André Franquin has left his mark on Franco-Belgian comics with his series but also with personal works. However, his influences and life are still poorly known. Indeed, Numa Sadoul's major work on the master of humor was nowhere to be found. Here it is back and it's an event.
Franquin, a giant of European comics
The release of Et Franquin créa la gaffe marks the spotlight on a journalist and an author. This book had become an inaccessible myth for thirty years while it is the bible of all comic book fans. Indeed, André Franquin is known as a scriptwriter and illustrator for his reference albums in the Spirou et Fantasio series. He made additions that have become indisputable elements (and very often repeated) such as the Marsupilami or Zorglub. He also created the albums of Modeste et Pompon and Gaston Lagaffe. In Black Ideas, he had the genius to put humor on his depression.
And Franquin created the gaffe brings together all the interviews conducted in 1985 between Franquin and the comic book specialist Numa Sadoul who also wrote the preface. After a book of interviews with Hergé, Sadoul wanted to make the same work on Franquin but the artist refused out of shyness for ten years. We feel it very quickly and repeatedly when Franquin refuses to evoke some of his works while he praises his colleagues of the newspaper of Spirou. The reader is amused by reading how the first interview was conducted through Franquin's wife, Liliane. Over the course of the nine sessions, Sadoul collected thirty-four hours of dialogue, the book of which is chronological. We feel that the two men have a friendly realization: they are silent, laugh together and Sadoul does not hesitate to give his opinion.
As his daughter Isabelle notes in the preface, they are made at a particular moment of the artist: he has just lost several friends, his physical and mental health is fragile, the Dupuis editions are sold but he will become a grandfather.
A career as diverse as Gaston's office
The book is organized in different chapters, initially chronological and then on Franquin's series. We begin with a biographical part from his birth to the date of interviews on more than a quarter of the book. The second chapter deciphers on more than 150 pages all the albums that Franquin made for the series Spirou et Fantasio. This very detailed part is so rich that Sadoul advises to have the books at hand to fully understand Franquin's answers. The cartoonist also gives his opinion on the authors who succeeded him.
However, Sadoul does not neglect the other parts of his career: the third chapter focuses on the short humorous series Modeste et Pompom before focusing on the other outstanding series of the master, Gaston. These chapters are all the more important as Franquin admits to having always had trouble with the personality of the bellhop and therefore felt freer elsewhere. The volume concludes with Franquin's little-known works at the time, such as the collective pages of the Trombone illustrée within the magazine Spirou and especially Idées noires. Sadoul helps Franquin to return to his work and we enter the intimacy of the creator. The reader discovers how to create a character with the example of Gaston. For Franquin, the uniform is important and therefore Gaston's espadrilles and sweater. The reader discovers his references of youth, his stylistic evolution but also the many constraints in the magazine Spirou and Dupuis. He did this during the attempt to modernize the newspaper in the pages of the Trombone. At the same time, we understand how Franquin recovered the rights to the Marsupilami.
A private life as discreet as that of Spirou
And Franquin created the gaffe is not, however, a work of academic analysis of a work but Franquin's view of his work. The reader may lose objectivity but he gains enormously in human richness. We find on each page the modesty of Franquin and we enter the intimacy of a man. His private life is of course present in his work. However, the precise first part sheds a totally new light on the life of the author. Sadoul sometimes knows how to insist on learning more and qualify Franquin's first assertions. The book also shows the author's inconsistencies. As a child, he never made comics or drawings but knew very early on that he wanted to become a cartoonist. He did not read poetry but his work is.
To highlight these rich exchanges, the publisher Glénat offers a magnificent setting. The book is very complete and solid allowing to return regularly. At the end of the volume, there is a very useful index for research and the bibliography of Numa Sadoul. Despite this richness, the reading of Et Franquin créa la gaffe is very easy thanks to a very rich and largely unpublished iconography.
By republishing Et Franquin créa la gaffe, Glénat offers new readers the chance to discover a rich and very complete work on Franquin. This reading sheds new light on all his work and inevitably makes you want to open again a Gaston or a Spirou.
Franquin is well present on the site by his creations, find the articles on Le Marsupilami, Spirou & Fantasio.
