Posted in: Comics, Current News | Tagged: ebay, spirou

Spirou And The Blue Gorgon Sells For $380 After Racism Controversy

Spirou And The Blue Gorgon sells on eBay for $380 after racism controversy, that began on TikTok in revcent weeks.

Yesterday, Bleeding Cool reported on the graphic novel Spirou and the Blue Gorgon, or Spirou Et La Gorgone Bleue, by Dany and Yann. How it was published this time last year in France/Belgium, but this week, 30,000 copies were pulled off shelves by publisher Dupuis after a TikTok explosion of objections over its racist depictions of black people and women. It also features a clone of Donald Trump, and the ship staffed by racist caricatures is called the USS Obama. So what happened next? Well, pretty much the exact thing you might expect would happen. Copies started selling for crazy money on eBay. The highest went for 350 Euros or $380, but it was not alone, and plenty of others were close in price. The cover price is around $15.

Previously, TikTok user Charlotte, posted a video seen 3/4 of a million times, saying (translated) "Strangely enough, when you see white people, you can tell they are human, but when they are black, they clearly look like monkeys… and all women are hyper-sexualised,"

@chaa_pr La BD la plus RACISTE de 2024: Spirou #fyp #bandedessinée #bd #spirou #racism ♬ son original – Charlotte

Publisher Dupuis, who pulled the album, stated (translated) that it "fits in a caricature style of representation inherited from another era", is "more aware than ever of our moral duty and the importance of comics", and must take into account "the evolution of society…We, therefore, take full responsibility for this error of judgment." "It was not our intention to shock or hurt anyone. We were very sad, but we understood. Therefore, we decided to withdraw the comic book from sale. We are very sorry," added Dupuis press officer Ines Cuesta Guerra. Approximately 30,000 copies would be removed from sale, the first such decision in Belgium.

Daniel Henrotin, or Dany, aged 81, said he had been emulating the style of the late  André Franquin, best known for his cartoons in the fifties. Dany says he recognised he had "made a mistake… I'm truly sorry if I could have hurt anyone… "I heard it said that we cannot draw like that today. I respond that humour and caricature are in the DNA of the Belgian school of bande dessinée". But Isabelle Debekker, the director of the Comic Strip Centre in Brussels, told Le Soir, "Comics are automatically caricatures… It is up to us to be a little more intelligent, whether in our humour or our way of representing reality. I find it a shame that there are still people who do not understand what is problematic."

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