Lagaffe

 No idea where I first encountered Gaston Lagaffe. I spent a lot of time in my local library in Portslade when I was growing up, but it seems highly unlikely that those blue paper children's tickets could have gifted me a hardback bande dessine. As far as I can see there were no English translated versions at the time, and I doubt there'd be much call for French versions in my sleepy little seaside town. (They were eventually published in English through Fantagraphics Press, where he had been renamed Gomer Goof, as an American audience couldn't handle a character who was exotically Belgian). 

I'm assuming it came into my life as part of the wider Asterix diaspora, like Lucky Luke and Nicholas and the Gang. And my love of the French (or Belgian) school of cartoon artwork, those beautiful, fluid lines, the compacted action in every character. The Beano looked like hieroglyphics next to it: Franquin's drawings were dynamic, always on the edge of exploding out of the panel. 

There were other influences too. Here's a picture of Gaston. 

I swapped the box for a plastic bag, back in the day. 

He's got a quiff. He's got a big baggy jumper and a t shirt. He's wearing skinny jeans with turn ups. On his feet are a pair of knackered espadrilles. Gaston first appeared in the pages Spirou magazine in February of 1957. And yet, that is also a drawing of me, at 17, in 1988. I even wore the espadrilles. My jeans were black and my jumper navy, but apart from that it is exact. Even the frame is correct. It might be hard to believe now, but I weighed about nine stone then, and most of that was teeth and hairspray. 

Could that look have imprinted on me as a child? Was I unconsciously aping a Belgian office worker from a decade before I was born, as the acme of cool. Even now it's hard to disagree with Gaston's sweet style - it is a classic vanilla-bohemian look. I dont dress in too dissimilar a manner even today, though plantar fasciitis has forced me to abandon my espadrilles, and a heavy dusting of fag ash grey body hair means I've swapped my pullover for a smock-like shirt. I'm pre-woolly. 

They made a live action film of Gaston a few years ago. It's about £16 on DVD, so sod that, but I'd be interested to see how it plays out. Gaston is a buffoon who works in an office, is lazy and does no work (again, me in my twenties) and sometimes builds huge Heath-Robinson style inventions (this, finally, is where we differ). The cover of the DVD looks awful, and the live action Asterix and Lucky Luke films were no great shakes either (despite the latter featuring Jean DuJardin). But it would be interesting to see what it's like. Whether I'd be a better Gaston.