Marsupilami

Marsupilami
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Marsupilami is a fictional comic book species created by André Franquin, first published on 31 January 1952 in the magazine Spirou.[1] Since then it appeared regularly in the popular Belgian comic book series Spirou et Fantasio until Franquin stopped working on the series in 1968 and the character dropped out soon afterward. In the late 1980s, the Marsupilami got its own successful spin-off series of comic albums, Marsupilami, written by Greg, Yann and Dugomier and drawn by Batem, launching the publishing house Marsu Productions. Later, two animated shows featuring this character, as well as a Sega Genesis video game and a variety of other merchandise followed. The asteroid 98494 Marsupilami is named in its honour.
The name is a portmanteau of the words marsupial, Pilou-Pilou (the French name for Eugene the Jeep, a character Franquin loved as a kid) and ami, French for friend.
Marsupilami's adventures had been translated to several languages, like Dutch, German, Spanish, Portuguese and several Scandinavian languages. More than three million albums of the Marsupilami series are claimed to have been sold by Marsu Productions.[2]
One album of Spirou and Fantasio featuring Marsupilami, number 15, was translated to English by Fantasy Flight Publishing in 1995, although it is currently out of print. Plans on releasing number 16 ended halfway through the translation process, due to bad sales. In 2007, Egmont's subsidiary Euro Books translated albums number 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 14 for the Indian market.

Appearance
The marsupilami is a black-spotted yellow monkey-like creature.[3] Male marsupilamis have an incredibly long, strong, flexible and prehensile tail which can be used for almost anything. Female marsupilamis have a much shorter tail, but still long compared to real animals. Unlike the males, the females also walk on the tips of their toes. When the animal rebounds, he makes a funny noise: "Boing". Males also have eyes that are not completely separate while females have two separate eyes. Female marsupilamis also have a totally different voice than the males. Males say "houba" most of the time, while females say "houbii", which means the same thing as houba, but sounds more feminine. According to the L'Encyclopédie du Marsupilami, they are monotremes like the platypus and echidna, which explains why they lay eggs while having mammalian features. ...READ MORE