History Comicbook / GastonLagaffe

But the point is that [[TheSlacker he never gets any work done]], instead preferring to spend his work days cobbling together mad contraptions, playing music on {{Bizarre Instrument}}s, keeping a range of animals and plants, conducting [[ExplosiveResults chemical experiments that usually end with the explosion of his makeshift lab]] or simply sleeping. This frequently leads to him butting heads with his neurotic boss Fantasio [[note]] originally a main character in the aforementioned ''Spirou And Fantasio''[[/note]], who is charged with the impossible task of getting Gaston to work. Later in the comic's run, Fantasio's role was taken over by the equally hot-tempered Léon Prunelle. Gaston has a presumably platonic but reciprocated relationship with fellow Dupuis employee Mademoiselle "'Moiselle" Jeanne.

* AbnormalAllergy: Gaston is such a slacker he's allergic to effort, that is, sneezing violently whenever anyone uses the word "effort" near him.

* SuperficialSuggestionBox: [[http://horsdutemps.centerblog.net/2101-gaston-lagaffe One strip]] has a coworker put an idea in the suggestion box, followed by Gaston revealing it hides a garbage chute and dumping the contents of his wastebasket in it. [[GeniusDitz This being Gaston]], it's ambiguous who put the fake box over the chute and why: Did Gaston think it was a good idea to hide the garbage chute with a fake box, or did he simply find out something management had done and not bother to tell his coworkers?

* SuperficialSuggestionBox: [[http://horsdutemps.centerblog.net/2101-gaston-lagaffe One strip]] has a coworker put an idea in the suggestion box, followed by Gaston dumping the contents of his wastebasket in it, revealing the "suggestion box" is in fact a drop chute linked directly to the waste bins. It's unclear if Gaston is at the origin of the set-up, but it's likely.

* SuperficialSuggestionBox: [[http://horsdutemps.centerblog.net/2101-gaston-lagaffe One strip]] has a coworker put an idea in the suggestion box, followed by Gaston dumping the contents of his wastebasket in it. [[GeniusDitz This being Gaston]], it's entirely possible it wasn't a spiteful gesture but his never figuring out what the box was for.

** His [[BizarreInstrument Gaffophone]] has this result as well, making animals manically depressed and [[UpToEleven driving plants to suicide.]]

** Gaston's project of "wax that shines without slipping", progressively ''more'' slippery in each iteration until [[UpToEleven he creates a perfect zero friction material.]]

* YankTheDogsChain: Fantasio, Prunelle, and De Mesmaeker many times.

* ActuallyPrettyFunny: Prunelle broke down in hysteric laughter, when Gaston demonstrated an air freshener, which ''ate De Mesmaeker's suit'' so he was suddenly standing in his underwear.

* AlasPoorYorick: Referenced as a joke in a strip that start with Gaston holding a coconut in his hand while looking confused. When Fantasio sees him, he can't help but quote Hamlet's "To be, or not to be". Gaston doesn't get the joke, and when Fantasio tells Gaston that he reminded him of "some Hamlet guy", Gaston assumes that Hamlet is a random person he never met, but that Fantasio personally knows.
* TheAllegedCar: Gaston's car is an old jalopy [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_509 Fiat 509]] that barely holds together and can be outraced by pedestrians. It also emits more thick black smoke than a coal-fueled locomotive and on one occasion loses enough oil that someone can waterski while being pulled by it. On one occasion, Gaston's homemade fuel additive turned that smoke ''blue'' and occasional engine backfires left behind something that looked like the result of the explosion of a water balloon filled with blue paint. It also breaks down so often that once Gaston returned from a holiday with only his legs showing a tan. He also sometimes complains about having to find a part, which are apparently hard to come by. Lebrac once quipped, "You don't find any parts in the junkyards, and the antiquarians charge too much."

** Gaston once retuned a violin to the point that playing it ''paralyzes'' the listeners out.

** When Gaston's cat fell into a tuba and clawed the metal instrument while trying to climb out, the resulting sound is like fingernails on a blackboard turned up to eleven, driving everyone in the office nuts.

* TheCameo: Raoul Cauvin, a real life artist, appears in some strips.

* KlatchianCoffee: Gaston's homemade coffee. It is so strong that Prunelle claims smelling it is enough to give him a sleepless night and one tiny cup got Gaston so jittery that he was pulled over for drunk driving.

* LatexPerfection: Or Latex Perfection Dolls... Gaston owns a life-sized rubber doll of himself that gets repeatedly mistaken for him, or vice versa. In the most extreme cases, Fantasio once almost throws the real Gaston out of the window, mistaking him for the puppet, and another time gets arrested for murder in the act of disposing it, and it takes the coroner hours to notice that something is amiss.

** Both Fantasio and Prunelle have done this to Gaston on occasion. Prunelle once kicked Gaston so hard that he crashed head first into the ceiling with enough force to send the contents of a paper bin on the upper floor flying.

* MacrossMissileMassacre: Gaston once accidentlaly turned a chimney into a surface to air missile silo by using what was implied to be explosives to clean it, ripping a fighter jet that was passing above to shreds.

* TheMaze: Whose bright idea was it to put Gaston in charge of the library anyway? Two months later, the place is in such a mess than Fantasio needed ''spelunking equipment'', complete with food and radio, to go fetch a book. In a later story, Gaston has turned it into a literal maze for his coworkers to enjoy (they do, until Prunelle comes along).

* {{Misblamed}}: Nearly every time Gaston's gaffes involve authority figures such as policemen (except when it's Longtarin), firefighters or Mr Dupuis, or very strong men it's others such as Fantasio, Prunelle, De Mesmaeker or Longtarin who will take the blame and sometimes even be assaulted for it.
* TheMovie: There was a live-action film based on the comic, called ''Fais gaffe à la gaffe !'' It was an utter failure. A new live-action film adaptation, simply titled ''Gaston Lagaffe'', was released in early 2018. [[HistoryRepeats It was also a failure]].

** De Mesmaeker once trolled Fantasio with a latex imitation of himself, Fantasio didn't realise it so he spent the entire day trying to get the attention of the fake De Mesmaeker. De Mesmaeker is also sometime interested in Gaston's inventions and found his astronaut clock funny and made a contract with Gaston to mass product them. In another story, Gaston gives De Mesmaaker some soup he just cooked, and De Mesmaeker likes it so much he decides to get rid of the contracts he was supposed to sign... to make a contract with ''Gaston'' concerning the soup recipe!

* PlankGag: Used in a few gags.

** Yet another returning gag was the office being burglarized by Freddy "Fingers". It is always Gaston's antics that get him caught, and he is usually found in such a dismal state the next morning (stuck in a giant cactus, buried under an avalanche of books, etc.) that the other characters take pity on him and send him home with some cartoons for his kids instead of handing him to the police.

* ShortDistancePhoneCall: Entering Gaston's office, Fantasio takes what he thinks is a call from the Ducran & Lapoigne [[note]]Guts and Strongarm[[/note]], managers of the bridge building company in the next building. In fact, the phone is out of order, and he doesn't realize they're actually talking to him through a gaping hole in the wall.

'''Lapoigne:''' ''thoroughly'' obeyed...

* SitcomArchNemesis: Longtarin, the police officer constantly on the lookout for Gaston's trafic law infringements. There are quite a few instances where Gaston [[{{Troll}} actively trolls the poor man.]]

** One strip has Gaston getting angry at Fantasio for saying his car is slower than a turtle with the flu. Gaston then stop and tell Fantasio to continue on foot with Fantasio telling him he didn't need to stop for him to get out of the car. Then it's shown that Fantasio goes faster than Gaston's car by ''walking''.

** On one occasion, Gaston stepped on one to put away a model aircraft's engine, and turned it on by mistake. He turned the chair into a propeller-driven vehicle.
** He and Jules-de-chez-Smith-en-face held a ChariotRace in swivel chairs once.
** He once tried to take revenge on Fantasio by tying a firecracker to his chair, causing it to spin wildly. The plan worked, as Fantasio is left so dizzy that he can barely walk.

* TakeThat: In one comic, Gaston is building a model of a [=WWII-era=] bomber (at his desk, during his worktime, of course), and he has a thought bubble saying "those with swastika markings are said to be very popular... for morons".

* TestYourStrengthGame: In one comic, Gaston finds a boxer-shaped machine at a junkyard and takes it home. Predictably, it gets away from him wheeling down a slope and rams Demasmaeker's new car. The last panel has a cop writing a ticket for Demasmaeker (the punch machine had right-of-way), while Gaston notes that the needle reads "Champion".

* ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill: The firemen uses this approach the moment they get a call about suspicious smoke or smell going on in the office. This backfires when Gaston was working on a new soap and they end up turning the whole place in a bubble bath by accident.

* HollywoodChameleons: There is one gag in which Gaston puts color-painted sheets behind a chameleon to force it change its skin color, which works (to said chameleon's annoyance).

* KlatchianCoffee: Gaston's homemade coffee. One tiny cup got him so jittery that he was pulled over for drunk driving.

* RequiredSpinoffCrossover: Spirou and Fantasio have made recurring appearances in the series, while Gaston has had cameos in a couple of ''ComicBook/SpirouAndFantasio'' adventures. Understandable, as he works in the same place they do -- Franquin did decide to make Spirou and Fantasio less present in the journal before handing the characters off to Fournier. Gaston is referred to later on, by Tome and Janry notably. He appears in a flashback from Fantasio in ''Le Groom du Sniper Alley'', and Spip compares one of Fantasio's failed inventions to Gaston's in ''La Mort de Spirou''.
** De Mesmaeker also appears in ''La Colère du Marsupilami'', negotiating some contracts with Fantasio. [[RunningGag It doesn't go well]].
** Lebrac and Jeanne show up at the start of ''La Mort de Spirou''.

* RequiredSpinoffCrossover: Spirou and Fantasio have made recurring appearances in the series, while Gaston has had cameos in a couple of ''ComicBook/SpirouAndFantasio'' adventures. Understandable, as he works in the same place they do -- Franquin did decide to make Spirou and Fantasio less present in the journal before handing the characters off to Fournier. Gaston is referred to later on, by Tome and Janry notably.

* BunnyEarsLawyer: Gaston considers himself this, but those rare inventions that would benefit his company have a 100% backfire rate, as opposed to the 95% backfire rate of his other inventions. And the backfire is often quite literal, and in the office building, so... Later albums show he is very skilled at computer programming (think engineer level) despite being in his late teens and without any educational background. Of course, seeing him writing Fortran or BASIC would be quite unfunny, so...

[[caption-width-right:300:An iconic man with an iconic cat.]]
''Gaston Lagaffe'' is arguably one of the best-known and most well-liked characters of the Franco-Belgian comics school. The character first appeared in ''Magazine/{{Spirou}}'' #985 (February 28, 1957). The creation of Creator/AndreFranquin, who wanted to come up with an AntiHero after working for years on the series ''ComicBook/SpirouAndFantasio'', Gaston Lagaffe is an office drone and errand boy employed by a fictional version of the Dupuis publishing company.

* NotSoDifferent: As part of a meta joke by Franquin, Gaston is a lot like Fantasio's original characterization by Jijé, if slightly more grounded and better fashion. A bonus album lampshaded it.

* BreakoutCharacter: Gaston Lagaffe started out as a recurring minor character for space-filling gags in ''Spirou'' before acquiring his own proper series.
* BrilliantButLazy: Gaston, of course, although too inept to be a perfect example of the trope. On one occasion however, when warned that Mr Boulier was going to check on his work, he proved to be so efficient at his work that Boulier ended up wanting to test him for doping.

* BunglingInventor: Gaston spends his time engineering gizmos and gewgaws that often are too impractical to work out and generally do more damage than the office can do with.

** In the original French, Gaston's catch phrase is ''"M'enfin ?"''; it's a contracted form of ''Mais enfin ?'' (loosely, "What the heck?" or "Huh?" -- the English version translates it as "Wha-huh?"). He says it whenever things don't go as planned, which is quite often due to his lack of foresight.

** Lebrac's is ''"Et si on danse ?"'' (''What if there's dancing?'') every time Gaston shows one of his AwesomeButImpractical disguises around the office.

** In Swedish, "M'enfin" is normally translated as "Jösses" (which really is a mild Swedish oath based on a distortion of the name of UsefulNotes/{{Jesus}}). But as for Prunelle, the Swedish translation retains the original "rogntudju", presumably because it sounds funny, or possibly because no-one considered that it's supposed to mean anything.
** In the Dutch translation, it's "Grretvrrrdrie!", which is a highly mangled form of "Godverdomme!", a Dutch curse equivalent to "Goddammit!", and "M'enfin ?" became "Nou Moe?" (very untranslatable). "Les signerais jamais !", however, was translated literally.
** In the Danish translation, "M'enfin" is "Hva'ba'?" which is an abbreviated version of "hvad behager?" (loosely translated "what?")

* CharacterizationMarchesOn:
** In the older gags, Gaston is a total moron instead of being just clueless and lacking energy. Later, he is still lazy but can be energetic when he does things he enjoys, like cooking or inventing.
** Prunelle, in his earliest appearances, is a pretty calm and jovial guy, as a direct contrast to the temperamental Fantasio. After Fantasio is PutOnABus and Prunelle steps in as his substitute, he quickly becomes a lot more hotheaded, and it doesn't take long before his temper is more explosive than Fantasio's has ever been.
** Bertrand Labévue is at first just another Gaston that flops around, hence the last name. Afterward he became TheEeyore.

* DubNameChange: The English version of Gaston Lagaffe has been renamed "'''Gomer Goof'''".

* FriendToAllLivingThings: Gaston can get just about any animal to like him and do tricks (he arm-wrestles with an elephant). The only exception is an owl who [[TheSleepless kept him up all night hooting; he retaliated by playing guitar all day]].

* LethalChef:
** While flambeeing crepes suzette, he set fire to his orange liquor bottle that shot like a rocket and exploded only a few meters away from the French president's limousine (Gaston had used a presidential parade as distraction to circumvent a "no cooking in the office" order).
** He also thinks nothing of cooking and performing chemical experiments at the same time, often on the same table. This (and an explosion) makes Lebrac claim that Gaston invented the "horror kitchen".

** De Mesmaeker will typically say one relating to the way [[EpicFail the contract-signing (or the contracts themselves) is ruined]]. Fantasio and Prunelle also frequently react like this to Gaston's antics. For examples, fter Gaston launched a dart that flew out the window and caught the freshly signed contracts before sticking them to a truck marked "International transport", which was departing for Copenhagen:

** One gag had Fantasio giving Gaston instructions on the phone, but constant cracle on the phone meant he had to go there personally, complaining about the crackle... Only to find out that Gaston had been frying a meal while on the phone. "Friture" (frying, as in frying food with frying oil) being a slang term for the crackle from bad phone reception.

* LovesMeNot: There's a strip where Gaston offers a cactus to Jeanne and finds out the next day that it lost its needles. Gaston then offers her a second cactus, which also loses its needles, prompting a confused Gaston to give her a third cactus. The last panel reveals that Jeanne plays "Loves me, loves me not" by plucking her cactuses' needles.

** De Mesmaeker will typically say one relating to the way [[EpicFail the contract-signing (or the contracts themselves) is ruined]]. Fantasio and Prunelle also frequently react like this to Gaston's antics.
** After Gaston launched a dart that flew out the window and caught the freshly signed contracts before sticking them to a truck marked "International transport", which was departing for Copenhagen:

* EverythingIsAnInstrument: In a [[http://spiroureporter.net/2013/05/05/scanlation-sunday-gaston/ tribute comic by Yoann & Vehlmann,]] Gaston ''turns the entire Dupuis office building into an instrument'' by cutting a hole in every floor and tying a string from the ground floor to the roof. When Spirou pulls the string of this "Dupuiphone", the building promptly collapses.

** An early one involved Gaston making costumes and people commenting on their (usually lack of) suitability for dancing.

** Gaston's costumes whenever he goes to a party are very well-made, but come with quite the caveat. Examples include a knight's armor that clanked so loudly someone thought the kitchen's cabinets fell apart when Gaston passed in front of his house, a robot costume that can barely move (and realistic enough to make De Mesmaeker faint) or a Marsupilami costume with a whole garden hose as the tail (Longtarin gets tangled inside and dragged behind Gaston's car).

* TakeThat: In one comic, Gaston is building a model of a [=WWII-era=] bomber (at his desk, during his worktime, of course), and he has a though balloon saying "those with swastika markings are said to be very popular... for morons".