''The Purple Smurfs'' (original French title: ''Les Schtroumpfs noirs'', "The Black Smurfs") is the first album of the original French-language ''
Smurfs
''The Smurfs'' (french: Les Schtroumpfs; nl, De Smurfen) is a Belgian comic franchise centered on a fictional colony of small, blue, humanoid creatures who live in mushroom-shaped houses in the forest. ''The Smurfs'' was first created and int ...
'' comic series created by Belgian artist
Peyo
Pierre Culliford (; 25 June 1928 – 24 December 1992) was a Belgian comics writer and artist who worked under the pseudonym Peyo (). His best-known works are the comic book series ''The Smurfs'' and ''Johan and Peewit'', the latter in whi ...
. It was first published as an album in 1963, but the stories it contained had already been published in ''
Spirou'' magazine.
The main story ''Les Schtroumpfs noirs'' was first published in number 1107 (July 2, 1959) as the first "mini-récit" in the magazine. This was a special supplemental page which readers would remove and fold up in order to create a small booklet. Mini-récits were not included when the issues of Spirou were collected in the quarterly hardcover volumes, so this story is absent from volume 72 of Spirou, though the page containing instructions for creating the booklet is there.
Apart from the titular one, it contains two other stories: ''The Flying Smurf'' (''Le Schtroumpf Volant'') and ''The Smurfnapper'' (''Le Voleur de Schtroumpfs'').
Plots
The Purple Smurfs
In a little
mushroom
A mushroom or toadstool is the fleshy, spore-bearing fruiting body of a fungus, typically produced above ground, on soil, or on its food source. ''Toadstool'' generally denotes one poisonous to humans.
The standard for the name "mushroom" is ...
village
A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town (although the word is often used to describe both hamlets and smaller towns), with a population typically ranging from a few hundred ...
live the
Smurfs
''The Smurfs'' (french: Les Schtroumpfs; nl, De Smurfen) is a Belgian comic franchise centered on a fictional colony of small, blue, humanoid creatures who live in mushroom-shaped houses in the forest. ''The Smurfs'' was first created and int ...
, diminutive
blue
Blue is one of the three primary colours in the RYB colour model (traditional colour theory), as well as in the RGB (additive) colour model. It lies between violet and cyan on the spectrum of visible light. The eye perceives blue when ...
-skinned
humanoid creatures. One day, one of them gets bitten by a Purple
fly that turns his skin jet Purple, reduces his vocabulary to the single word "gnap!", and causes him to go angry and berserk. He bounces around and bites other
Smurfs
''The Smurfs'' (french: Les Schtroumpfs; nl, De Smurfen) is a Belgian comic franchise centered on a fictional colony of small, blue, humanoid creatures who live in mushroom-shaped houses in the forest. ''The Smurfs'' was first created and int ...
on their tail, which turns them into evil Purple Smurfs as well. Soon, almost everyone in the village has become a nasty Purple Smurf, and
Papa Smurf
Papa Smurf is one of the protagonists from the comic strip the Smurfs. Most Smurfs are said to be about 100 years old, but at the advanced age of 546 (553 in the 1980s series episode "The Littlest Giant"), Papa is the oldest Smurf and the leader ...
, the leader, tries to find a cure and cease the tail-biting
epidemic
An epidemic (from Greek ἐπί ''epi'' "upon or above" and δῆμος ''demos'' "people") is the rapid spread of disease to a large number of patients among a given population within an area in a short period of time.
Epidemics of infectious ...
. The cure is found in magnolia pollen, which is gathered in great quantity and loaded in fireplace
bellows
A bellows or pair of bellows is a device constructed to furnish a strong blast of air. The simplest type consists of a flexible bag comprising a pair of rigid boards with handles joined by flexible leather sides enclosing an approximately airtig ...
to be used as impromptu ranged weapons against contaminated Smurfs. The Purple Smurf has to inhale the pollen, which, after a loud and powerful sneeze, causes him to revert to his usual blue-skinned bonhomie. A great battle is fought outside the village, as the Purple, tail-biting horde closes in, threatening to destroy Smurf civilization for good.
The first Purple Smurf to have been transformed, meanwhile, recovers some semblance of ingenuity and paints himself blue to avoid being sprayed by the pollen-powered antidote. This allows him to ambush several normal Smurfs and reverse the outcome of the clash. In the end, only Papa Smurf still stands. He rushes to the lab to reload his bellows but is bitten while doing so. As he turns, he lets the large pollen jar fall into the fire, which causes the whole lab to explode. The resulting pollen cloud descends on the raving Purple Smurfs, reverting them to normality once and for all.
This is the one of the few ''Smurfs'' comic books where a Smurf is seen without a hat. Papa Smurf has his blown away by the final explosion, revealing a
bald
Hair loss, also known as alopecia or baldness, refers to a loss of hair from part of the head or body. Typically at least the head is involved. The severity of hair loss can vary from a small area to the entire body. Inflammation or scarrin ...
head. In a later adventure, "
The Egg and the Smurfs
''The Egg and the Smurfs'' (original French title ''L'Œuf et les Schtroumpfs'') is the fourth album of the original French-language ''Smurfs'' comic series created by Belgian artist Peyo.
Apart from the titular adventure, it contains two other s ...
", it is revealed that Grouchy Smurf's moody and unsociable personality is because of the lasting effects of the fly that bit him. In the Hanna-Barbera cartoon, Lazy Smurf is bitten by the fly first.
This story was later used as the basis for an episode of the ''Smurfs'' cartoon, though their skin color was changed from black to purple, in order to avoid possible
racial
A race is a categorization of humans based on shared physical or social qualities into groups generally viewed as distinct within a given society. The term came into common usage during the 1500s, when it was used to refer to groups of variou ...
connotations.
Followers of
zombie fiction have remarked the similarities between the plot of ''The Black Smurfs'' and that of
George A. Romero
George Andrew Romero (; February 4, 1940 – July 16, 2017) was an American-Canadian filmmaker, writer, editor and actor. His ''Night of the Living Dead'' series of films about an imagined zombie apocalypse began with the 1968 film of the ...
's 1968 film ''
Night of the Living Dead
''Night of the Living Dead'' is a 1968 American independent horror film directed, photographed, and edited by George A. Romero, with a screenplay by John Russo and Romero, and starring Duane Jones and Judith O'Dea. The story follows seven pe ...
'', which introduced a new archetype of zombies that would be later used in other fiction works: plagues of zombies that infect the living people, turning them violent, irrational and uncontrolled, as the black Smurfs. However, there had been other fictional works that could also be considered
precedents of this zombie archetype.
The Flying Smurf
A blue Smurf desperately wishes to be able to fly in the air, and tries various means to defy gravity and accomplish his dream, such as sticking
feathers to his arms, building a
hot-air balloon
A hot air balloon is a lighter-than-air aircraft consisting of a bag, called an envelope, which contains heated air. Suspended beneath is a gondola or wicker basket (in some long-distance or high-altitude balloons, a capsule), which carries p ...
and eating much
yeast
Yeasts are eukaryotic, single-celled microorganisms classified as members of the fungus kingdom. The first yeast originated hundreds of millions of years ago, and at least 1,500 species are currently recognized. They are estimated to constit ...
.
The Smurfnapper
A reclusive sorcerer,
Gargamel
Gargamel is a fictional character and the main antagonist of the '' Smurfs'' show and comic books. He is a wizard and the sworn enemy of the Smurfs. His main goals are to destroy the Smurfs, eat them, or transform them into gold.
Appearance ...
, wants to create the
philosopher's stone
The philosopher's stone or more properly philosophers' stone (Arabic: حجر الفلاسفة, , la, lapis philosophorum), is a mythic alchemical substance capable of turning base metals such as mercury into gold (, from the Greek , "gold", ...
. In his magic recipe book, he finds out that one of the ingredients for making it is a Smurf. He succeeds in catching a Smurf and locks him up in a cage. Papa Smurf and the others quickly go to rescue the imprisoned Smurf, but opening the cage proves a case of easier said than done.
This is Gargamel's first appearance in the Smurfs canon, and his motive for stealing Smurfs is made clear here, although it was slightly inconsistent in latter stories and adaptations.
Publication
The comic was re-released in 2010 for the US market as "The Purple Smurfs" by
Papercutz
:PAPERCUTZ (stylized as :papercutz or :PAPERCUTZ) is a Portuguese electronic music act formed as a side project in Porto that became a fully active band in 2008. Bruno Miguel is the only official member of Papercutz and solely responsible for ...
in September 2010, with artist Diego Jourdan Pereira in charge of the re-coloring (and partly redrawing) of all black smurfs into purple ones with red eyes. Translated by Joe Johnson, this contains a different third story, called ''The Smurf and His Neighbors''. ''The Smurfnapper'' was instead issued in a special preview comic published by Papercutz in July 2010.
["The Smurfs"](_blank)
''Papercutz''
Reception
The book received positive reviews.
See also
*
Characters in The Smurfs
*
Jynx
Jynx, known in Japan as , is a Pokémon species in Nintendo and Game Freak's ''Pokémon'' franchise. Created by Ken Sugimori, Jynx first appeared in the video games ''Pokémon Red'' and ''Blue'' and subsequent sequels, later appearing in variou ...
, a Pokémon that was also recolored from black to purple for racial reasons
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Black Smurfs, The
The Smurfs books
1963 graphic novels