The new album Gaston Lagaffe was to be released next October under the title Le retour de Lagaffe, but this release has already been postponed and the pre-publication of gags in the newspaper Spirou is suspended against the backdrop of a legal battle between the publisher (Dupuis) and Franquin’s daughter. According to her, her father did not want Gaston to survive him.
With our correspondent in Brussels, Pierre Benazet
The soap opera fascinates comic book purists: after the 2018 film simply titled Gaston Lagaffe, the friendly, indolent hero and wacky inventor was to rise again from his ashes and this time with a real comic book album, the first since Gaffe à Lagaffe signed by Franquin in 1996, a year before his death. But Gaston Lagaffe won’t be able to come back to the office right away to take a nap or drive Prunelle crazy.
Dupuis editions own the rights
The drawing of the new Gaston was entrusted to the Canadian Delaf, known for his series The navels and a first gag of the new Gaston had been published in the April issue of the journal de Spirou. Isabelle Franquin, daughter and beneficiary of Gaston’s father had criticized the project from the start and she filed an application for interim relief to urgently prevent the publication of the boards.
It is the Dupuis editions which have therefore themselves taken the decision to suspend these pre-publications and to postpone the publication of the album Le retour de Lagaffe until 2023, pending the outcome of an arbitration between Dupuis and Isabelle. Frankin. It is in this context that the question will be settled on the merits and there was therefore ultimately no pleading at the Brussels interim court on Monday May 16 since the procedure only concerned prepublication.
opposite Franquin
Isabelle Franquin affirms that her father was absolutely opposed to Gaston continuing without him, he said it on several occasions. But the Dupuis editions which own the rights believe that he did not have such a clear opinion