On the occasion of the centenary of the comic book publisher Dupuis, its boss Stéphane Beaujean recently announced Gaston's return: the Canadian cartoonist Delaf is already working on the 22nd album in the series, it will be released in October with a circulation of 1.2 million copies, the preprint in Spirou" - the Dupuis magazine in which Gaston appeared from 1957 - starts on April 6th.

The announcement of 'Le Retour de Lagaffe' (The Return of Lagaffe) caused quite a stir, as Gaston Lagaffe (

gaffe

means 'blunderer') is very popular in France and Belgium.

Figures show what that means: in 2021, 85 million comics were sold in France alone, which accounted for a good quarter of all book sales;

sales amounted to 889 million euros.

"Gaston" has hit thirty million albums to date.

The good-natured but clumsy eponymous hero works as an office boy in a publishing house (Dupuis' image).

Gaston only mobilizes energy for ingenious inventions: his ideas, including the brontosaurophone, a hellishly loud musical instrument, throw everyday office life and his colleagues into chaos.

André Franquin (1924 to 1997) first developed this endearing universe in half-page episodes, and from 1966 onwards in full-page episodes;

since 1968 he has devoted himself almost exclusively to it.

However, the last twenty years of Franquin's life were unproductive due to a depression.

What does the Creator's wish matter?

The Belgian illustrator was a great in comics.

He made Spirou and Fantasio what this series is;

the resulting Marsupilami is his creation.

The "Black Thoughts" are among the darkest and most intelligent that comics have to offer.

Hence the stir when there was talk of a new Gaston in the best seventies style.

All the more so since such sequels are tricky: While series like "Lucky Luke", "Corto Maltese", "Asterix" or "Spirou and Fantasio" have been taken up successfully and often challenging by new authors, other projects like "Tim and Struppi ' failed due to the heirs of the original creators.

Franquin's daughter Isabelle, informed of the sequel in December 2021, has also objected.

Her father declared in 1986: "If I get hit by a bus tomorrow, I really don't want Gaston to be caught again." Beaujean, on the other hand, told Télérama magazine: "Dupuis has all the publishing rights today, Franquin has them in the Assigned in the 1990s in a contract that seems very clear to us.

It is all the more clear that it contains clauses that were rare at the time because comic artists hardly thought ahead.

These clauses cede absolutely all rights to his characters, permitting revivals and sequels under the condition of copyright control – which his daughter exercises today.” Franquin had ceded the rights in 1993 to Marsu Productions, a publisher

Isabelle Franquin had already filed a lawsuit against "Gastoon", a comic spin-off about Gaston's nephew, in 2012;

an agreement was reached out of court at the time.

Their resistance was unsuccessful in the film "Gaston Lagaffe" (2018) by Pierre-François Martin-Laval.

Now she is suing Delaf for “plagiarism”;

the trial is scheduled for May, the pre-print stopped.

Fundamental questions arise: On the one hand, comics like “Gaston” are series, so they live off the sequel.

On the other hand, comics also have unique styles.

So does exclusive copyright make sense?

Always?

The responsible Brussels court will hardly be able to clarify the questions.