The announcement, in March 2022, of the return of Gaston Lagaffe generated controversy during the 49e edition of the Angoulême Festival and on socio-digital networks. The daughter and beneficiary of André Franquin (1924-1997), Isabelle Franquin, intervened by specifying that her father had never wanted the character of Gaston to be repeated. The affair went so far that the launch with great fanfare of the album had to be postponed by several months, until the result of the arbitration between the publisher and Isabelle Franquin.
Finally, here it is in all bookstores, in supermarkets, pharmacies and almost everywhere in French-speaking public spaces, this Return of Lagaffe written and drawn by the Quebec cartoonist Marc Delafontaine, known as Delaf. The circulation is phenomenal: 800,000 copies, in a comic book market where the average circulation does not exceed a few thousand copies. As the album is purchased and offered, the controversy moves into homes and circles of friends, including those of the author of these lines. Was it necessary, should we have, could we even resurrect the Gaston Lagaffe series for commercial purposes?
The matter is more complex than it seems, as I will endeavor to show. Legal, economic, sociological, ethical and aesthetic questions are at work. The legal aspect is the one that has been commented on the most. Here’s what it’s about: André Franquin decided in 1992 to transfer by contract the rights to the character of Gaston Lagaffe, that is to say the exploitation rights (reissues, merchandisingetc.) and the right to produce sequels.
The practice was not new to Franquin: he had already done the same for Marsupilami in 1986 and for Modeste et Pompon in 1959. The conflict between the rights holder and the publisher concerned the interpretation of the contract signed in 1992 by the Franquin company. There were also interviews, prior to the sale of the rights, during which Franquin explained that he would prefer that the character of Gaston did not survive him, without frankly opposing it. The arbitration which settled the conflict, after examining the contract and the interviews, concluded that the takeover was legal according to Belgian law, which allows the exercise of moral rights to be adjusted.
Gaston is far from being the first Franco-Belgian comic book hero to have survived his creator(s): Asterix, Lucky Luke, Blake and Mortimer are still very present in our bookstores today. Only Tintin, over whose legacy Éditions Moulinsart jealously watches over, was not followed up as an album after Hergé’s death. In literature, it is also not uncommon to see characters taken up and developed by others: we have imagined the life of Emma Bovary’s daughter, the continuation of d’Artagnan’s adventures or even the return of Sherlock Holmes. Fiction often has no limits other than imagination and copyright.
It is therefore established that the publisher had the right to return Lagaffe. But does this justify having done it despite the will (even ambiguous) of the creator? Asking the question in these terms touches on the sociology of authors and artistic works. Indeed, two conceptions of creative work are opposed: on the one hand, that of the independent creator, of the artist dedicated to a work which is intimately linked to him; on the other hand, that of the passionate culture transmitter, of the geek coupled with an intellectual worker.
According to the first conception, the author must be left to his singularity, and the corpus of his works forms a closed whole, a canon to be respected: Delaf and Dupuis editions should therefore have abstained. According to the second, the characters and works survive their creator thanks to readers and fan communities, each successful tribute keeping interest in the original work alive.
The choice by the publisher of Gaston Lagaffe of the designer Delaf, already author with Maryse Dubuc of the successful series Les Nombrils, but not from the Franco-Belgian inner circle since he is from Quebec, is emblematic of the desire to play instead on the second conception. Delaf presents himself as a fan from the start determined to honor the memory of Franquin and Gaston: “I, who grew up with the values of the character, I sought, with the greatest possible respect, to bring together at the same time a drawing, a gallery of characters, a vision of the world and a critique of society, which form the identity of this work,” he told the newspaper Point.
In the very pages of Return of Lagaffe, Delaf slipped in numerous references to Editions Dupuis (publisher of all the albums and main location of the action), to Franquin and to other fictional characters, such as Spirou and Spider-Man. We even recognize a self-portrait of Delaf as Lebrac, the designer reproducing a Franquin page damaged by Gaston’s seagull and sighing: “Well, I did what I could, but Pffou! What a genius, this Franquin! » (p. 38).
It is still necessary to determine with what aesthetic identity and with what narrative intentions the cover is made. Lucky Luke, to take just one example, has already been used in all kinds of graphic styles. In the contract signed in 1992, Franquin clearly specified that Dupuis editions would have to submit Gaston’s sequel projects to him for approval. Moreover, for all the covers of characters he created, Franquin wanted this to be done in the continuity of his own graphic style. It is a safe bet that if Delaf’s drawing had moved further from that of Franquin, symmetrical criticisms would have been formulated. Too close or too far, we touch the sacred.
There remains the issue of what Gaston represents, socially and politically. Should we bring Gaston Lagaffe “up to date”, he who represents the counterculture of an era (the 1960s-1980s), he who embodies a way of being, of loving and (not) work, a refractory and ingenious attitude towards the wishes of bosses which has inspired philosophers, sociologists and artists?
Gaston is basically resourcefulness, sharing space with animals, the right to be lazy, tidying up through disorder, the fight against pollution, explosive inventions, resistance against surveillance. With Prunelle, Boulier, de Mesmaeker and others Benoît Labévue, Gaston has nourished an imagination of office life and weekends in the countryside with which everyone can identify because he brings out the marvelous in everyday life.
In any case, the unemployed hero is back in action. Everyone is free to devote money and attention to it or not. The son of the author of these lines, aged 9, threw himself into the new album, read most of the pages, sometimes laughed, often smiled, then closed it and opened instead an old Gaston.