The Marsupilami appears in the majority of the Franquin stories, starting in 1952 with Spirou et les héritiers. One Franquin creation that went on to develop a life of its own was the Marsupilami, a fictional monkey-like creature with a tremendously long prehensile tail. Spirou et les héritiers, 1952, by Franquin He introduced a large gallery of recurring characters, notably the Count de Champignac, elderly scientist and inventor the buffoonish mad scientist Zorglub Fantasio's cousin and aspiring dictator Zantafio and the journalist Seccotine, a rare instance of a major female character in Franco-Belgian comics of this period. Franquin's Spirou įranquin developed the strip from single gags and short serials into long adventures with complex plots, and is usually considered as the definitive author of the strip. Holding many artistic commitments at Spirou magazine, Jijé sought to delegate much of his work, and in 1946 he handed the series to his understudy, the young André Franquin, in the middle of the production of the story Spirou et la maison préfabriquée. In 1944 Jijé introduced a new character, Fantasio, who would become Spirou's best friend and co-adventurer. The first succession came in 1943 when Joseph Gillain, known by the pen name Jijé, was given charge of the character. The title has therefore subsequently been passed on to several different artists and writers. Spirou became the property of the publisher Dupuis (atypical in France and Belgium where most comics characters are owned by their creator(s)), who bought the character from Rob-Vel in 1943, and since then the series has belonged to no specific author. Adding to the difficulties of magazine publication that came with the outbreak of World War II, Velter joined the army effort, and his wife Blanche Dumoulin, using the pen name Davine, continued the work on the Spirou strip, with the aid of the young Belgian artist Luc Lafnet.