PEYO PALS SMURFS FRIENDS A PREFACE TO BY MATT MUrrAY SMUrFoLoGIST Welcome Blue Believers to this new Smurfs anthology THE SMURFS AND FRIENDS a veritable variety pack of illustrated antics from Peyo As a Smurfologist I’ve often been asked What is a Peyo Well the answer to that my fellow fans is presented in the pages of this very collection that we’re about to explore and enjoy Peyo was an artist an editor a marketing marketing mogul and ultimately a brand which remains a creative force behind THE SMURFS and a number of other cartoon creations that enjoy a level of global success success and popularity to this very day For the record Peyo was originally just a man Pierre Culliford to be precise born on June 25th 1928 in Brussels Belgium When an English cousin couldn’t pronounce Pierrot Pierre’s family nickname the French equivalent of Petey Pierre was given a new moniker which he would carry into his professional life Peyo Under that name he created a few comic strips including including the medieval swashbuckler Johan of which the first major arc is presented here for the first time in English as well as the funny animal panel cartoon POUSSY aka PUSSYCAT available in its own collection collection from Papercutz He was considered moderately successful until he spun-off a group of magical blue gnomes called les Schtroumpfs from the pages of Johan into their own comic strip It was those characters also known as the Smurfs which would make Peyo a household household name first in Belgium then Europe and eventually all over the world as his signature appeared on countless products and productions from toys to breakfast cereals cereals television shows to feature films record albums to sticker albums It was the overwhelming popularity of THE SMURFS that would allow Peyo to grow from a single man into a studio of artists and an office of merchandisers that operated operated under his direct supervision and behind his iconic monograph Working with assistants co-writers and fellow fellow artists Peyo created a number of other comics including including the boys adventure strip Jacky et Celetstin the super hero comedy Benoit Brisefer aka BENNY BREAKIRON which like Johan has its first major storyline featured in this collection and Pierrot He adapted his work for animation at first in black and white short films and then for the 1976 feature film La flute a six Schtroumpfs 3
aka The Smurfs and the Magic Flute available in comicbook form as a single Papercutz graphic novel THE SMURFS 2 and in SMURFS ANTHOLOGY Volume 1 Perhaps the key moment in the transition of man into brand came in 1959 when Peyo’s then-publisher Dupuis released a small assortment of plastic figurines depicting different Smurfs characters which they sold in the pages of their comics magazine Le Journal de Spirou FYI The year prior they had released a figurine of an other Peyo creation Pirlouit but we’ll get back to him at another time The toys were popular amongst young readers and a few more were released over the years but in the mid-1960s Dupuis decided that they wanted to focus on the publishing of their comics and not be in the figurine business so allowed the artist to begin licensing licensing the Smurfs to outside contractors and the business of Peyo really took off The Smurfs became product spokes elves for brands such as Kellogg’s an award-winning album of Smurf songs was created by Dutch children’s entertainer Father Abraham and eventually the toys widely available all over Europe made it over to America America where they inspired the creation of the Hanna-Barbera animated series which ran for nine seasons and cemented The Smurfs’s place in global pop culture history Around the time the initial run of The Smurfs animated animated series was ending in America the European market market was still Smurfing along with the introduction of Schtroumpf magazine which featured long form Smurfs stories as well as shorter comic strips which are also collected collected within this volume as well an assortment of other products which kept the Smurfs in the consciousness of fans around the globe It was also during this time that Peyo the man really began to take a backseat to Peyo the brand allowing his art studio to be overseen largely by his son Thierry Culliford while his daughter Veronique Culliford mostly managed the business and licensing arm of the empire On December 24th 1992 Pierre Culliford passed away of a heart attack Peyo however continues to live on to this day a fact that became abundantly clear to the global marketplace in 2008 when The Smurfs celebrated celebrated the 50th anniversary of their first publication There was a global celebration of not only the brand but the man himself who would have been celebrat ing his own 80th birthday which culminated in the release of limited edition products such as collectors coins postage stamps DVDs plush animals and the publication of Les Schtroumpfers de flute a special edition edition SMURFS comic which served as a prequel to their debut appearance in the pages of Johan’s La flute a six schtroumpfs Papercutz is proud to present that 2008 special edition here for the first time in English as The Flute Smurfers The following years have seen the Smurfs brand expand expand and enrapt a whole new generation of Blue Believers Believers with the release of two live-action animation hybrid hybrid feature films from Sony the widely popular Smurfs Village app game a giant Smurf balloon in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade while still continuing to produce produce the PVC figurines and the comics that have been around since the beginning of the phenomenon Papercutz would be doing itself a bit of a disservice if it didn’t mention its own place in that recent boom as we have been the publishers of Smurfs graphic novels since 2010 and are the first comics publisher to make a number of Peyo’s stories from their entire diverse catalog of comics available to English-speaking fans around the globe Our commitment to publishing THE SMURFS comics has extended into exploring the rest of Peyo’s world as we have in the aforementioned release of PUSSYCAT as well as our series of BENNY BREAKIRON BREAKIRON graphic novels and the SMURFS ANTHOLOGY ANTHOLOGY series which include not only THE SMURFS graphic novels laid out in sequential order but bonus material in the form of the later Johan and Peewit com ics which have featured the Smurfs as sidekicks and supporting supporting players We are proud participants in Peyo’s legacy both as a man and a brand because we enjoy the quality of work that name has come to stand for over the years and are eager to share that with other fans and entertain them in the best ways possible So what is a Peyo A man A signature A company A brand For the purposes of this book let’s call it a good time spent in the company of old pals and maybe a few new ones as we navigate our way through some adventures some laughs and some great comics I think we can all agree on that answer as we take a look at the works collected collected here in THE SMURFS AND FRIENDS 4
INTRODUCTION TO THE FLUTE SMURFERS BY MATT MUrrAY SMUrFoLoGIST In issue number 1701 of Le Journal de Spirou cover dated October 23 1958 fans of the Johan et Pirlouit comic strip got their first full look at what was called a Schtroumpf In that particular Johan story originally entitled La Flute a six trous The Flute with Six Holes later called La Flute a six Schtroumpfs The Flute of Six Smurfs and published in English as The Smurfs and the Magic Flute Johan and his faithful sidekick Pirlouit Peewit to English-speaking fans come into and eventually lose possession of a musical instrument with the power to physically control those who hear its music The flute as we learn was created by the Schtroumpfs a magical race of blue gnomes that live in a secluded bit of forest called the Cursed Land Johan and Peewit track down the Schtroumpfs in an effort to understand the power of the flute and in turn the public was in troduced to the strange and wonderful world of charac ters we would come to know as The Smurfs an English translation of les Schtroumpfs In 2008 dozens of collected comics albums an animated feature film countless tie-in products and a long-running television series later the Smurfs found themselves celebrating their 50th Anniversary Although hundreds of stories had been told about them since their first appearance little was known about who the Smurfs were before their encounter with Johan and Peewit or how they came to make the titular magic flute Although the creative team behind the original story Peyo and his writing partner Yvan Delporte had passed away by this time THE SMURFS comics were still be ing produced with regularity by Peyo’s son Thierry Cul liford The studio he continued to run under his father’s signature and brand chose to honor the Golden Anni versary of the characters and the story by creating a di rect prequel to The Smurfs and the Magic Flute called Les Schtroumpfeurs de flute written by Culliford and 5
