Gaston (comics)

Gaston is a Belgian gag-a-day comic strip created in 1957 by the Belgian cartoonist André Franquin in the Franco-Belgian comics magazine Spirou. The series, serving as a spin-off of the magazine's primary series Spirou et Fantasio, focuses on the everyday life of Gaston Lagaffe (whose surname means "the blunder"), a lazy and accident-prone office junior who works at Spirou's office in Brussels. Gaston is very popular in large parts of Europe (especially in Belgium and France) and has been translated into over a dozen languages, but except for a few pages by Fantagraphics in the early 1990s (as Gomer Goof), there was no English translation until Cinebook began publishing English language editions of Gaston books (again named 'Gomer Goof') in July, 2017.

In 2023, the series was revived by Québécois author Delaf.

Since the 1980s Gaston has appeared on a wide variety of merchandise.

André Franquin who was then in charge of Spirou et Fantasio, the primary series of Spirou magazine, first introduced the character Gaston in issue n°985, published February 28, 1957. The picture above is found on the 5th page of the magazine in segment of the story, Le Piano à Bretelles (written by Paul Berna and illustrated by Morris) which only contains letters and large images. The initial purpose was to fill up empty spaces in the magazine and offer a (comically artificial) glimpse of life behind-the-scenes at the paper. His arrival was carefully orchestrated with a teasing campaign over several months, based on ideas by Franquin, Yvan Delporte and Jidéhem, with mysterious blue footprints in the margins of the magazine.

For the Spirou issue N°1000 cover, Franquin drew 999 heads of Spirou, and one of Gaston, and the first Gaston full-page gag was featured in a bonus supplement.

In the context of the fictive story evolving at the magazine offices, the man behind the footprints, Gaston, finally turned up for a memorable job interview, telling the bemused Spirou that he didn't remember with whom or for what he had been called. Fantasio, functioning as the magazine's opinionated face of signed editorials, subsequently announced in a formal communiqué that Gaston would be the first "Hero-without-a-job". Gaston's blunders continued during a stressful and frustrating period for Fantasio, pushing him to go on a 4-week strike and eventually a vacation, initiating the story Vacances sans histoires.

From Spirou issue n°1025, the single-panel gags were replaced with Gaston strips running at the bottom of the editor's pages, signed by both Jidéhem and Franquin. These ran until 1959 when Gaston acquired a weekly half-page, which lasted until the mid-60s when the Gaston Lagaffe gags grew to full-page. A full length comic featuring Gaston has not yet been published in English. In 1971 4 gags of Gaston were published in the Thunderbirds Annual 1971. Gaston was christened Cranky Franky for this series. In the early 1990s Fantagraphics translated about a half a dozen gags into English and Gaston was rechristened Gomer Goof for this one.

Gaston's first cameo in a Spirou et Fantasio adventure took place in Spirou issue n°1014 (19 September 1957) as he graced two frames of Le voyageur du Mésozoïque (French: "The Traveller from the Mesozoic Era"). He 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.