Guust Flater is the ultimate antihero. The comic character created by cartoonist André Franquin works at the offices of the comic magazine Spirou, but without contributing anything to production. Sorting mail seems to be his job, but the letters pile up while he either sleeps or messes everything up with inimitable actions.
He doesn’t work, but he does enough. Guust is a dreamer, anarchist, animal protector, inventor. But what he undertakes ends in chaos, misunderstandings and torment for his colleagues: explosions, injuries, smoke, water and fire. The fact that he is allowed to continue coming to the office is a mystery that is not questioned in this comic, a paean to idleness.
The French-speaking Belgian André Franquin (1924-1997) created the lanky Guust Flater (originally, in French, Gaston Lagaffe) in 1957 as a separate illustration for the comic magazine Spirou. Gradually it became Guust a strip of two strips and later of one page. Franquin continued to draw him, in his clear, swinging style, until 1996.
Guust became his most popular creation, with more than 30 million albums sold worldwide in almost thirty languages. In his overview work 100 Comic Book Classics journalist Geert De Weyer recalls that the sales department of the publishing house initially resisted publication of one Guustalbum: “No one is interested in such an antihero.”
André Franquin © Dupuis
Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, the publisher still sees value in it more than 25 years after Franquin’s death. Guust makes a triumphant return in the recreation of the series, after decades of absence, by a new artist, the Canadian Delaf. Continuing a comic series in the same style is a well-known and accepted phenomenon in the comics world, in which the uniqueness of drawing is not a priority. Many great comic book heroes, including Asterix, Suske and Wiske and Blake and Mortimerused to go Guust for. Only after resistance from Franquin’s daughter, who proclaimed that Franquin never wanted Guust to have a new father. But Franquin had sold his rights and the publisher presented the new album on November 22 Flatter strikes again.
What makes Franquin’s Guust so popular? Many apparently harbor an aversion to Guust’s works and, in the depths of their thoughts, only want to play and sleep. The highlight of the work-shy genre is the episode in which his colleagues only see Guust coming in and leaving for a week. Where is he anyway? In the archive. There they discover a mountain of books. A carelessly propped up, long tunnel leads them to a cavity in the mountain, a book cave, where Guust is sleeping peacefully on a bed. A beautiful image.
Accidentally
The fun of this classic comic strip lies in the grotesque slapstick and the absurd disasters that Guust causes. Accidental, of course, but all that unintentional cruelty and destruction is often funny. The sporadic revenge of his colleagues, albeit deliberate, is no less so.
The best parts of Franquin are the episodes in which nothing is broken and the menacing final image is especially striking. When Guust rushes to the cycling race, his car with racing bikes on the roof inevitably flies upside down. But then this monster just continues down the hill: four bicycles with a car on their backs. Cartoonist Krasser performs a similar choreography when he tastes Guust’s hot red pepper sauce. He takes off his clothes and, screaming in pain, runs up the wall and across the ceiling, ending up upside down with his head in the sink: the perfect position to squirt water into his mouth.
Guust is a man of progress, like all inventors. He knows how to come up with an unorthodox solution for every everyday task or problem. But his inexhaustible inventiveness invariably leads to flops and explosions. Unforgettable is the box on his head with arms with suction cups on the cheek to prevent you from biting the cheek when chewing. He comes up with, among other things, a self-folding bicycle, a swing with elastic ropes and a fan with an aircraft engine.
What he comes up with goes wrong in many ways. The rocket on his back that he wants to fly works on a flame that burns his buttocks. With the method of sweeping the chimney in one go, with a gunpowder mixture, the pieces of chimney become projectiles that blow a military aircraft to pieces.
Despite everything that goes wrong, Guust himself remains unperturbed. Colleagues scream and turn red, but when Guust notices what he is causing, he only responds with a ‘Well, tired!!’ or a ‘phew’.
Animal love
Part of his detached art of living is his unconditional bond with animals. In his office he keeps, among other things, a seagull, a cat and a mouse. Commotion guaranteed. If the seagull is in a bad mood, the staff puts on a helmet, because then it pecks on your head. On several occasions, Guust endearingly demonstrates his belief that animals deserve their place. When a fisherman takes a seat next to Guust with a fishing rod, the man starts an angry argument that it will certainly become one of those jokes in which the amateur lands a big fish, while fishing requires professionalism. When the man has finished, Guust picks up his fishing rod and says dryly to his friend Miss Janni: “I think our bottle of wine is cool now.” In another strip he amazes a hunter with his rifle. That puts roots in the rabbits. The rabbits need the energy during the hunting season, he explains. Guust is not a particularly committed comic, but for those who want it there is plenty to read about their love for animals.
Guust’s infinite ingenuity lives by the grace of the creative, playful and childlike spirit of his creator. In his almost thousand episodes of blunders, Franquin creates a world in which there is no room for adult realism. In particular, he takes pleasure in exploiting a discovery to no end. A gag is often one with Franquin running gag. Like Guust with a cactus, with his latex version of himself or with his homemade musical instrument, the brontosaurophone, a kind of oversized harp, baptized ‘goofy’ by colleagues. The thing causes tremors that shake the plaster off the walls, collapse floors, and once even make the army think it’s about to attack.
André Franquin © Dupuis.
These jokes grow over time, as colleagues sing in advance of their despair: not again! Franquin is also intemperate in the farcical clashes between Guust and agent Vondelaar and businessman Demesmaeker. The power is in the repetition.
New Guust
The new Flatter strikes again is a recognizable one Guust: Delaf copied all the ingredients. Regular characters return, just like the seagull and the cat with their antics. The design of the editorial office and the clothing style again breathe the sixties and seventies, the women are secretaries, the men smoke pipes. Guust has only been on holiday, he announces. Most importantly: the jokes are also based on Franquin’s humor. Already on the first page, a poisonous substance bites a hole in the ground and a bowling ball from Guust falls through the hole onto the head of editor Pruimpit one floor below: crap frozen in time.
Delaf does wink at the present. Guust invents an electric bicycle and the mobile phone, the G-phone. He does this in his characteristically cumbersome and hilariously useless manner: the bicycle battery is in a cart behind the bicycle and he has attached a rail along all the walls for the classic telephone with a receiver on a wire. Naturally, the phone becomes a projectile and when people groan in pain, Pruimpit suggests that Guust should call his phone the AI-phone. Delaf loves puns and fortunately he is slightly better at it than Franquin.
His traditional inventions also provide pleasant entertainment, such as a super strong electromagnet and ice that breaks down into elastic threads, turning Guust into a kind of Spiderman. Delaf could have used the latter fact more visually and intelligently – there is a good one running gag in. Some finds are bland and lazy, such as the invisible hammock and the new car tires that Guust ordered from a bouncy ball manufacturer.
Psychiatrist
The fact that Delaf is aware that this comic will mainly attract nostalgic, older readers can be concluded from the introduction of a psychiatrist who treats Guust’s frustrated colleagues. Adding psychology sometimes gives dialogues an extra boost. Guust walks in and says to his colleague: “Kwabbernoot? I have a moral problem.” Fantasio answers: “Me too. But every time I manage to control myself and not strangle you.”
The atypical way in which Guust defends his nonsense is also aimed at adults. “Art must be confrontational,” he says. On the one hand, that sounds perky in this universe full of stumbling humor and boom-bang jokes, on the other hand: Guust shows like no other how unsuitable man is for life.
Delaf shows even more individuality when he actually comes up with a good reason for Guust’s lethargy. He draws a weekend in which Guust continuously helps others. After such a busy weekend, you need to catch up on sleep at the office on Monday. With this act of love, Delaf colors Guust’s character in a new way.
Less successful are the ten pages with which the album ends, a follow-up story about lost comic pages. Delaf creates space to show self-mockery. Cartoonist Krasser, just like him, copies Franquin’s drawings in his style, but his colleagues react with moderate enthusiasm. You don’t immediately see the difference, says one person, and according to another, the difference is “in the details.” “Many feel called, but imitate Franquin….” Poor Krasser collapses: “You are right. I can’t even touch his ankles.”
It is not that bad. The new Guust by Delaf is a more than respectable attempt to resuscitate a comic book hero. In particular, the freedoms that the new artist allows himself leave him wanting more.
What has disappeared forever are the stylish, decorated signatures with which Franquin signed his work. Under a page with a joke about a boxing glove, a gun or traffic, he wrote his name wearing a boxing glove, ending in a gun barrel or a traffic sign. Wonderful. Delaf rightly does not dare: not everything is replaceable.