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[[File:GastonLagaffe_1121.jpg|frame]]
'''Gaston Lagaffe''' is arguably one of the best-known and most well-liked characters of the French-Belgian comics school. The creation of [[Andre Franquin]], who wanted to come up with an [[Anti-Hero]] after working for years on the series ''[[Spirou and Fantasio]]'', Gaston Lagaffe is an office drone and errand boy employed by a fictional version of the Dupuis publishing company.
But the point is that [[The Slacker|he never gets any work done]], instead preferring to spend his work days cobbling together mad contraptions, playing music on [[Xenophone|xenophones]], or conducting chemical experiments that usually end with the explosion of his makeshift lab. He has a platonic but reciprocated relationship with fellow Dupuis employee Mademoiselle "Mam'zelle" Jeanne.
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* [[Amusing Injuries]]
* [[The Animated Series]]
* [[Anti-Hero]]: Gaston is a textbook example.
* [[Anti-Villain]]: Agent Longtarin, the closest thing Gaston has to an archenemy, is just a regular traffic cop charged with enforcing the law, which Gaston often breaks openly. However, there are times when he gets a bit vindictive, giving Gaston a ticket for his car on a no-parking zone, then another for the soapbox racer he was unloading, then a third one for ''the roller-skate'' that fell out of the racer, doing a [[Happy Dance]] as writes the ticket. Once, he stopped Gaston in the street to ticket him for various faults on the car, and then added a parking ticket because the car was parked in the street. Considering that Gaston loves tormenting him with practical jokes revolving around parking meters that occasionally seem to drive him on borders of neurosis, he probably deserves a little payback.
* [[Art Evolution]]: Gaston basically becomes increasingly [[Super-Deformed]] throughout the series, his nose gets bigger, and his eyes acquire whites (having previously just been little dots), and the art style becomes a bit more detailed.
* [[Ascended Extra]]
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* [[The Ditz]]: Gaston is lovably clueless, as are his buddies Jules-de-chez-Smith-en-face and Bertrand Labévue.
* [[DIY Disaster]]: Whenever Gaston attempts to "fix" something in the office.
** He made water spray from a heater, turned a fridge into a pressure cooker, made a motorcycle ride in reverse, switched around all the keys on a typewriter and once launched a boiler into orbit<ref>''[[Breaking Point]]'' and ''[[
** He also once redid the plumbing for the heaters in order to use them as coffeemakers.
** He once made a radio-controlled model plane from Russian transistor parts. The plane worked fine, it's just that he somehow also managed to make a Russian space station pull off the exact same stunts as the plane....
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* [[Feathered Fiend]]: Gaston's seagull is sadistic at best, and downright dangerous when in a really foul mood. Being pecked with a beak strong enough to be used as a can opener hurts.
{{quote|"[[Evil Laugh|Hi-hi-hi-HIAAARRRR!!!]]"}}
* [[Flanderization]]: Originally, Longtarin was just a normal cop who giving tickets when Gaston parked wrong. At the end, he ''loves'' giving tickets to Gaston. Though it could also be considered [[Character Development]]: Longtarin fines Gaston, Gaston retaliates with his practical jokes, and soon Longtarin is seeking revenge in return.
* [[Follow That Car!]]: Played with when Fantasio asks a cab driver to "follow that coat!"
* [[Friend to All Living Things]]: Gaston can get just about any animal to like him and do tricks (he arm-wrestles with an elephant). The only exception is an owl who [[The Sleepless|kept him up all night hooting; he retaliated by playing guitar all day]].
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* [[Office Lady]]: Mam'zelle Jeanne.
* [[Omnidisciplinary Scientist]]: Chemistry, cooking, rocket science (he once built one that had members of the US Army, Air Force, Navy, and representatives from other armies fighting over whose branch would get it), model building... Subverted in that he only has enough knowledge in each field to make spectacular explosions.
* [[Overly Polite Pals]]: In one strip, Fantasio encourages Gaston to be more polite. This leads to a major traffic jam when he and another car driver refuse to go first into a street, blocking up every car behind them.
* [[Perpetual Motion Machine]]: Gaston invents one of the "weak" type. It doesn't do anything; it just hops around and gets on his co-workers' nerves.
* [[Pink Elephants]]: Played with. Gaston once borrowed an elephant from the local zoo and gave him a pink paint job, in order to play a practical joke on a friend who drinks too much. The original edition of the gag failed due to a colorist's error: the elephant is red in the album.
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* [[Progressively Prettier]]: Jeanne was originally meant to be homely and quite grotesque-looking, but she has evolved into becoming very pretty. Franquin never intended to make her permanent at first, but since all the (admittedly pretty) other office ladies either quit their jobs or had other romantic interests and she was the only one left, he decided to have her mature. She's more or less the same age as Gaston, and Franquin always said that his character was never older than 18.
* [[Required Spinoff Crossover]]: Spirou and Fantasio have made recurring appearances in the series, while Gaston has had cameos in a couple of ''[[Spirou and Fantasio]]'' adventures. Understandable, as he works in the same place they do - Franquin did decide to make Spirou and Fantasio less present in the journal before handing the characters off to Fournier. Gaston is referred to later on, by Tome & Janry notably.
* [[Ridiculously-Human Robots|Ridiculously Human Rubber Doll]]: Gaston owns a life-sized rubber doll of himself that gets repeatedly mistaken for him, or vice versa. In the most extreme cases Fantasio once almost throws the real Gaston out of the window, mistaking him for the puppet, and another time gets arrested for murder in the act of disposing it, and it takes the coroner hours to notice that something is amiss.
* [[Rugby Is Slaughter]]: Gaston briefly gives rugby a try but gives up after getting repeatedly and violently tackled. He decides to go home to the quietness of his beloved pets... [[Yank the Dog's Chain|who promptly proceed to wrestle a can of food off him, rugby-style.]]
* [[Running Gag]]
** After more than 40 years, De Mesmaeker NEVER managed to successfully sign those goddamn contracts, as every single attempt had been thwarted by Lagaffe's antics.
*** On the few occasion when he has, he either actually signed something else, or Gaston destroyed them after the fact.
*** Once he took liking in one of Gaston's gastronomical experiments (a chicken-fish soup), and abandoned the intended contract for one about the rights to its recipe.
*** Almost the same thing happened another time, when Gaston had made a funny cuckoo-clock that looked like a space capsule, and had an astronaut instead of a cuckoo. De Mesmaeker found it hilarious, and immediately bought rights to manufacturing them.
** Another common gag was Gaston being in charge of "ordering" the documentation room... effectively turning it into a literal mountain of books, which people were afraid to get near to, "because of rockfall".
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** Gaston's project of "wax that shines without slipping", progressively ''more'' slippery in each iteration until [[Up to Eleven|he creates a perfect zero friction material.]]
* [[Scale-Model Destruction]]: Prunelle has an office building model destroyed by Lagaffe.
* [[Short Distance Phone Call]]: Entering Gaston's office, Fantasio takes what he thinks is a call from the managers of the company in the next building. In fact the phone is out of order, and he doesn't realize they're actually talking to him through a gaping hole in the wall.
* [[Sitcom Arch Nemesis]]: Longtarin
* [[The Slacker]]: Gaston is ''the'' quintessential slacker.
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* [[Throw the Dog a Bone]]: Fantasio and Prunelle sometimes manages to work Gaston.
** Officer Longtarin managing to give Gaston some pretty spicy parking tickets.
* [[Too Dumb to Live]]: Gaston in some comics. For example, once he decides to play at cup and ball with his ''bowling ball''.
* [[Unusual Chapter Numbers]]: The album numbers go as follows: R1, R2, R3, R4, 6, 7 and so on. There used to be no fifth album. This is because the original album printing was done in half-sized softcovers, five of them specifically, the sixth being the first hardcover. When the original five were reprinted (the four "R" albums), only three-and-a-half albums' worth of material could be obtained from the softcovers, the fourth album using humorous text filler and character logs to round up to a full album, leaving the fifth album gap and turning this into a [[Mythology Gag]]. After a while, a fifth album was compiled from gags that hadn't been published outside the journal yet, or that had been made for advertisement purposes. It was numbered R5.
* [[Vague Age]]: Gaston is obviously in his late teens or early twenties, as he has a job, a car, and his own place, but his age is indeterminate beyond that, and he often acts younger. Franquin, the creator of the series, admitted to neither knowing nor wanting to know Gaston's age. He mentioned that Gaston, in his mind, is a teenager.
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[[Category:Franco Belgian Comics]]
[[Category:The Fifties]]
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