This was a situation just as odd as it sounds. Franquin also worked for the competition, Le Journal de Tintin. If that wasn't enough, there was more one thing. Now he was starting a supplement called Spirou Poche and had just become a first-time father. Over a decade, as well as the magazine's cover, he had been producing Spirou and Fantasio weekly. But, from the start, he was indifferent to all the problems he caused them.Īt the moment he got the idea for Gaston, Franquin was overworked. Despite his hopeless behavior, Lagaffe likes people. Each of them had a "job" which could further improving narratives. In that era, kiddie mags starred exemplary heroes like cowboys, aviators and private eyes. If the concept behind Gaston Lagaffe was simple, his actual character constituted an aberration. Gaston La Gaffe, catalogue, Gaston, Bpi © Franquin/Dargaud-Lombard, 2016 Why was Gaston in the office? Who had actually hired him? The character shrugged he didn't know, couldn't recall and didn't care. When an irate Spirou eventually tried to question him, a dialogue worthy of Samuel Beckett ensued. A page might be obscured when Gaston poked his face in the camera or an article lost under ink he had spilled. From then on, every week, he appeared to instigate problems. On 28 February 1957, Gaston appeared with no explanation he was simply shown opening the door to Spirou. He threw himself into it, even naming the character after a shambolic pal. Franquin's pitch for a house "blunderer" tickled Delporte's fancy. It's still funny to think about some of his initiatives, like a "spring issue" with violet-scented ink which caused the whole print works to vomit. He loved jazz, ran a private club and read comics in English. A comics scenariste with a beard the size of a copse, the editor was a character. Publisher Charles Dupuis had hired Delporte to make Spirou funnier. In Yvan Delporte, he found a receptive ear. From the start, his concept was a swipe at the magazine's rectitude. Franquin proposed filling these with a character, "a BD hero too stupid to fit the mold". The pagination problems were solved by using a centerfold but unexpected gaps still cropped up. The magazine published both a Belgian and a French edition so, between them, advertising volumes differed. That role belonged to a daring insurance adjuster, Jean Valhardi. Spirou, a red-clad bellboy, wasn't even its featured star. Their youth weekly Spirou was a Catholic children's journal which, like its competitor Tintin, stuck to Boy Scout values. Franquin and his editor, Yvan Delporte, had envisioned not a strip but a running gag. Yet, at the start, Gaston was just an in-joke. Gaston at the Pompidou Bpi © Hervé Vérnonèse Elevated to stardom by Franquin's graphic brilliance, this rebellion-by-default changed the rules of the bande dessinée. As Renaud Defiebre-Muller notes in the show, "Gaston pits personal autonomy against social control: against manners, against respect, against everyday decorum". But, if his character exudes a Sixties effervescence it also has the era's disillusions. Over three decades the artist honed Gaston's interests, showing him to be an inventor, a music fan, a DIY fanatic and an amateur chef. Franquin made him into a prototype of subversion. While hardly the first antihero of European comics, Gaston was one of their first post-adolescents. Gaston, whose last name means "the blunder", is an dedicated idler in jeans and espadrilles. ![]() It also honours a landmark birthday – the sixtieth year of Gaston Lagaffe, Franquin's most well-known character. ![]() He created the most complete, the most alive, the most absolute cartooniness in comics history."Ī current Paris retrospective, Gaston, shares their views. "In terms of ultra-classic greatness," he once wrote me, "Hergé has that abstract line but Franquin has something else. Next to him, I'm only a mediocre pen-pusher." Fantagraphics' Kim Thompson agreed with Tintin's creator. "Franquin", he declared, "is a great artist. Was Belgian Andre Franquin (1924-1997) comics' greatest draftsman? One colleague who certainly thought so was Hergé. Features André Franquin: Great or…The Greatest?Ĭynthia Rose | FebruAndré Franquin in the 1950s © Gaston Servais Franquin/Dargaud-Lombard, 2016
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