It was in response to a request from the then editor of Journal Spirou that Yves Chaland took over the series of the famous groom in the summer of 1982. For 22 weeks, Chaland?s two black-and-white strips appeared at the bottom of the magazine?s second and third pages under the title ?Spirou et les robots? (Spirou and the Robots).Four years later and after publishing two new Freddy Lombard albums, Chaland went back to his beloved robots, but this time he abandoned the constraints of the comic strip in favour of full-page illustrations. The result was three quite different and dis-tinct storylines: Coeurs d?acier (Steel Hearts), Moustic Journal and Le Groom Vert-de-Gris (The Verdigris Groom?), totalling a mere 22 pages of pencil drawings.Two out of six of the pages in Moustic Journal were drawn and inked entirely by Chaland himself, however. Page four, published in 1993 in Les Inachevés (The Unfinished) by Champaka Book, is one of them.As Yann Lepennetier explains, ?Chaland re-situates the action in Brussels. Having heard nothing from his friend Fantasio, our hero goes to Fantasio?s house and tells him that the newspaper has just fired him because of an article he wrote about the mysteries of the North Pole ? such a fanciful article that at the last moment the editor preferred to publish a blank page... But our nutty hero isn?t the least bit bothered and proudly produces the robot he claims to have found and dismantled in order to learn its secrets? (Les Inachevés, Champaka).