Published in 1986, L’Intégrale Peyo is the first collection of the complete works of Peyo, the man behind the Smurfs. Styled after Peyo’s most popular creation, French publisher Rombaldi advertises the collection with blue synthetic leather and debossed Smurf icons on the spines of  all twelve volumes. But when the sixth volume is released a year later, an icon of a raven-haired knight in training appeared.

The squire on the spine was Johan, and the book was the first volume dedicated to Peyo’s personal favorite Johan et Pirlouit (a.k.a. Johan and Peewit). It was in this story of a squire and a tone-def bard that the Smurfs first appeared, but Johan et Pirlouit never achieved the success of the Smurfs. Likewise, the remaining volumes of L’intégrale Peyo feature icons reflecting lesser-known Peyo creations.

Volumes seven and eight continue the Johan et Pirlouit comics.  Volumes nine and ten feature an icon of a boy in a beret, Benoit Brisefer (a.k.a. Benny Breakiron), the kind-hearted boy with super-human strength. Volume eleven presents the most faithful icon as a silent black cat stares up from the spine. Unlike the other icons who are taken from a world bursting with speech baloons, Peyo’s black cat, Poussy (a.k.a. Pussycat), is never drawn with a speech baloon because Poussy never talks.

The final Volume, published in 1989, is adorned with an icon of what may be Peyo’s most obscure creation, Jacky et Célestin, an adolescent duo who repeatedly find themselves in dangerous situations. In addition to reprinting the comics, each volume contains extras, such as features on Peyo, articles on the Smurf language, and previously unpublished stories.

The juxtaposition of comics in faux-leather binding seems strange. It’s as if Rombaldi warped reality, and what would contain works on law, philosophy, or classic literature now contains comics. Publishing comics in this fashion, connoting valuable works to be treasured, is a testament to the love and respect the French have for comics.

Not being French, my concept of Smurfs comics was contemptuous. They were an animation downgrade, an attempt to gravy train off the cartoon, still images in place of moving pictures, no cool voices, no music, and you had to read. To top it off, the cartoon was free. You had to pay money to read the comic. Get less, pay more; an evil ploy and stain on the Smurfs.

I assumed all this because the cartoon introduced me to the Smurfs. It was there that I first saw the Smurfs, so the cartoon came first. In my defense, I was eight, so I was flabbergasted to learn that the comics came first and that they were so much better.

On a boring Saturday afternoon in the 80s, my 8-year-old peepers poured over an old, bent copy of The Smurf King abandoned in the garage. Nothing on TV, and I was bored enough to read. The first few panels confirmed my suspicions. There were the smurfs, tiny and blue, but mute and inanimate. Try as I might, I just couldn’t get the cartoon voices to sound out in my head.

As my eyes grudgingly traversed the page, a transformation took place, as if far enough removed from the inner sanctum of perpetually flickering artificial light casting strange shadows across the TV room, the garage was the threshold to the old, outer world where some forgotten forest magic lingered, filtered by trees through glowing leaves to light those still drawings into life.

They didn’t possess the modern movement cast from glowing glass on the TV, but looking down on those still Smurfs, lit by beams of sunlight pouring through the high row of garage door windows, the drawings took on movement all their own. It would be years before I learned how this magic worked.

It turns out Peyo was a member of the Marcinelle School, not a school of magic but a school of art, that emphasized the impression of movement in how characters are drawn. As a kid reading a comic in the garage, I knew nothing of the Marcinelle School, but my half-slit eyes widened with surprise at the dawning realization that I had been wrong. The comics were not less than the cartoon. There was still movement, better writing, funnier jokes, and more interesting plots.

Looking back on my comic confused prejudice illustrates how the growing popularity of the Smurfs ironically overshadowed their smaller but greater beginnings. Despite being so small, the Smurfs grew big enough to garner a cartoon series that would squeeze from view their humble origins in a Belgian comic. As the Smurfs grew into a global giant, Peyo suffered the sting of success, lamenting his inability to devote more time to other comics.

The Smurfs’ bittersweet boom reverberates success and loss, and how progress can blind us to what we’ve lost. The glow of the Smurfs cartoon outshone the Smurfs comics, and the Pyrrhic popularity of the Smurfs comics overshadowed Peyo’s other creations.

This collection is a corrective vision, a visual contradiction that more than a cartoon, to be treasured as well are the Smurfs comics and Peyo’s other comics that have long lived in the shadow of the Smurfs.