a relic from the character's past and doesn't have relevance in the stories.
The Spirou adventures usually take 40-60 pages. As Spirou and Fantasio are simply journalists, they don't fight crime as their job; they only have a tendency to get in these humorous adventures in which they fight against various criminals. It's a bit like what Tintin does.

Spip is the pet squirrel of Spirou. He understands what people say and comments things with sarcastic thought bubbles, but people are not able to talk with him.

Marsupilami was once a wild animal living in the jungles of Palombia. Spirou and Fantasio managed to capture him in an early adventure of theirs. Since then, they've discovered the animal has some interesting capabilities. It doesn't give birth to its young, it lays eggs instead. It can parrot a few human words and breathe underwater. Maybe most importantly, Marsupilami is a strong and fierce opponent to fight with, and he can use his 8 metres long tail for jumping, fighting and many other tasks.
The character is never given a name, he's called simply Marsupilami.
Marsupilami disappeared from Spirou comics when Franquin stopped drawing Spirou. Other artists started drawing Spirou's adventures, but Franquin wanted to keep the rights to the animal, and later on started spin-off comics featuring some other marsupilamis.

The scans that I post here mention briefly a character called mister De Mesmaeker, and Gaston (Lagaffe). Gaston is the co-worker of Spirou and Fantasio in the magazine. He's got a good heart, but he's a walking catastrophe and causes lots of accidents. When Franquin stopped drawing Spirou, he started to concentrate in making comics of Gaston.
Monsieur De Mesmaeker is an old, important, rich man appearing in Gaston's own comics. Fantasio and his magazine try to sign some unspecified, important contracts with him. However, some comical disturbance always happens, and De Mesmaeker usually either gets knocked out or angrily storms out before they ever manage to sign the contracts.

The original name of the following comic is "QRN sur Bretzelburg" (according to my dictionary, that's "QRN over Bretzelburg"). The Finnish name "SOS - Bretzelburg kutsuu" means something like "SOS - Bretzelburg is calling". The comic was made in the 1960s.

There was no internet, MSN, mp3 players or anything at the time this was drawn and so, the technology of the comic is outdated. Also, at least in Finland, there are no milkmen. And another thing; there were some songs playing in the scenes, and instead of translating their lyrics literally, I picked some totally different songs in the scenes randomly.

(Btw, French-speaking people may spot inconsistencies between their copy and my translation. It's because I don't know French and I translated from the Finnish version. So it went through French -> Finnish -> English and a lot of stuff was probably lost in translation.)