Four wheeled characters

Franquin was a true aficionado of automobiles (a Citroën DS drives through nearly every Spirou and Fantasio episode) and put his characters behind the wheel from the outset. Since 1952, in Spirou et les héritiers (Spirou and the Inheritors), Fantasio ran through the history of the car up to the 50’s from behind the wheel of a 20’s vintage Citroen 5 CV Type C. In this key episode, in which the famous Marsupilami made his first appearance, Spirou and Fantasio also run a Grand Prix driving a yellow racing Turbot, traced from a Ferrari 156 M.

From album to album, we would see them driving a 2 CV Citroen, a Honda S 800 Sport, a Lotus Europa, and even a Willis Jeep when they were drafted into the army (with the rank of Colonel!) in Le dictateur et les champignons (The Dictator and the Mushrooms). But it would be "Turbotraction" which would feature as the most regular recurring automotive character in episodes from La Corne du rhinocéros (The Horn of the Rhinoceros) to Le Gorille a bonne mine (The Gorilla Looks Healthy).

Not content with reproducing existing cars, Franquin also never stopped inventing news ones: in Modeste et Pompon, created for the Editions Tintin, he had great fun plagiarizing the Dauphine, parking different versions on every street corner. Franquin’s imagination and virtuosity seemed limitless: His creations plumbed the depths of every source of inspiration, from the rounded European look to the bulging, angular, streamlined, American cars and were frequently innovative: like the "Zorglumobile" gyroscopic vehicle, belonging to Spirou and Fantasio’s sworn enemy, which was equally at home in the air or on the ground.

Mistakes and destruction…

At the end of the 60’s Franquin gave birth to another "Star": Gaston Lagaffe, whose primary job on the Spirou editorial team was to answer reader’s letters, but who quickly transformed himself into an all-purpose inventor. Almost immediately he bought himself a used car, with which he started a real love story: his faithful yellow with black and white checker board Fiat 509 (1925). Slightly stylised, and enormously modified over the course of the albums, he would even lend it to Spirou in Gaston et le Marsupilami (Gaston and the Marsupilami). Fiat would eventually pay him homage in 1977 in the very official La fantastica FIAT 509 di Gaston Lagaffe episode.

Gaston found himself faced with insoluble maintenance and parking problems, thanks to the age of his car and the zeal of Officer Longtarin, the policeman who gave parking tickets in his neighborhood.

But Gaston had other problems to deal with starting with the energy crisis of the 70’s, which he attacked with perseverance. Panel by panel, he built a filtering muffler capable of handling the noxious exhaust his car produces, then got hooked on engines (electric or gas) which were either to powerful or just the opposite, but invariably catastrophic! Never daunted by the impossible, he even developed an additive to clean his engine’s mechanicals which succeeded in painting everyone around him indelibly blue.

Finally, to get around the hallways at work, he invented the "Gastonmobile" a kind of pedal powered chair, which allowed him to spread even more destruction in his wake. These kinds of inventions lace a half century of Franquin’s work, representing his poetic vision of the world, and the cars driving around in it.

[04/25/2002]