Gaston Lagaffe
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Gaston Lagaffe
Gaston Lagaffe is the main character of the comic strip Gaston, originally created in 1957 by the Belgian cartoonist André Franquin in the Belgian comic strip magazine, Spirou. He is an extremely popular pop culture icon in France, and since the 1980s also appears on a wide variety of merchandise. La gaffe is French for "the gaffe".
Franquin was the cartoonist on the Spirou et Fantasio comic strip, and Gaston originally started as single panels in Spirou magazine, which Franquin drew as a distraction from the more elaborate adventures involving the title character Spirou and his friend Fantasio. Gaston appeared in comic strip form in Spirou magazine from 1957 to Franquin's death in 1997, although new material appeared only sporadically after the early 1980s.
Gaston Lagaffe is known by different names in translations, for example Guust Flater in Dutch; and Viggo in Norwegian.
In 1996 Franquin had the pleasure of participating in the inaugural ceremonies of his statue of Gaston Lagaffe, which had then found a permanent home on Boulevard Pachéco in Brussels.
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Characters
Gaston Lagaffe
Gaston Lagaffe is employed at the Journal de Spirou office; in a certain sense he is portrayed as a fictional employee of the very publication he appears in. From the beginning Gaston was lazy and an occasional blunderer, finding a way to set fire to the fire extinguishers, or flooding the office, for example. His gaffes gave him his surname, which he did not acquire until well after his first appearance. A recurring theme involves Gaston's gaffes preventing his bosses from signing important contracts with a businessman named Monsieur De Mesmaeker. He spends the majority of his time trying to avoid work by hiding in a closet, or even by just simply sleeping on the job…
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As time went on, the character evolved. Lazy as he was, Gaston became resourceful, and began inventing schemes and gadgets in order to make work that much easier. Usually however these ideas are farfetched and backfire, creating a mess and yet another gaffe. When this happens, he often expresses his surprise or chagrin by uttering his trademark phrase "M'enfin?" (which can be translated as "What the heck?" or "Oh come on!" depending on the context).
Among other things he has invented a machine that ties neckties, an ultrasonic kettle, traffic lights for living room use, a pneumatic ashtray, a paper airplane folder, an all-in-one calling device for mosquitos and moles and chickens, and a rear-view mirror for pedestrians, just to name a few. A born tinkerer, it sometimes takes courage to continue driving his "Gaffomobile" jalopy, a pre-war Fiat decorated with a “sporty” checkerboard pattern.
With music in his soul, he has created some rather fantastic musical instruments, the most important of which is the "gaffophone", whose undefinable sound is used to make windows explode, or even to save whales from whalers by scaring them into fleeing the area. He plays, among others, the guitar, the tuba, the trombone, and the car horn organ.
Being an accomplished chef as well, Gaston creates certain gastronomic dishes, such as raspberry codfish, pineapple cod, and hot-air balloon crêpes. He is the only person who prepares such dishes, and also the only person capable of eating them.
Finally, Gaston has a passion for ecology and adores his little animals: a hyperactive cat, a seagull, a goldfish, and several mice. But, because his apartment is too small, he must keep all of his animals at the office. This becomes more annoying when he brings in a cow or a pig that he won in a contest, especially when the animal tries to eat Gaston’s colleagues’ important papers…
In a nutshell, Gaston is a big child and an awkward person with a big heart.
The office co-workers
Fantasio (of Spirou et Fantasio) is one of the supporting characters of the series. Being Gaston's superior, we generally see him when he is trying to sign contracts with Monsieur Demesmaeker, without ever succeeding thanks to all of Gaston’s interruptions... What is astonishing about this character is that in his adventures with Spirou, he symbolizes fantasy, and invention, contrasting with the serious nature of Spirou. But in the Gaston adventures, he plays straight man to Gaston's goofy antics, who thus becomes to Fantasio what Fantasio is to Spirou!
Spirou (also from Spirou et Fantasio) also puts in a few cameo appearances, usually in conjunction with Fantasio.
Léon Prunelle is Fantasio’s successor in the post of Gaston’s boss, and continues the futile attempts to sign contracts with Demesmaeker. A short-tempered man, he has declared himself "The Man Who Made Gaston Work", and in this capacity continually hunts Gaston down to prevent him from napping or taking a break, and to remind him that he must tend to the backlog of mail. He also tries to keep him from cooking, from tinkering, from inventing, and, obviously, from "gaffing". When he loses his temper at Gaston his face often turns reddish purple and he utters his nonsensical trademark outburst "Rogntudjuuu!"
Yves Lebrac is one of the cartoonists. He is much more laid-back than Prunelle and has a tendency to lose his work implements, such as his eraser, his pencil, his India ink, etc. — Gaston or his cat often have something to do with this. He continually tries to make passes at one of the secretaries, but without success. He is also fond of comical word games, which all too often annoy Prunelle.
Monsieur Boulier, a surly accountant for the Éditions Dupuis publishers, will not rest until he tracks down every useless expense for the publication and more particularly Gaston’s.
Mademoiselle Jeanne
Mademoiselle Jeanne ("M'oiselle Jeanne" for Gaston) is one of Gaston’s colleagues, yet she occupies a special place. In fact, she is in love with Gaston, who is equally in love with her.
Jeanne has an undying admiration for Gaston. She admires his talent, his courage, his capacity to dare to try the craziest of things, etc. As for Gaston, he has gone so far as to borrow the fire department’s big ladder (courtesy of one his friends) in order to pay her a visit when she was having a tiff with her mother. He does succeed in disappointing her from time to time. Once, she believed that he was carving a heart with their initials in the bark of a tree, but Gaston was in fact in the process of drawing a face.
However their relationship is mostly platonic. They address each other with the formal vous, see each other mainly at the office, and only rarely go out together.
At first, she was very shy, and drawn in a very classic style, but she progressively evolved into a character much more like the rest of the group.
The friends
Jules-de-chez-Smith-en-face (Jules-from-Smith’s-across-the-Street) is one of Gaston’s good friends. He "works" in the office just across from Gaston's, on the other side of the street. They attempt to communicate by talking into yogurt containers connected by a cord strung across the street between their windows. They even send each other remote-controlled airplanes, or they will try to string a rope above the street in the middle of the winter in order that icicles form on it. He is a blunderer, just like Gaston.
Bertrand Labévue is another one of Gaston’s friends. As his name indicates, (la bévue is another synonym for "the blunder"), he is also a big blunderer. He often tries to help his friend when Gaston has some tough times at the office, for example trying to furnish him with can openers when Prunelle tried to ban cans of fruit cocktail and indispensable can openers. Depressed, Bertrand is equally as interested in food as Gaston, but Gaston’s culinary "exploits" only serve to deepen Bertand's depression.
Manu accepts many different jobs: first, he is a chimney sweep, then he is a sewer worker, and sometimes he is responsible for the installation of street signage. He is always ready to help Gaston get on Agent Longtarin's nerves.
Longtarin
Joseph Longtarin is a policeman working in the neighborhood where the Spirou office is located. He is one of Gaston's favorite "victims", and sometimes his nemesis. Gaston and his friends destroy his precious parking meters, by replacing them with candy dispensers, or by installing a remote control system in order that they no longer have "to feed the dreaded money-eating machine", or on the contrary, by equipping them with distress flares in order to notice when the meter shows a violation. In return, Longtarin gets on Gaston’s case: he examines his new vehicles with a fine-toothed comb to make sure they meet up with the standards of the law; he especially keeps watch on the parking meters at which Gaston is parked and puts his energy into writing Gaston tickets for as many infractions as possible. However, Longtarin is not heartless: when Gaston and his friends set out to grow a tree around one of the meters, a tree where birds had made their nest, Longtarin decided (under the pressure of Gaston and his friends) that anybody wishing to park in that space must pay their toll in food for the baby birds.
Monsieur De Mesmaeker
Aimé de Mesmaeker, or Monsieur De Mesmaeker, is a rich business man: he owns a private jet, (which Gaston destroyed) and his daughter will only drive nothing less than an Alfa Romeo. He is always seen trying to sign an important contract with Fantasio or Prunelle. But without fail, Gaston always manages to mess up the signing of the contracts, for instance by using them to demonstrate his paper recycling machine, or by installing an anti-fire device on one of Monsieur de Mesmaeker's cigars, or generally by driving De Mesmaeker into such a fury that he rips up the contract himself. However, De Mesmaeker sometimes appreciates what Gaston does, like when he proposed a contract for the sale of Gaston's vegetable soup.
In real life, De Mesmaeker was the last name of Johan De Mesmaeker (known as Jidéhem from the French pronunciation of his initials J.D.M.), one of Franquin’s frequent collaborators, whose father served as the inspiration for this unlucky businessman.
The albums
In 1960 a small-format "Gaston" book was published.
Fifteen major albums were published between 1963 and 1996, including all the strips that appeared in Spirou. There were some oddities such as number 1 appearing out of sequence and number 0 twenty years later. The first five were quickly sold out; the others were frequently reprinted.
Included in the series were the "R1" thru "R5" albums (with R for "Réédition", French for republication). The R5 album was not published until 1986; its non-existence until then had been a mystery.
Beginning in 1987, Éditions J'ai lu began publishing a 17-volume series in paperback format. The titles and contents did not exactly match the large-format albums.
On the occasion of the character’s 40th anniversary, in 1997, Éditions Dupuis republished the whole 19-book series, known as the "definitive series". In this series the albums have no individual names, just volume numbers, eg Gaston, tome 1, etc. (tome = "volume"). This series is currently the most widely available.
Classic series
- Gaston (1960, small album format 7x13 cm)
| Number | Title | Year of original publication | ISBN |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | Gala des gaffes | 1963 | |
| 3 | Gaffes à gogo | 1964 | |
| 4 | Gaffes en gros | 1965 | |
| 1 | Gare aux gaffes | 1966 | |
| 5 | Les gaffes d'un gars gonflé | 1967 | |
| 6 | Des gaffes et des dégâts | 1968 | ISBN 2-8001-0088-5 |
| 7 | Un gaffeur sachant gaffer | 1969 | ISBN 2-8001-0089-3 |
| 8 | Lagaffe nous gâte | 1970 | ISBN 2-8001-0090-7 |
| R1 | Gala de gaffes à gogo | 1970 | ISBN 2-8001-0093-1 |
| 9 | Le cas Lagaffe | 1971 | ISBN 2-8001-0091-5 |
| 10 | Le géant de la gaffe | 1972 | ISBN 2-8001-0092-3 |
| R2 | Le bureau des gaffes en gros | 1972 | ISBN 2-8001-0094-X |
| R3 | Gare aux gaffes du gars gonflé | 1973 | ISBN 2-8001-0308-6 |
| 11 | Gaffes, bévues et boulettes | 1973 | ISBN 2-8001-0330-2 |
| R4 | En direct de la gaffe | 1974 | ISBN 2-8001-0370-1 |
| 12 | Le gang des gaffeurs | 1974 | ISBN 2-8001-0400-7 |
| 13 | Lagaffe mérite des baffes | 1979 | ISBN 2-8001-0658-1 |
| 14 | La saga des gaffes | 1982 | ISBN 2-8001-0955-6 |
| 0 | Gaffes et gadgets | 1985 | ISBN 2-8001-1248-4 |
| R5 | Le lourd passé de Lagaffe | 1986 | ISBN 2-8001-1473-8 |
| 15 | Gaffe à Lagaffe! | 1996 | ISBN 2-908462-73-7 |
Definitive series
On top of all that, even more special edition books were published:
Other books include:
- Gaston fou du Bus (Promotional book for varying transportation companies : RATP, CTS, STP, RTM, TCL, etc.)
The movie
In 1981, there was a live-action French movie based on Gaston Lagaffe, called "Fais gaffe à la gaffe!" ("Beware of the gaffe!"). It was directed by Paul Boujenah and it starred Roger Mirmont as Gaston.
The movie was quite a bomb. Not only because of the quality and difficulty of interpreting caricatural cartoon icons, but most fans were very disappointed due to the fact that the characters' names were changed from the originals: Gaston's name was changed to "G", Prunelle to "Prunus", Mademoiselle Jeanne to "Pénélope" and de Mesmaeker to "Mercantilos".
This frustrating change was due to a copyright intervention by Franquin himself, who said that he "didn't want to have Gaston adapted" and that he "agreed for having the jokes adapted, but not the characters". The movie crew still attempted to get the film's elements to look as much as possible similar to the original comic strip.
External links
- Official site of Gaston Lagaffe (http://www.gastonlagaffe.com/sitefr/index.php)
- The Franquin forum (In French) (http://www.franquin.org/forum/)
- Some fan sites:
- http://edbd.netatlantide.net/gaston/gaston.html
- http://perso.wanadoo.fr/claude.collignon/
- http://lagaffemegate.free.fr/
- http://www.bdcentral.com/Gaston/
- A page about Viggo (http://www.stud.ifi.uio.no/~janl/ts/viggo.html)
- A more detailed profile of him (http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Cafe/2877/gaston/gaston.html)nl:Guust Flater
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