A comic book has been withdrawn from sale by its Belgian publisher after an outcry over racist depictions of black people and “hyper-sexualised” images of women.
The publisher Dupuis announced that its graphic novel, Spirou and the Blue Gorgon, would be removed from shops after the book caused a storm on social media.
In an announcement last week, Dupuis said it was “profoundly sorry if this album has been shocking and hurtful”, adding that it had been done in a “caricatured style of representation from another era”. The publisher added it was “more aware than ever of our moral duty and the importance of comics,” adding: “We take full responsibility today for this error of judgment.”
Spirou and the Blue Gorgon, a satirical tale of so-called “eco-terrorists”, junk food and plastic rubbish, was first published in September 2023 and widely reviewed in the Francophone press with little controversy.
That changed last month when a TikTok video denouncing its portrayal of black people and women went viral, triggering a great deal of criticism. One internet user noted that all the white characters were human beings while black characters were depicted as monkeys, and the women, typically drawn with plunging cleavage and tiny waists, were “hyper-sexualised”.
After the publisher’s decision, local media reported that approximately 30,000 copies would be removed from sale, a decision said to be the first of its kind in Belgium.
Comic strips, or bandes dessinées, are celebrated as an art form in Belgium and France, but some once-fêted works have been strongly criticised for their stereotypical depictions of women and people of colour. In 2011 an attempt to ban the 1930 comic book Tintin and the Congo over its portrayal of Africans failed in the Belgian courts.
The cartoonist behind the Blue Gorgon, Daniel Henrotin, who uses the pen name Dany, said he had been emulating the style of the late Belgian comic strip artist, André Franquin, who was celebrated in the 1950s and beyond. Dany said he recognised he had “made a mistake” and was “truly sorry if I could have hurt anyone”.
Dany, 81, denied any racist or misogynist intentions, saying it was never his goal to mock or denigrate people of colour and women, while offering a partial defence. “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”.
Leading lights of the comic world pushed back against the idea that caricature was no longer possible. “Comics are automatically caricatures,” Isabelle Debekker, the director of the Comic Strip Centre in Brussels told Le Soir. She said artists should not stigmatise groups of people as was done in the 1980s. “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,” she said.
