[3][4] The picture above is found on the 5th page of the magazine in segment of the story, Le Piano à Bretelles (written by Paul Berna and illustrated by Morris) which only contains letters and large images.

[5] His arrival was carefully orchestrated with a teasing campaign over several months, based on ideas by Franquin, Yvan Delporte and Jidéhem, with mysterious blue footprints in the margins of the magazine.

[6][7][8] In the context of the fictive story evolving at the magazine offices, the man behind the footprints, Gaston, finally turned up for a memorable job interview, telling the bemused Spirou that he didn't remember with whom or for what he had been called.

Gaston's blunders continued during a stressful and frustrating period for Fantasio, pushing him to go on a 4-week strike and eventually a vacation, initiating the story Vacances sans histoires.

He is first seen "on the streets of the capital" riding a bicycle while reading a newspaper, obliviously littering papers, and then appears two frames later, bruised and dazed, dragging his deformed bike, having ridden into the middle of ongoing traffic.

[13] His second cameo occurred in the early panels of the story Vacances sans histoires (fr: "Quiet Holidays") (later included in the album Le gorille a bonne mine) which was published between November 1957 and January 1958.

He is featured in the opening pages of the title story, and plays a central role in Bravo les Brothers in which he offers Fantasio a troupe of performing chimpanzees as an unwanted birthday present.

[19] Franquin inversely grew tired of Spirou et Fantasio (a series he had not created himself, but inherited from Joseph "Jijé" Gillain in 1946) and decided in 1968 to resign the job, and concentrate on the increasingly popular Gaston.

[21] Gaston Lagaffe follows the classic "gag" format of Franco-Belgian comics: one-page stories (initially half-a-page) with an often visual punchline, sometimes foreshadowed in the dialogue.

The ever-growing piles of unanswered letters ("courrier en retard") and the attempts of Fantasio and Léon Prunelle to make him deal with it or to retrieve documentation are recurring themes of the comic.

Franquin acknowledged with regret that he had totally destroyed the original clown-like personality of the character by using him in this role, which required him to be formal and businesslike and behave as an authority figure.

He is then revealed to be even more short-tempered than his predecessor from whom he has inherited not only the mammoth task of making Gaston work, but also the job of signing contracts with important businessman Aimé De Mesmaeker (see below).

Perpetually at the end of his tether, he is constantly running around barking angry orders, turns a nasty reddish purple when disaster strikes and regularly utters his trademark outburst "Rogntudju!"

(a mangled version of "Nom de Dieu", roughly the equivalent of "bloody hell", which was unacceptable in a children's comic when the strip was originally published).

Often a victim of Gaston's inventions and projects, his efforts to counter his subordinate's laziness and carefree attitude leave him at the brink of exhaustion and violent rage attacks.

A large portion of Prunelle's time is spent chasing Gaston around and to remind him that he has to deal with late mail, prevent him from taking unnecessary naps or breaks and to stop him from using office hours for cooking, tinkering, inventing and, of course, goofing around.

A short redhead with freckles, glasses, conservative dress style and very long hair, she was first depicted as comically unattractive in a gag where Gaston needs a partner for the back end of his pantomime horse costume and chooses Jeanne because of her ponytail.

[28] However, in the following appearances, she increasingly becomes prettier and more attractive, if never really a conventional beauty queen: her body changes from pear-shaped to curvaceous, she pays more attention to her makeup and her long hair, her dress style gradually switches to modern (and often revealing) outfits and she becomes more confident in her interactions with Gaston and other characters.

[31] To the dismay of critics, Franquin only sporadically actually drew them naked, with Gaston in a state of arousal, on several unpublished sketches and commercially unavailable greeting cards.

Bertrand suffers from acute depression, mirroring Franquin's own problems with the illness, and Gaston and Jules do their best to cheer him up with food, country drives and other things (all of which backfire comically).

Manu is another friend, who regularly turns up in different jobs (like Bert in Mary Poppins): chimney sweep, sewer worker, installer of street signage...

His frequent visits allow Franquin to satirise business rituals, as Dupuis's employees shower him with attention, complimentary drinks and cigars, but De Mesmaeker almost inevitably ends up storming out of the offices, swearing never to set foot in them again, passed out on the floor or even in hospital due to Gaston's catastrophic blunders.

[35] The real-life Mr De Mesmaeker Sr — actually a salesman — soon found that, as Gaston's strip became increasingly popular, concluding a deal would result in the client asking, "Where are the contracts?"

This company is also a frequent victim of Lagaffe's mishaps and Fantasio or Prunelle often bear the brunt of Ducran and Lapoigne's anger—both of them being big muscular men, as their names suggest.

This extraordinary instrument, a prehistoric-looking combination of horn and harp created by Gaston,[45][46] produces a sound so terrible and loud that it causes physical destruction all around and panics animals and even fighter jet pilots.

An early running gag involved Gaston coming up with elaborate and extremely impractical costumes for fancy dress parties at the facetious suggestions of his colleagues: Roly-poly toy, octopus, Greek urn, petrol pump, Eiffel Tower etc.

However, the pacifism and concern for the environment that formed the basis of Franquin's politics and would be expressed much more bluntly in Idées noires were already surfacing in Gaston (and Spirou et Fantasio).

For the latter, Franquin produced a gut-wrenching sequence where Gaston is beaten and tortured and forced to watch M'oiselle Jeanne raped in front of him, before being sent to a prison camp.

The latter campaign is interesting in that it shows Franquin's evolution from car enthusiast inventing the Turbo-traction and other fancy sports vehicles for Spirou in the 1950s, to disillusioned citizen concerned over traffic and pollution in later years.

Each episode centered around a different theme and showed about 5 gags similar, from the including Cup-and-ball, experiments, the cactus, pets, etc.. A new adaptation with Théo Fernandez as the titular character, this time called Gaston Lagaffe [fr], made by and co-starring Pierre-François Martin-Laval was released in 2018.