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"The Reporter Smurf" (original French title Le Schtroumpf Reporter) is a comic book story that was created and published by Studio Peyo in 2003. It has been published in English by Papercutz on January 8, 2019 under the title "The Smurf Reporter", with the first half of "The Flute Smurfers" as its secondary story.

Characters[]

Plot Summary[]

The story begins with the title character witnessing Fisher Smurf having a bad day of fishing when he gets caught in his own tangled-up fishing line and falls into the lake. As he returns to the Smurf Village, Fisher tries to save face with Farmer Smurf by telling him a harmless fish story, which he then tells to Handy Smurf, which he then tells to another, which Vanity Smurf overhears. However, along the way, the fish story gets turned into a fantastic story about Fisher Smurf fighting a monster at the bottom of the lake, which Reporter Smurf ends up hearing and starts questioning the veracity of the story.

Reporter tells Papa Smurf how disgusted he is about how true stories get so distorted as they pass from one Smurf to another, and so decides to make it a mission that he would report only the truth so that the Smurfs would get the facts of the story straight. To that end, he begins by posting his news reports on the village bulletin board, only to find that very few Smurfs have the time or the desire to read the reports from that location. He tries creating hand copies of the reports that he could pass out to the other Smurfs, but not only does that become time-consuming (and prone to accidents with ink), but also he could only create a few copies at a time. Moreover, Chef Smurf uses his copy to light a fire in his oven, Hefty Smurf uses his copy to cover over a puddle that Smurfette walks across, and the third copy is destroyed by two Smurfs fighting over who will have it.

Reporter turns to Handy with the idea of a machine that could create as many copies of a writing as possible so that every Smurf would be able to read his news reports. Handy laughs at the idea at first, but then he sees Baby Smurf making prints with his toy blocks in the sand and so comes up with the idea of the printing press, which he then shows to Reporter after it was built. Soon with Greedy Smurf manning the press in exchange for his being able to use it as a large nutcracker, Reporter brings forth the first Smurf Village newspaper.

At first the paper has a slow and rocky start as Reporter tries to bring the level of his articles up past the point of telling the same old stories that everyone has heard. However, after witnessing and reporting a fire at the Smurf Village storehouse, which a few of the volunteers of the Smurf firefighter brigade, Dopey and Lazy, had failed in their jobs trying to stop, the newspaper finally starts selling out all its copies in a day. Reporter then gets himself a new reporter's hat and a tie from Tailor Smurf so that he would be able to go anywhere to get the latest story.

Immediately after getting the new clothes, Reporter hunts after a new story when he sees Handy and Lumberjack Smurf go to the village dam to talk about the leaks in it. Overhearing the two Smurfs saying that they plan to do nothing about the leaks and not even mention this to the other Smurfs, Reporter immediately takes it to the press room, and soon Handy and Lumberjack are greeted by the news of their silence gone public in the newspaper. Papa Smurf, who is also aware of the dam's problems and knows that the situation is not serious, tells the two scandalized Smurfs to go home and keep their heads down while he deals with the matter himself with his little Smurfs. But no sooner do they leave Papa Smurf's house, the newspaper readers spot the two Smurfs and give chase to them, ready to have their heads.

From that point on the paper continues to become more successful, even with additional features such as horoscopes, romance stories, sports reviews, weather reports, and also a comic strip. But it eventually reaches an impasse with Reporter Smurf as he finds himself with nothing more to write about. Then after an encounter with Smurfette delivering her latest story for publication, Reporter comes up with the idea of having the question of who "Smurfette's secret love" is be front page material. This starts a very long and painful ordeal with Smurfette as Reporter is now snooping into her private life and making it public knowledge. Papa Smurf tries to step in and get Reporter to stop with the snooping, but he ends up being forced into doing nothing about it when Reporter makes a charge in the newspaper that Papa Smurf has become a dictator. It gets worse as Reporter spies on Chef Smurf making a secret meal delivery to Smurfette and sees her give him a friendly kiss, insinuating that Chef Smurf was actually "Smurfette's secret love" -- something that drives Smurfette to tears when Brainy Smurf makes a harmless mention about Chef Smurf not escorting her to the ball of the full moon.

After the readers of the newspaper decided they would no longer support Reporter making Smurfette's private life public, the newspaper readership has dwindled. Papa Smurf has a talk with Reporter to remind him why he came up with the idea of the newspaper in the first place, and during the talk Reporter is inspired to do something really daring: he would go to Gargamel's castle and spy on the evil wizard so that the Smurf Village would know of his plans beforehand -- not to mention have it appear in the newspaper. Inside the wizard's lair, Reporter is caught by both Gargamel and Azrael and put into a cage, where the wizard finds out that the Smurfs would believe anything he would write up in his paper.

With that in mind, Gargamel misleads Reporter into believing that he has come up with a potion that would allow him to find the Smurf Village without their help, and all it takes to ruin the potion is a sarsaparilla leaf. Also the evil wizard purposely leaves the key to the cage within Reporter's reach so that he could use it and escape to the village to spread the false information. Although Papa Smurf isn't convinced of the story Reporter comes back to the village with, a good deal of Smurfs believe Reporter's words and return with him in the middle of the night to Gargamel's castle in an attempt to foil his plans. However, it turns out that the wizard has actually created a glue which he spreads on the floor and captures the Smurfs sneaking into his castle.

Reporter, the only Smurf that Gargamel hasn't captured, returns to the village to tell Papa Smurf the truth of what's happened. Papa Smurf then comes up with a plan using Reporter's skills and his printing press. By the following morning, Gargamel wakes up to find a copy of the village newspaper inside his door with a front page article about an illness the Smurfs were carrying that could turn humans that come into contact with the infected Smurfs into toads. Gargamel doesn't believe the article he is reading, but then he sees that the Smurfs in the cages all have green spots on them and are acting sick. They notice something wrong with Gargamel, which makes him look into a mirror and gasp in horror as he sees red pustules have formed on his face. After further reading of the article that says the only cure is to quarantine himself within hours of exposure before the transformation is permanent, Gargamel lets the infected Smurfs go free. After they escape to the village, it is revealed that the red pustules on the wizard's face was actually paint and he had been fooled by the Smurfs again, who were simply coated with spots of green paint.

Some days later, Papa Smurf notices that Reporter Smurf has hung up his reporter's hat and has also stopped publishing the village newspaper. He says that the Smurfs have learned from this that they can't always believe everything that they hear... or so he thinks, as he hears even Papa Smurf talk about something that he heard about Lazy Smurf at the end of the story.

In Other Media[]

The cartoon show episode "All The News That's Fit To Smurf" shows the debut of Handy's printing press, while "Smurf The Presses" is where Gargamel uses Reporter to mislead the Smurfs with a bit of news so that he could capture them.

Notes[]

  • The article below the main editorial in the Smurf Village newspaper's first appearance makes a mention of the attempt of bringing money into the Smurf Village being a failure, which references "The Finance Smurf".
  • Papa Smurf being accused of becoming a dictator by Reporter in his newspaper may be a case of what TV Tropes refers to as an Ascended Meme -- which in this case refers to the common meme among Smurf haters that Papa Smurf is actually a fascist or communist dictator.
  • The costumes the Smurfs wear at the disguise party include:
    • Supersmurf (Hefty Smurf)
    • Christopher Columbus
    • Indian
    • Knight
    • Astro Smurf (likely to be the real one)
    • Clown
    • Grandpa Smurf (unlikely to be the real one)
    • Fakir (Papa Smurf)
    • Lucky Luke (cowboy costume)
    • Angel (Brainy Smurf)
    • Devil
    • Bee
    • Robin Hood
    • Sherlock Holmes
    • Reporter Smurf (the real one)
    • A Swoof
  • In the hardcover edition of the English translation, Reporter takes the place of Papa Smurf among the Smurfs who appear on both the back and front cover inside pages.
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