![]() He threw himself into it, even naming the character after a shambolic pal. ![]() Franquin's pitch for a house "blunderer" tickled Delporte's fancy. It's still funny to think about some of his initiatives, like a "spring issue" with violet-scented ink which caused the whole print works to vomit. He loved jazz, ran a private club and read comics in English. A comics scenariste with a beard the size of a copse, the editor was a character. Publisher Charles Dupuis had hired Delporte to make Spirou funnier. In Yvan Delporte, he found a receptive ear. From the start, his concept was a swipe at the magazine's rectitude. Franquin proposed filling these with a character, "a BD hero too stupid to fit the mold". The pagination problems were solved by using a centerfold but unexpected gaps still cropped up. The magazine published both a Belgian and a French edition so, between them, advertising volumes differed. That role belonged to a daring insurance adjuster, Jean Valhardi. Spirou, a red-clad bellboy, wasn't even its featured star. Their youth weekly Spirou was a Catholic children's journal which, like its competitor Tintin, stuck to Boy Scout values. Franquin and his editor, Yvan Delporte, had envisioned not a strip but a running gag. ![]() Yet, at the start, Gaston was just an in-joke. Gaston at the Pompidou Bpi © Hervé Vérnonèse Elevated to stardom by Franquin's graphic brilliance, this rebellion-by-default changed the rules of the bande dessinée. As Renaud Defiebre-Muller notes in the show, "Gaston pits personal autonomy against social control: against manners, against respect, against everyday decorum". But, if his character exudes a Sixties effervescence it also has the era's disillusions. Over three decades the artist honed Gaston's interests, showing him to be an inventor, a music fan, a DIY fanatic and an amateur chef. Franquin made him into a prototype of subversion. While hardly the first antihero of European comics, Gaston was one of their first post-adolescents. Gaston, whose last name means "the blunder", is an dedicated idler in jeans and espadrilles. It also honours a landmark birthday – the sixtieth year of Gaston Lagaffe, Franquin's most well-known character. He created the most complete, the most alive, the most absolute cartooniness in comics history."Ī current Paris retrospective, Gaston, shares their views. "In terms of ultra-classic greatness," he once wrote me, "Hergé has that abstract line but Franquin has something else. Next to him, I'm only a mediocre pen-pusher." Fantagraphics' Kim Thompson agreed with Tintin's creator. "Franquin", he declared, "is a great artist. Was Belgian Andre Franquin (1924-1997) comics' greatest draftsman? One colleague who certainly thought so was Hergé. Read the full letter at Meltdown’s website.Features André Franquin: Great or…The Greatest?Ĭynthia Rose | FebruAndré Franquin in the 1950s © Gaston Servais Franquin/Dargaud-Lombard, 2016 “For one last time, # LetsgoMELTDOWN!” he wrote.īy Wednesday night Meltdown Comics’ website featured a black screen urging visitors to join the store’s email newsletter and see “what the next 25 years will bring.” “We’ve watched every fad, trend and next big thing come and go while customers became celebrities, children blossomed to adults, geeks morphed into moguls, and fanboys scored Oscars.”Īt the end of his letter, Domingeuz-Letelier urged fans to keep buying, creating and supporting comics. “And what a wonderfully surreal run it’s been,” Dominguez-Letelier added in his letter. Podcasts including Mutant Season, Indoor Kids and You Made It Weird were also recorded at the venue. Harmontown, a documentary released in 2014 starring Community writer Dan Harmon, originated as a weekly live show and podcast performed and recorded at Meltdown. From 2010-2016, Comedy Central’s stand-up comedy series The Meltdown With Jonah and Kumail, hosted by Jonah Ray and Kumail Nanjiani, was filmed entirely within the venue and featured names including Maria Bamford, Jen Kirkman, Steve Agee and Todd Barry. In addition to hosting book signings and author talks, Meltdown Comics’ event space, called the NerdMelt Showroom, hosted high-profile comedy performances.
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