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Gaston picture in a Brussels exhibition: did Franquin want a future for his lazy hero?
Photo: JACQUES COLLET / AFP
Along with Spirou, Tintin, Asterix and Lucky Luke, it is one of the classics of Franco-Belgian comics: Gaston Lagaffe, i.e. Gaston the slip-up, office factotum in a publishing house, unleashes the most wonderful chaos.
For 40 years, from 1957 until his death in 1997, André Franquin drew and wrote about his favorite character.
This March, 25 years after Franquin's death, the head of the Dupuis comics company, Stéphane Beaujean, announced Gaston's return at a press conference at the Angoulême International Comics Festival.
The comic book publisher, which is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year, had entrusted the new edition of »Gaston Lagaffe« to French Canadian Delaf, whose real name is Marc Delafontaine.
"Le Retour de Lagaffe," a 48-page classic comic book, the 22nd volume in the series, had been announced for October 19, with an initial print run of 1.2 million copies.
However, Dupuis' announcement caused irritation in the Franquins family.
After all, the draftsman and author had decreed that Gaston should not live after his death.
As early as 2018, when a film version was released in French cinemas, Franquin's daughter Isabelle commented sullenly in the newspaper "L'Avenir": "I watch the disaster helplessly".
As the Belgian newspaper »Le Soir« reported, Isabelle Franquin turned to a court in Brussels after the news from Angoulême.
In your opinion, every new volume from a different pen would represent plagiarism.
She appealed to the court to suspend all advertising for the new Gaston comic.
Dupuis boss Beaujean admitted at the press conference that Isabelle Franquin "orally spoke out against" resuming the Gaston series.
But he insisted that the clauses in his rights contract made it clear "that a takeover is possible."
Now, however, the publisher is rowing back.
As the trade journal Livres Hebdo reports, Dupuis has decided to suspend the publication of the 22nd Gaston volume for the time being.
"We made this decision spontaneously to enable a calm and objective debate," it said in a publisher's statement.
They do not want to strain relations with Isabelle Franquin and are now waiting for the court decision, which is expected in September 2022.
Dupuis hopes to find a solution that will allow "Franquin's work to be kept alive, so that the legacy of this comic genius is permanently secured".
Franquin, who also drew for the »Spirou« series and other Dupuis comics, created his alter ego in Gaston - an anarchic good-for-nothing with a great deal of animal welfare and environmental awareness, who was absolutely unsuitable for office work, his creativity in the corridors of the editorial office but let loose in other ways.
According to Dupuis, Delaf was chosen because the Quebec artist created a Gaston drawing for a Franquin tribute in 2017 that was amazingly close to the original.
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