39 Facts About Gaston Lagaffe

Gaston Lagaffe is a Belgian gag-a-day comic strip created in 1957 by the Belgian cartoonist Andre Franquin in the Franco-Belgian comics magazine Spirou.

Gaston Lagaffe is very popular in large parts of Europe and has been translated into over a dozen languages, but except for a few pages by Fantagraphics in the early 1990s, there was no English translation until Cinebook began publishing English language editions of Gaston Lagaffe books in July, 2017.

Gaston Lagaffe's arrival was carefully orchestrated with a teasing campaign over several months, based on ideas by Franquin, Yvan Delporte and Jidehem, with mysterious blue footprints in the margins of the magazine.

From Spirou issue n°1025, the single-panel gags were replaced with Gaston Lagaffe strips running at the bottom of the editor's pages, signed by both Jidehem and Franquin.

Gaston Lagaffe is first seen "on the streets of the capital" riding a bicycle while reading a newspaper, obliviously littering papers, and then appears two frames later, bruised and dazed, dragging his deformed bike, having ridden into the middle of ongoing traffic.

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Gaston Lagaffe appears at the start of the story when, cycling and lighting a cigarette at the same time, he runs past a red light and very nearly gets hit by Spirou and Fantasio's Turbot I sportscar.

Gaston Lagaffe was given a larger part in the following adventure, La Foire aux gangsters .

Fortunately for Spirou and the little victim, Gaston Lagaffe keeps getting his directions wrong and he and the gangsters end up in a dead-end, surrounded by police and in jail.

Gaston Lagaffe appeared in Franquin's two final Spirou et Fantasio stories, published in Panade a Champignac.

Gaston Lagaffe is featured in the opening pages of the title story, and plays a central role in Bravo les Brothers in which he offers Fantasio a troupe of performing chimpanzees as an unwanted birthday present.

Gaston Lagaffe thus decides that the best thing to do is to focus on emptiness and think of Gaston.

When Tome and Janry took over the series a couple of references to Gaston Lagaffe were made in the album "La jeunesse de Spirou" where a scam artist is publishing a faux number five album of the Gaston Lagaffe series.

Gaston Lagaffe's antics appeared in Spirou from 1957 to 1996, a few months before Franquin's death in 1997, although new material appeared only sporadically after the early 1980s.

Gaston Lagaffe follows the classic "gag" format of Franco-Belgian comics: one-page stories with an often visual punchline, sometimes foreshadowed in the dialogue.

Gaston Lagaffe was hired - somewhat mysteriously - as an office junior at the offices of the Journal de Spirou, having wandered in cluelessly.

Gaston Lagaffe's age is a mystery – Franquin himself confessed that he neither knew nor indeed wanted to know it.

Gaston Lagaffe is invariably dressed in a tight polo-necked green jumper and blue-jeans, and worn-out espadrilles.

Also, in his first gags, Gaston Lagaffe was an avid cigarette smoker, but his habit was slowly phased out.

Gaston Lagaffe is the main character's hierarchical superior, often seen trying to sign contracts with Monsieur De Mesmaeker.

In opposition to his role in Spirou, in Gaston Lagaffe, Fantasio was a comically serious character, a regular victim of Gaston Lagaffe's goofy antics who thus became to Fantasio what Fantasio is to Spirou.

Gaston Lagaffe was on generally friendly terms with Gaston, sometimes trying to mediate between him and Fantasio, usually without much success.

Gaston Lagaffe is then revealed to be even more short-tempered than his predecessor from whom he has inherited not only the mammoth task of making Gaston work, but the job of signing contracts with important businessman Aime De Mesmaeker .

Occasionally, he manages to turn the tables on Gaston Lagaffe, preventing him from causing chaos or actually pranking him and showing that he is not without a sense of humor.

Gaston Lagaffe is fond of puns and we see him woo one of the attractive secretary girls over the course of the series.

Gaston Lagaffe represents the more serious side of the comics publishing business.

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Gaston Lagaffe partakes in Gaston's schemes to irritate Longtarin, the policeman.

Gaston Lagaffe is one of Gaston's favorite "victims" as well as his nemesis.

Gaston Lagaffe pulls off other pranks, such as putting a small effigy of Longtarin on the front of his car, in a parody of the Rolls-Royce Spirit of Ecstasy.

Much humour derives from the car's extreme state of decrepitude; for example, a friend of Gaston Lagaffe is able to "waterski" behind it on a slick of oil, while Gaston Lagaffe strenuously denies any such leaks.

Some of Gaston Lagaffe's colleagues are terrified at the very thought of sitting in the Fiat – Prunelle swears on several occasions that he will never set foot in it again.

Gaston Lagaffe has created at least one other instrument in the same vein, and an electric version of the Gaffophone.

An early running gag involved Gaston Lagaffe coming up with elaborate and extremely impractical costumes for fancy dress parties at the facetious suggestions of his colleagues: Roly-poly toy, octopus, Greek urn, petrol pump, Eiffel Tower etc.

Gaston Lagaffe was invariably worried about whether he would be able to dance with the outfit on.

Authors at Spirou could only go so far in expressing anything resembling politics within the magazine, and so the author of Gaston Lagaffe generally stuck to a gentle satire of productivity and authority.

Awaking in a sweat, Gaston Lagaffe shouts at the reader that "although this was a nightmare, it's happening right now around the world", urging membership.

Gaston Lagaffe has appeared in advertising campaigns for batteries, a soft drink, and in a campaign to promote bus use.

The cover features Gaston Lagaffe wearing orange espadrilles without socks, not yet given his trademark blue espadrilles.

Gaston Lagaffe is among the many Belgian comics characters to jokingly have a Brussels street named after them.

Franquin, uncomfortable with the prospect of a live adaptation of Gaston Lagaffe, had given permission for the elements and jokes from his work to be used, but not the actual characters.