Scans_Daily

Hello everyone! This is my first post here I'm so happy to have found this place!

As a french-canadian living near Montreal, Quebec, I'm lucky to have access to a wide variety of comics from many sources: american comics from the US, franco-belgian comics from europe, manga translated in both english and french, and even some local talents (the "Paul" series by Michel Rabagliati for example). My local library has a large collection of comics of all kinds and I want to share with you all the most obscure and awesome stuff I can find.

For my first post, I'll start with one of my favorite franco-belgian comics, the goofy office gofer, Gaston Lagaffe.





In February 1957, readers of the Belgian comic magazine "Le journal de Spirou" discovered in issue #985 a strange character. There was no name, no explanation for this little image in a page corner:



The following weeks, the mystery character returned, now wearing a ratty green sweater, jeans and sneakers, and framed by blue footprints. Eventually a name was revealed: Gaston.

Gaston was actually a creation of André Franquin, then writer and artist on the "Spirou & Fantasio" series, and editor-in-chief Yvan Delporte. Gaston, who acquired the last name Lagaffe ("gaffe" in french means "blunder, mistake, goof"), was never meant to become a regular comic character with his own series. His only role would have been to liven up the pages of the magazine with his blunders, wandering around the offices of Les Éditions Dupuis (real life publishers of Spirou), doing odd jobs after just showing up one day and claiming he had been hired to work there (By who? To do what? He couldn't remember).

Franquin describes Gaston as:

"…a comic hero with no positive qualities, who would be stupid, not handsome, not strong. He would be a "Jobless hero" so pathetic that no one would want to read a comic about him."

Source: Official Gaston website (in french only)

But Gaston soon became so popular with readers that in 1959, the "little doodle in page corners" format was dropped for a half-page sized strip, set in the (fictionalized) offices of the magazine Gaston appeared in. Fantasio from the Spirou series became his boss, and Gaston's character was developed more. He became a lazy, incompetent office clerk who seemed to cause catastrophes where ever he went.

Gaston has no shame in using office space and work hours to put together crazy inventions, practice weird hobbies, take care of his numerous annoying pets (cat, mouse, goldfish, hedgehog, seagull...wait, seagull?), flirt with the cute secretary Mademoiselle Jeanne, have a prank war with a local police officer, play his Gaffophone, a monstrous homemade musical instrument, and of course, just find 1001 creative ways to avoid doing his job.

In 1968, Franquin left the Spirou series to work on Gaston full time. The strip's cast of characters also grew. Leon Prunelle replaced Fantasio as Gaston's boss (Dupuis still owned the rights to Fantasio).



A few characters from the Gaston series: Gaston, Fantasio, Prunelle, Jeanne, Mr.DeMesmaeker, coworkers Lebrac and Boulier, local cop Longtarin, Gaston's buddies Bertrand Labevue and Jules-from-Smith's-across-the-street, the cat and the seagull.



The Gaffophone, the sound of your worst nightmares.

André Franquin worked on Gaston until his death in 1997, and Gaston's strips have been reprinted numerous times in different compilation albums since then. A series of animated shorts was made in 2012, using Flash animation to give life to Franquin's drawings. You can watch a few episodes here, but only in french.



Gaston's creator, André Franquin (1924 - 1997). He's also the creator of the Marsupilami character.

So, after this history lesson, here is our feature presentation, a series of strips I like to call "The saga of Rubber-Gaston", first published in the sixties (I can't pinpoint the exact year). In these strips, Gaston somehow got his hands on a life-size replica of himself made of rubber and brought it to the office (it's sort of an inside joke because little rubber Gaston toys existed in real life at the time). So here are 9 strips that total 4 and a half pages of a 44 pages album. The translation is homemade by me.

Now let's all sit back and watch the mayhem...




The next strip features the closest thing the series has to a villain: Mr. DeMesmaeker, a grumpy businessman who shows up from time to time to sign some important contracts. But due to Gaston's shenanigans, something always happens to ruin the deal. Either DeMesmaeker gets angry and storms off, or the contracts get destroyed somehow.





Great stress-reliever, this Rubber-Gaston.






And that's it for this first post on Scans_Daily, thank you for reading. If I did something wrong or break any rules, please tell me and I'll fix it. My native language is French so I apologize for any spelling or grammar mistake. I might not be able to translate everything I post in the future but I'll do my best to explain the dialogue.

Bye Bye!