Angry Smurf - 2.0007 (1966)
A longtime fan-favorite in Europe, this zombie-Sambo smurf stems from Peyo’s storybook Les Schtroumpfs Noirs (The Black Smurf) , which was first published in 1963 by Dupuis. In the story, a hapless smurf is stung by a fly, turning his blue skin black and his eyes bright red. With a vocabulary consisting of only one word (“Gnap”), the smurf runs amok amongst the Smurfs’ village, attacking the other smurts by biting their spherical tails, which causes them to turn black as well, and soon there are so many blacks that they’re threatening to turn the close-knit community into a nihilistic wasteland.
Luckily, Papa Smurf (the last remaining blue smurf in the village) has found a pollen that will rid the smurfs of their blackness, and in what could be described as typical mintstrel-slapstick, Patient Zero accidentally sneezes after sniffing the “pollen”, causing it to spread all over the village and thereby curing the smurfs of their blackness. Whatever questionable racial implications that arise in Angry’s story, the fact remains that his polyvinyl visage is highly sought after by strange grown-ups the world over, making him a wonderful foundation on which to reconstruct my beloved, long-lost collection of Smurfs.
