“A lot of noise” and legal disputes surrounding the new “Gaston Lagaffe” which has just been released

After long months of controversy, the new album by “Gaston Lagaffe” is released in bookstores on Wednesday. Franquin, the creator, did not want his character to survive him and yet that is what happens with this album by Delaf.

It’s an event in the world of comics. A new Gaston Lagaffe comes out in bookstores Wednesday November 22 and this album is called The return of Lagaffe. This character, unlike Asterix, the Bluecoats or the Smurfs, had never been used again. The creator, André Franquin, did not want this except that upon his death, the exploitation rights no longer belonged to him. A new author, Quebecois Delaf, is now taking on it, and he did not imagine the controversy that this project would trigger.

Delaf already has great success with a youth series of his own, called Navels. As a child, his idol was none other than Franquin: “Gaston has something a little sacred for me and when I was actually asked to do a whole album, I couldn’t believe it”.

Fred Jannin, friend of Franquin, who, among other things, colored all the albums, hasn’t come back from it either. He remembers very well the dinner at the restaurant where the Franquin couple, André and his partner Liliane, announced to him the sale of the rights to the character: “There was a great silence and Liliane, very embarrassed but at the same time a little authoritarian, said ‘there it is, that’s how it is, it’s decided, we’re not talking about it anymore’. But it was obvious that “he sold his drawings and there was no question of having someone else take up the character”.

In 2022, he is called to the rescue by the daughter, Isabelle Franquin, to testify before the Belgian courts and try to prevent this publication. “Even if Franquin had said no 12 times and yes twice, that’s enough not to do it,” he believes. Meanwhile, Delaf refines his pages which look like the master’s jokes.

“When I got involved in this project, I had the impression that everything was very clear, that there was a contract signed by Franquin”

Delaf, author of the new “Gaston Lagaffe”

at franceinfo

“I want to try to make the best album possible and what I found the hardest was the fact that it took so long to get an answer”, continues the author. It took almost a year before an amicable agreement was reached last May. Isabelle Franquin obtains a right to review the result before publication. She will never use it and will not make the slightest comment.

The head of cultural programming at the Cité de la BD in Angoulême, Mathieu Charrier, finds this debate a little absurd today. “When we see the way in which American comics are taken up by a multitude of creators and sometimes for fantastic covers, I think of Batman for example or when we see that in Japan, mangas are written by a whole slew of what “We call the assistants who draw, we say to ourselves that this is still a very Franco-Belgian position. To think that someone is going to adopt your child when you die, that hurts your heart. But in the end , you also have to tell yourself that your child will continue to live. What seems very important to me is that you should not do anything with it.”he explains.

In this album, there is precisely a desire to remain as faithful as possible to the original work, even in the situations or themes addressed, notably the environment. For Fred Jannin, this is one more argument: “It is not a good idea, in my opinion, to do a kind of copy and paste which brings absolutely nothing new”.

“I’m sure that if Franquin saw this new album, it would make him sick”

Fred Jannin, friend of Franquin

at franceinfo

One of the strengths of the album is to smile at this controversy, we see in a gag a colleague of Gaston who tries to copy Franquin to repair a board damaged by the gaffer. “It was really to play down all that, recognizes Delaf. Then to say to ourselves ‘let’s stop taking all this seriously’. Obviously I’m not up to him so it was a way of having a little self-deprecation about all that.”.

The author comes out of all this a little rinsed: “I’m super grateful to have spent so much time with my favorite character. Let’s just say there’s been a lot of noise and I want it all to settle down.”. It is not certain that a sequel will be made. The publisher would probably not say no. This trial run is printed in 800,000 copies.