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Gaston Lagaffe is the lead character in the comic series Gaston, created by the Belgian cartoonist André Franquin in 1957 in the Franco-Belgian comics magazine Spirou. His adventures were also published in books after 1960. His name (meaning ″The blunder″ in Franch) is well deserved and most of the gags depict him provoking a kind of disaster.

Character

Gaston was hired - somewhat mysteriously - as an office junior at the offices of the Journal de Spirou (the real-life publication in which the strip appeared), having wandered in cluelessly. The strip usually focuses on his efforts to avoid doing any work, and indulge instead in hobbies or naps while all around him panic over deadlines, lost mail and contracts. Initially, Gaston was an irritating simpleton, but he developed a genial personality and sense of humour. Common sense however always eludes him, and he has an almost supernatural ability to cause disasters ("gaffes") to which he reacts with his catchphrase: "M'enfin!" ("What the...?"). His job involves chiefly dealing with readers' mail. The ever-growing piles of unanswered letters ("courrier en retard") and the attempts of his successive managers Fantasio and Léon Prunelle to make him deal with it or to retrieve documentation are recurring themes of the comic.

Gaston's age is a mystery - Franquin himself confessed that he neither knew nor indeed wanted to know it. Although Gaston has a job, a car and his own place, he often acts like a young teenager. In the publication of Dossier Franquin Franquin had said that Gaston is a boy in his late teens but certainly not in his twenties. He is invariably dressed in a tight polo-necked green jumper and blue-jeans, and worn-out espadrilles. It is said that his appearance was originally based on that of Yvan Delporte, editor of the Journal de Spirou at that time. Also, in his first gags, Gaston was an avid cigarette smoker, but his habit was slowly phased out.

Activities

Gaston alternates between phases of extreme laziness, when it is near impossible to wake him up, and hyper-activity, when he creates various machines or plays with office furniture. Over the years, he has experimented with cooking, rocket science, music, electronics, decorating, telecommunication, chemistry and many other hobbies, all with uniformly catastrophic results. His Peter Pan-like refusal to grow up and care about his work makes him very endearing, while ironically his antics account for half the stress experienced by his unfortunate co-workers.

Gaston's disregard for authority or even public safety are not confined to his office; they occasionally threaten the entire city. He is not above covering road signs with advertising posters or even snowmen, reasoning that it is the only decent use that they have — being oblivious to the chaos and accidents that covering the road signs cause.

Political views

Gaston is very sensitive to environment protection and some of his jokes aim at pushing hunters out of the forest. He also despises policemen and war.

Pets

Gaston is very fond of animals (as was Franquin of drawing them) and keeps several pets. The main ones are a depressive, aggressive seagull and a hyperactive cat. Like Franquin's most famous animal creation, the Marsupilami, those two never acquired a name and are just referred to as the cat and the seagull. Gaston also sometimes keeps a mouse (Cheese), and a goldfish (Bubulle). The animals are sometimes Gaston's partners in crime, sometimes the victims of his clumsiness and sometimes the perpetrators of nefarious schemes. They are depicted more realistically than the pets in Spirou, in that we are not privy to their inner thoughts. The cat and seagull in particular can be fairly vicious, to the extent of forcing all employees and an unwilling De Mesmaeker to wear helmets, but never to Gaston himself. They often team up to obtain food. For example, in volume 14, the seagull distracts the fishmonger while the cat steals a fish, which they later eat together.

Homages

An exhibition entitled "Gaston, au-delà de Lagaffe" (litterally "Gaston, beyond Lagaffe") is held at the Bibliothèque publique d'Information in the Centre Beaubourg in Paris from December, 7th 2016 to April, 10th 2017.