Champignac

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This article is about the fictional village. For the fictional inhabitants, see Characters in Spirou et Fantasio.

Champignac, or specifically Champignac-en-Cambrousse, is a fictional village frequently featured in the adventures of Spirou et Fantasio by André Franquin and the successive authors. The initial idea of Champignac is attributed to Henri Gillain.^[1] The village was introduced in the adventure Il y a un sorcier à Champignac, first published in Le Journal de Spirou in 1950.

1 Features
2 Role
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Features

The village is placed in a rural region of Belgium (despite the name's suffix suggesting a location in the south of France), and is known for its prolific occurrence of mushrooms.^[2] It is chiefly a farming community, home to several central and more obscure characters of the Spirou adventures, most notably The Count of Champignac whose chateau is a prominent fixture of the region. The Mayor of Champignac, Gustave Labarbe, is also a public presence, in statues, billboards and in person. The Mayor's assistant, Duplumier is often seen on his bicycle, and the former pharmacist and town drunk, Dupilon, is frequently visible. Other inhabitants from the wide gallery of secondary characters are the boy Le Petit Noël, the policeman Jérôme, the pump caretaker Jules, the bookseller A. Tachetoux, and the grocer Eugene.^[2]

[edit] Role

During the course of the Spirou stories that have taken place in Champignac, the village population as a whole has been exploited as a "victim character" in several of the plots. The ways in which the population has been victimized are:

Il y a un sorcier à Champignac, confused guinea pigs in the Count's mushroom experiments, they turn into an angry lynch-mob.
Le voyageur du Mésozoïque, the village is devastated by a dinosaur.
Z comme Zorglub, the villagers are mass-hypnotized into an angry, destructive vandals.
L'ombre du Z, the entire population is paralyzed by Zorglub's zorglonde stunning-ray.
Qui arrêtera Cyanure?, the villagers are mind-controlled.
Le rayon noir, the skin colour of the population is altered.