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 handful of strips, there was no English translation until Cinebook began publishing English language editions of Gaston books as 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.

Publication history

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.