{"id":30492,"date":"2024-09-13T08:00:33","date_gmt":"2024-09-13T08:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/?p=30492"},"modified":"2024-09-11T13:41:21","modified_gmt":"2024-09-11T13:41:21","slug":"gomer-goof-volume-10-gomers-goons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/2024\/09\/13\/gomer-goof-volume-10-gomers-goons\/","title":{"rendered":"Gomer Goof volume 10: Gomers Goons"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"
\nBy Franquin<\/strong>, translated byJerome Saincantin<\/strong> (Cinebook)
\nISBN: 978-1-80044-092-0 (PB Album\/Digital edition)<\/p>\n

This book includes <\/em>Discriminatory Content<\/em><\/strong> produced in less enlightened times.<\/em><\/p>\n

Andr\u00e9 Franquin was born in Etterbeek, Belgium on January 3rd<\/sup> 1924 and began his astonishing comics career in a golden age of European cartooning. Beginning as assistant to Joseph \u201cJij\u00e9\u201d Gillain on the strip Spirou<\/em><\/strong>, he inherited sole control of the keynote feature in 1946, and went on to create countless unforgettable new characters like Fantasio<\/strong> and The Marsupilami<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Franquin – with Jij\u00e9, Morris (Lucky Luke<\/strong>) and Willy \u201cWill\u201d (Tif et Tondu<\/em><\/strong>) Maltaite – was co-founder of creative powerhouse La bande des quatre<\/em>: \u201cthe Gang of Four\u201d who reshaped and revolutionised Belgian comics and all European cartooning with their prolific and engaging \u201cMarcinelle school\u201d graphic style.<\/p>\n

Over two decades Franquin made the strip purely his, expanding Spirou & Fantasio<\/strong>\u2019s scope and horizons, as they became globetrotting journalists who visited exotic places, exposed crimes, explored the incredible and clashed with bizarre, exotic arch-enemies. Throughout, Fantasio remained a full-fledged – albeit entirely fictional – reporter for Le Journal de<\/em><\/strong> Spirou<\/em><\/strong>, popping back to base between assignments. Sadly, ensconced there was an arrogant, accident-prone office junior tasked with minor jobs and general dogs-bodying. This was Gaston Lagaffe<\/em><\/strong> – Franquin\u2019s second immortal invention\u2026<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a long tradition of comics personalising fictitiously back-office creatives and the arcane processes they indulge in, whether it\u2019s Marvel\u2019s Bullpen or DC Thomson\u2019s lugubrious Editor and underlings at The<\/strong> Beano <\/strong>and Dandy<\/strong> – it\u2019s a truly international practise. Somehow though after debuting in Le Journal de<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0Spirou<\/em><\/strong> #985 (February 28th<\/sup> 1957), the affable dimwit grew beyond control to become one of the most popular and ubiquitous components of the comic, whether as a guest in Spirou\u2019s adventures or his own comedy strips and\/or faux reports on the editorial pages he was supposed to paste up. Initial cameos in Spirou yarns or occasional asides on text pages featured well-meaning foul-up and ostensible gofer Gaston lurking and lounging amidst a crowd of diligent toilers: a workshy slacker employed as a general assistant at Le Journal de<\/em><\/strong> Spirou<\/em><\/strong>\u2019s head office. The scruffy bit-player eventually and inevitably shambled into his own star feature\u2026<\/p>\n

In terms of schtick and delivery, older readers will recognise favourite beats and elements of well-intentioned helpfulness wedded to irrepressible self-delusion as seen in Benny Hill<\/strong> or Jacques Tati<\/strong> vehicles and recognise recurring riffs from Some Mothers Do Have \u2019Em <\/strong>and Mr Bean<\/strong>. It\u2019s all blunt-force slapstick, paralysing puns, fantastic ingenuity and inspired invention, compiled to mug smugness, puncture pomposity, lampoon the status quoi?<\/em> (that there\u2019s some British punning, see?) and ensure no good deed goes noticed, rewarded or unpunished\u2026<\/p>\n

As previously stated, Gaston\/Gomer obtains a regular salary – let\u2019s not dignify what he does as \u201cearning\u201d a living – from Spirou<\/em><\/strong>\u2019s editorial offices: initially reporting to top journalist Fantasio, and latterly complicating the lives of office manager L\u00e9on Prunelle<\/em> and the other staffers, all whilst effectively ignoring any tasks he\u2019s paid to actually handle. These include page paste-up, posting packages, filing, clean-up, collecting stuff inbound from off-site and editing readers\u2019 letters (the real reason fans requests and suggestions are never acknowledged or answered)\u2026
\n\"\"
\nGomer is lazy, hyperkinetic, over-opinionated, ever-ravenous, impetuous, underfed, forgetful and eternally hungry: a passionate sports fan and animal lover with his most manic moments all stemming from cutting work corners, stashing or consuming contraband nosh in the office or inventing the Next Big Thing. It leads to constant clashes with colleagues and draws in notionally unaffiliated bystanders like traffic cop Longsnoot<\/em> and fireman Captain Morwater<\/em>, as well as ordinary passers-by who should know by now to keep away from this street.<\/p>\n

Through it all the office oaf remains affable, easy-going and incorrigible. Only three questions really matter: why everyone keeps giving him one last chance, what does gentle, lovelorn Miss Jeanne<\/em> see in the self-opinionated idiot and will perpetually-outraged capitalist financier De Mesmaeker <\/em>ever get his perennial, pestiferous contracts signed?<\/p>\n

In 1974 Gaston – Le gang des gaffeurs<\/em><\/strong> was the 12th<\/sup> collected album and in 2023 became Cinebook\u2019s 10th<\/sup> translated compilation, offering single page bursts and some half-page sight gags: non-stop all-Franquin comics jabs and japes, with a few ideas and contributions from colleagues Joop, Degotte and Yvan (The Smurfs<\/strong>, Steve Severin<\/strong>, Id\u00e9es noires<\/em><\/strong>) Delporte.<\/p>\n

The assistants were necessary as Franquin\u2019s mental health was increasingly being affected by stress. After this album the frequency of Gaston collections reduced by 50%…<\/p>\n

Here an increased spotlight falls upon distressed in-house staff artist Yves<\/em> (occasionally called Yvon<\/em>) Lebrac<\/em> who often acted as unwilling, inadvertent beta tester for our well-meaning, overly-helpful, know-it-all office hindrance. This tome is packed with innovations that make Lebrac\u2019s life increasingly annoying and unnecessarily hazardous, such as super-amped central heating so workers can make toast on radiators, a retractable, ceiling-mounted eraser, assorted games, further experiments with (light-repelling) aerosol air-fresheners and paste-up adhesives that just should not be allowed under the Geneva Convention…<\/p>\n

Crucially, Gomer\u2019s pets regard Lebrac\u2019s desk and drawing board as their playground but are always ready to have him join in their games…<\/p>\n

Whilst concentrating on avoiding his job, The Goof always seeks to improve life for his animal pals. The adopted feral cat and black-headed gull still accompany illicit studio companions Cheese<\/em> the mouse in many destructive romps but it\u2019s studio goldfish Bubelle<\/em> who really benefits this time as Gomer installs several solutions to improve mobility and grant the water-dweller FULL access to the building…<\/p>\n

When not pursuing illicit culinary dreams – like lighter-than-air pancakes made on a desktop cr\u00eape fryer – Gomer is quick to solve pressing problems such as a cat very stridently trapped in a bass tuba, but even that paralysing din is as nothing to the near-lethal advent of ultrasonic violin tuning, A.I. cup-&-ball machine, casual\/office-wear robot suits, self-emptying pedal bins, recycling Soviet components for airplane models, the most wonderful couch on Earth, Inter-Office ski-lift systems and accidentally perfecting the most volatile motion-sensitive explosive ever to grace an art kit…<\/p>\n

The installation of roller towels in the toilets sparks a wave of (dangerous) inspiration and innovation and when Gomer\u2019s like-minded chum, opposite number and born accomplice Jules-from-Smith\u2019s-across-the-street<\/em> joins him in moonlighting as advertising prop makers, the resulting giant shoe fiasco sets the entire city panicking. Ever-eager to slope off for a chat, Jules is also a confirmed devotee of Gomer\u2019s sporting methods for passing the time at work and complicit in seducing the office redecorators: turning hard-working diligent toilers to their laggardly ways, and introducing them to the joys of adventure cooking, citizen chemistry and colossally big bangs…
\n\"\"
\nSemi-regular burglar Freddy<\/em> falls foul of Gomer\u2019s lethal filing system – something Prunelle also suffers from often – but both are mercifully absent when the inventor\u2019s inquiries into aural animal attractant whistles (affecting owls, mosquitos, moles, and a certain (uniformed) species of \u201cPig\u201d) make an extended camping trip to \u201cGus\u2019s farm\u201d a weird nightmare…<\/p>\n

Also on view are more skirmishes in the ongoing car-parking war with Longsnoot and a succession of sporting gags including a clash with a karate master, snow paddleball and swamp football, but in the end even our recumbent genius has no cure for peasouper fog – although his quick work-around does get the city moving… in the wrong direction…<\/p>\n

Far better enjoyed than pr\u00e9cised or described, these strips allowed Franquin and his occasional co-scenarists to flex whimsical muscles, subversively sneak in satirical support for their beliefs in pacifism, environmentalism and animal rights and sometimes even appear in person\u2026
\n\"\"
\nThese are sublime examples of all-ages comedy: wholesome, barbed, daft and incrementally funnier with every re-reading. Why haven\u2019t you got your Goof on yet?
\n\u00a9 Dupuis, Dargaud-Lombard s.a. 2009 by Franquin. All rights reserved. English translation \u00a9 2023 Cinebook Ltd.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Franquin, translated byJerome Saincantin (Cinebook) ISBN: 978-1-80044-092-0 (PB Album\/Digital edition) This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times. Andr\u00e9 Franquin was born in Etterbeek, Belgium on January 3rd 1924 and began his astonishing comics career in a golden age of European cartooning. Beginning as assistant to Joseph \u201cJij\u00e9\u201d Gillain on the strip … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Gomer Goof volume 10: Gomers Goons”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[357,280,113,255,63,102,346,125,328,111,107,210],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-andre-franquin","category-animal-antics","category-comedy","category-environmentalism","category-european-classics","category-fantasy","category-gomer-goof","category-humour","category-music","category-satirepolitics","category-science-fiction","category-sport"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4AFj-7VO","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30492"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30492\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30497,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30492\/revisions\/30497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}