The Beast (Oni Press, 2026)

This sometimes dark-but always hopeful-adventure by renowned author Zidrou and celebrated gallery artist Frank Pe portrays a beautiful friendship between a boy and his beast with a magnificent adventure whose heart is the extraordinary friendship that can unite a child with an animal . . . Captured in the heart of Palombia by Chahuta Indians and sold to exotic animal traffickers, a marsupilami lands in the port of Antwerp in the 1950s. Managing to escape, he arrives in the suburbs of Brussels and is taken in by Francois, a young boy who is a fan of animals and whose daily life is far from easy. Francois is picked on by the local kids, particularly because his father had been a German soldier, an unforgivable crime in those postwar years; a fact he and his mother cannot escape. Both are ostracized for their connection to past events. The authors pay a superb tribute to the fabulous animal created by Franquin in the series Spirou et Fantasio while denouncing the mistreatment and trafficking of exotic animals.