User:Murgh/Gaston charactersection
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[edit] Gaston Lagaffe
Gaston Lagaffe, le héros sans emploi (hero without a job) is employed at the Journal de Spirou office where he came wandering in one week, claiming to be the magazine's big hero; in a certain sense he is portrayed as a fictional employee of the very publication he appears in. From the beginning Gaston was lazy and an occasional blunderer, finding a way to set fire to the fire extinguishers, or flooding the office, for example. His gaffes gave him his surname, which he did not acquire until well after his first appearance. A recurring theme involves Gaston's gaffes preventing his boss from signing important contracts with a businessman named Monsieur De Mesmaeker. He spends the majority of his time trying to avoid work by hiding in a closet, or even by just simply sleeping on the job…
As time went on, the character evolved. Lazy as he was, Gaston became resourceful, and began inventing schemes and gadgets in order to make work that much easier. Usually however these ideas are farfetched and backfire, creating a mess and yet another catastrophe. When this happens, he often expresses his surprise, sadness or embarrassment by uttering his trademark phrase "M'enfin ?" (which can be translated as "What the heck?" or "Oh come on!" depending on the context).
Among other things he has invented a machine that ties neckties, an ultrasonic kettle, traffic lights for living room use, a pneumatic ashtray, a paper airplane folder, an all-in-one calling device for mosquitos and moles and chickens, and a rear-view mirror for pedestrians, just to name a few. A born tinkerer, it sometimes takes courage to continue driving his "Gaffomobile" jalopy, a 1928 Fiat 509 decorated with a “sporty” checkerboard pattern. Some inventions became running gags, such as his "wax that shines without making the floor slippery", which contrary to Gaston's research actually becomes more and more slippery with every iteration, to the point of becoming a perfect frictionless lubricant.
With music in his soul, he has created some rather fantastic musical instruments, the most important of which is the "gaffophone", whose undefinable sound destroys glass, crashes ceilings in and even brings jet fighters passing overhead into trouble. It is employed by clever members of Greenpeace to save whales from whalers by scaring them into fleeing the area. He also plays (awfully), among others, the guitar, the tuba, the trombone, and the car horn organ.
Being an accomplished chef as well, Gaston creates certain unique gastronomic dishes, such as strawberry or pineapple codfish and hot-air balloon crêpes (involving accidental use of paint). His coffee machine, which delivers one drop every ten minutes, produces a coffee that makes it impossible to drive or even sign a contract by means of a sheer caffeine overdose.
Finally, Gaston has a passion for ecology and adores his pets: a hyperactive cat, a depressed and depressive seagull, a goldfish, and several mice. But because his apartment is too small, he must keep all of his animals at the office. This becomes more problematic when he brings in a cow or a pig that he won in a contest, especially when the animal tries to eat Gaston’s colleagues’ important papers.
In a nutshell, Gaston is a big child and an awkward person with a big heart.
[edit] Fantasio
Fantasio is the main supporting character of the early series. Being Gaston's superior, we often see him as he tries to secure Monsieur De Mesmaeker's signature on the contract, always unsuccessfully due to Gaston’s interruptions. One perspective on this character is that in his adventures with Spirou, he symbolizes fantasy and invention, in contrast to Spirou's serious nature, but his character in Gaston stories is that of the straight man to Gaston's goofy antics, who thus becomes to Fantasio what Fantasio is to Spirou.
Appearances
- Gaston n°1
- Gaston n°2
- Gaston n°3
- Gaston n°4
- Gaston n°5
- Gaston n°6
- Gaston n°7
- Gaston n°8
- Gaston n°9
- Gaston n°18
- Gaston n°19
[edit] Spirou
Spirou puts in a few cameo appearances, usually in Fantasio's company. Both Fantasio and Spirou left the series when André Franquin ended his Spirou et Fantasio work, following the album Panade à Champignac.
[edit] Léon Prunelle
Léon Prunelle is Fantasio’s successor in the post of Gaston’s boss, and continues the futile attempts to sign contracts with De Mesmaeker. A short-tempered man, he has vowed to be "The Man Who Made Gaston Work", and in this capacity continually hunts Gaston down to prevent him from napping or taking a break, and to remind him that he must tend to the backlog of mail. He also tries to keep him from cooking, from tinkering, from inventing, and, obviously, from "gaffing". When he loses his temper his face often turns reddish purple and he utters his trademark outburst "Rogntudjuuu !" (a mangled version of "Nom de Dieu" ("Good God"), then not acceptable in a comic also read by children).
Appearances
- Gaston n°4
- Gaston n°5
- Gaston n°6
- Gaston n°7
- Gaston n°8
- Gaston n°9
- Gaston n°10
- Gaston n°11
- Gaston n°12
- Gaston n°13
- Gaston n°14
- Gaston n°15
- Gaston n°16
- Gaston n°17
- Gaston n°18
- Gaston n°19
[edit] Mademoiselle Jeanne
Mademoiselle Jeanne ("M'oiselle Jeanne" for Gaston) is one of Gaston’s colleagues, who is in love with Gaston, who is equally in love with her.
Jeanne holds deep admiration for Gaston. She admires his talent, his courage, his capacity to dare to try the craziest of things, etc. As for Gaston, he has gone so far as to borrow the fire department’s big ladder (courtesy of a friend) in order to pay her a visit when she was having a tiff with her mother. He does succeed in disappointing her from time to time. Once, she believed that he was carving a heart with their initials in the bark of a tree, but Gaston was in fact in the process of drawing a face.
She is often portrayed in a damsel in distress role in Gaston's daydreaming episodes, where he unfailingly appears as heroic until confronted with some symbolic foe (usually unprocessed mail!).
However their relationship is mostly platonic. They address each other with the formal vous, see each other mainly at the office, and only rarely go out together. (Franquin however memorably drew them being much more intimate on a not commercially available greeting card one year).
At first, she was drawn to appear very shy and "mousy", but progressively evolved into a more conventionally "pleasant to look at" female similar to the other young women at Dupuis.[1]
Appearances
- Gaston n°4
- Gaston n°5
- Gaston n°6
- Gaston n°7
- Gaston n°8
- Gaston n°9
- Gaston n°10
- Gaston n°11
- Gaston n°12
- Gaston n°13
- Gaston n°14
- Gaston n°15
- Gaston n°16
- Gaston n°17
- Gaston n°18
- Gaston n°19
[edit] Yves Lebrac
Yves Lebrac, an in-house cartoonist, is fairly laid-back. He has a tendency to lose work tools such as erasers, pencils, India ink, etc. and often Gaston or his cat have something to do with this. He frequently makes passes at the secretaries, without success, and is also fond of comical word games, which may annoy Prunelle.
Appearances
- Gaston n°4
- Gaston n°5
- Gaston n°6
- Gaston n°7
- Gaston n°8
- Gaston n°9
- Gaston n°10
- Gaston n°11
- Gaston n°12
- Gaston n°13
- Gaston n°14
- Gaston n°15
- Gaston n°16
- Gaston n°17
- Gaston n°18
- Gaston n°19
[edit] Joseph Boulier
Joseph Boulier, the surly head of accounting at the Éditions Dupuis offices, will not rest until he tracks down every useless expense for the publication, and in particular those of Gaston.
Appearances
- Gaston n°4
- Gaston n°5
- Gaston n°6
- Gaston n°7
- Gaston n°8
- Gaston n°9
- Gaston n°10
- Gaston n°11
- Gaston n°12
- Gaston n°13
- Gaston n°14
- Gaston n°15
- Gaston n°18
[edit] Jules-de-chez-Smith-en-face
Jules-de-chez-Smith-en-face (Jules-from-Smith’s-across-the-Street) is one of Gaston’s good friends and almost his alter ego. He "works" in the office just across from Gaston's, on the other side of the street. They attempt to communicate by talking into yogurt containers connected by a cord strung across the street between their windows. They even send each other remote-controlled airplanes, or try to string a rope above the street in the middle of the winter in order that icicles form on it. He is a blunderer, just like Gaston.
Appearances
- Gaston n°4
- Gaston n°5
- Gaston n°6
- Gaston n°8
- Gaston n°9
- Gaston n°10
- Gaston n°11
- Gaston n°12
- Gaston n°13
- Gaston n°14
- Gaston n°15
- Gaston n°16
- Gaston n°17
- Gaston n°18
- Gaston n°19
[edit] Bertrand Labévue
Bertrand Labévue is another one of Gaston’s friends and also Gaston’s cousin. As his name indicates, (la bévue is another synonym for "the blunder"), he is also a big blunderer. He often tries to help his friend when Gaston has some tough times at the office, for example trying to furnish him with can openers when Prunelle tried to ban cans of fruit cocktail and indispensable can openers.
Bertrand suffers from acute depression, mirroring Franquin's own problems with the illness, and Gaston's efforts to cheer him up backfire comically.
Appearances
- Gaston n°5
- Gaston n°8
- Gaston n°10
- Gaston n°11
- Gaston n°12
- Gaston n°13
- Gaston n°14
- Gaston n°16
- Gaston n°17
[edit] Manu
Manu accepts many different jobs: first, he is a chimney sweep, then he is a sewer worker, and sometimes he is responsible for the installation of street signage. He is always ready to help Gaston get on Agent Longtarin's nerves.
[edit] Joseph Longtarin
Joseph Longtarin is a policeman working in the neighborhood where the Spirou office is located. He is one of Gaston's favorite "victims" but also his nemesis. Gaston and his friends destroy his precious parking meters, by replacing them with candy dispensers, or by installing a remote control system in order that they no longer have "to feed the dreaded money-eating machine", or on the contrary, by equipping them with distress flares in order to notice when the meter shows a violation. In return, Longtarin gets on Gaston’s case: he examines his new vehicles meticulously to make sure they meet up with the standards of the law; he especially keeps watch on the parking meters at which Gaston is parked and puts his energy into writing Gaston tickets for as many infractions as possible. However, Longtarin is not heartless: when Gaston and his friends set out to grow a tree around one of the meters, a tree where birds had made their nest, Longtarin decided (under the pressure of Gaston and his friends) that anybody wishing to park in that space must pay their toll in food for the baby birds.
Appearances
- Gaston n°2
- Gaston n°3
- Gaston n°4
- Gaston n°5
- Gaston n°6
- Gaston n°7
- Gaston n°8
- Gaston n°9
- Gaston n°10
- Gaston n°11
- Gaston n°12
- Gaston n°13
- Gaston n°14
- Gaston n°15
- Gaston n°16
- Gaston n°17
- Gaston n°18
- Gaston n°19
[edit] Monsieur Aimé De Mesmaeker
Aimé De Mesmaeker, or Monsieur De Mesmaeker, is a rich business man: he owns a private jet (until Gaston destroys it!) and his daughter drives no less than an Alfa Romeo. He is always seen trying to sign an important contract with Fantasio or Prunelle. But without fail, Gaston always manages to mess up the signing of the contracts, for instance by using them to demonstrate his paper recycling machine, by setting off an anti-fire device, or generally by driving De Mesmaeker into such a fury that he tears up the contracts himself. However, De Mesmaeker sometimes appreciates what Gaston does, like when he offered a contract for the sale of Gaston's vegetable soup.
De Mesmaeker was the last name of Johan De Mesmaeker (known as Jidéhem from the French pronunciation of his initials J.D.M.), one of Franquin’s frequent collaborators, who remarked that the character looked like his own father. The real-life Mr De Mesmaeker Sr — actually a salesman — found it increasingly difficult to get contracts signed as Gaston's popularity grew…
Appearances
- Gaston n°2
- Gaston n°3
- Gaston n°4
- Gaston n°5
- Gaston n°6
- Gaston n°7
- Gaston n°8
- Gaston n°9
- Gaston n°10
- Gaston n°11
- Gaston n°12
- Gaston n°13
- Gaston n°14
- Gaston n°15
- Gaston n°16
- Gaston n°17
- Gaston n°18
- Gaston n°19
[edit] The Cat
Gaston's unusually weird cat was modeled after César, Franquin's daughter's cat.
Appearances
- Gaston n°11
- Gaston n°12
- Gaston n°13
- Gaston n°14
- Gaston n°15
- Gaston n°16
- Gaston n°17
- Gaston n°18
- Gaston n°19
[edit] The Seagull
Gaston's seagull, nicknamed "the laughing seagull", is actually quite a monstrous character, with the ability to depress those nearby. She is Gaston's partner in fighting ecological crime.
Appearances
- Gaston n°11
- Gaston n°12
- Gaston n°13
- Gaston n°14
- Gaston n°15
- Gaston n°16
- Gaston n°17
- Gaston n°18
- Gaston n°19
[edit] Other Spioru office co-workers
Monsieur Dupuis himself has made two appearances, though at both times we only see his legs.
Other office workers that appear are translator Bertje Van Schrijfboek, and secretaries, Sonia, Yvonne, Suzanne, and "the nameless secretary".
[edit] References
Footnotes
- ^ franquin.com. Personnages-Melle Jeanne.
[edit] External links
- Franquin site characters (French)
{{FrancoBelgian-comics-stub}} [[Category:Spirou et Fantasio albums|*]]
