DALLAS, TX.- “ANDRÉ FRANQUIN: GREAT OR...THE GREATEST?” This was the question posed by The Comics Journal in 2017 when a Paris exhibition feted the Belgian creator’s most famous and beloved character, the shaggy Gaston Lagaffe, a “dedicated idler in jeans and espadrilles” then celebrating his 60th birthday while never looking older than 23. “He is a child in an adult world,” Franquin once said of Gaston, whose last name means “the blunder.”
When Gaston made his bow in 1957 in the pages of the Franco-Belgian comics magazine Spirou, he was introduced and intended as an in-joke: He worked at the magazine but was meant to serve as the readers’ behind-the-scenes surrogate. Over time, he transformed from a punchline to a symbol, from a would-be slacker to “one of the world’s most beloved anarchists, a gentle saboteur of the status quo who is against parking meters, cops, office routine and most other things that pass for the trappings of modern civilization,” The Los Angeles Times noted upon Franquin’s death in 1997.
For the first time in its storied history as the world’s largest comics-art auctioneer,
Heritage presents an original Gaston Lagaffe Gag — No. 839, to be specific, dating to 1978. It’s among the numerous centerpiece offerings in Heritage’s March 9-10 International Original Art Signature® Auction, which brims with more than 630 works from international sensations, American masters and a few underground heroes (among them Robert Crumb, Daniel Clowes and Richard Corben) whose art delights and disturbs in equal measure in any language. Rom the Spaceknight lands in this auction, too, not long after his return to the Marvel Universe.
Olivier Delflas, Heritage’s Director of International Comic Art and Anime, says, “This Gaston Lagaffe work is among Franquin’s best, most pointed ‘gags,’ as it elicits a few chuckles while covering a serious turning point. It’s also an honor to bring it to auction, as Franquin’s coveted originals are scarce.”
This particular piece was very of the moment upon its publication — and, perhaps, ahead of its time, as it touches upon the explosion of media, elections, climate change, pollution and the overwhelmingness of it all. It began as a headline — the piece was inspired by the March 1978 sinking of the Amoco Cadiz off the coast of Brittany, France, which resulted in a historically devastating oil spill — before Franquin transformed it into a bitter punchline.
Incidentally, The Journal answered its great-or-the-greatest query with a resounding yes, courtesy none other than fellow Belgian comics maker Hergé, who once said that next to Franquin, “I’m only a mediocre pen-pusher.” That was a kind gesture of self-deprecation from a maker of magnificent, meaningful masterworks — Tintin, primarily, who is represented in this event by three exceptional works, among them this 1944 rendering of Tintin and Captain Haddock’s dashing through a Moroccan market.
The image is among the most famous in Tintin’s history, as it appears toward the end of 1941’s The Crab With the Golden Claws, the ninth entry in Georges Prosper Remi’s ongoing series about the globetrotting reporter and his dog, and was among that book’s scant few full-page illustrations. Three years later, Hergé revisited the image for a coloring book, and, as Delflas notes, “He wanted to give it more depth,” which is evident in this delightful work that’s among the most sought-after pieces by Tintin admirers.
Here, too, is a book Delflas describes as “a must-have for any major Hergé collectors”: the cover of and original art from Les Musées Belges de Marine d’Alexandre Berqueman, so named for the land surveyor and maritime enthusiast whom Remi befriended around 1942 in Brussels. Legend has it, Berqueman inspired Hergé to send Tintin to sea — a lot — with Berqueman serving as the creator’s advisor when it came to keeping things shipshape.
A year after they became pals, Hergé offered Berqueman to design the cover of Berqueman’s book dedicated to the Belgian Maritime Museums, from which this original ink cover hails. There were but 600 copies printed of the edition featuring Tintin, Haddock and Snowy at the Musée National de Marine entrance. Says Delflas, this work is “worthy of a museum.”
The same could be said of any work by Jean Giraud, better known as Moebius, who is represented in this event by nearly two dozen works, chief among them a striking closeup of his spiked-helmeted cosmic creation, Major Grubert. This piece originally appeared in 1977’s Métal Hurlant No. 15 as part of the story “Le garage hermétique de Jerry Cornélius,” since reprinted dozens of times as Moebius’ reach extended into every comic book and science-fiction film made since. So significant is this single page that a single panel from it was offered as a limited-edition silkscreen in 1989.
“‘Airtight’ is right,” says Delflas of this work from the tale whose title translates into English as “The Airtight Garage of Jerry Cornelius.” It’s part of Heritage’s most extensive offering of original Moebius art.
No International Original Art auction would be complete without revered Argentine comic book writer and artist Juan Giménez and his Metabarons, which sprang from an idea first concocted in 1989 by filmmaker and artist Alejandro Jodorowsky and the man called Moebius. So impactful was this title about a fierce, celestial clan of warriors, which launched in 1992, that Simon & Schuster would later publish Deconstructing the Metabarons, which described the work as “the seminal science-fiction graphic novel [that] has become the cornerstone of the Jodoverse.”
There are 18 Metabarons lots, including “five of the best pages from Issue No. 1,” says Delflas, “and two amazing covers.” Giménez’s work looks like comic-book art and more like detailed, almost three-dimensional storyboards for a stunning film set in a cold, mechanized future. In these works, you can see what Warren Ellis meant when he said, “What keeps me going back to The Metabarons is the immense volume and speed of its innovation. There is literally a new and mad idea on every page.”
Speaking of mad, some industry veterans thought it crazy in the late 1970s when Marvel turned a toy into a superhero. Yet the result led to one of the most significant works in the event — and one of the most widely viewed.
Jean Frisano’s cover for 1981’s Strange No. 134 — featuring Marvel’s beloved Rom the Spaceknight — was among the centerpieces on display during 2020’s “Jean Frisano: From Tarzan to Marvel, Fantasized America” exhibition at the 47th Angoulême International Comics Festival. The Parisian artist’s mixed-media piece is as significant as it is striking, as it marked Rom’s European debut two years after the Parkers Brothers toy landed in the comic book that ran until 1986 and reappeared on bookshelves last month as Rom: The Original Marvel Years Omnibus.
This event features another Marvel-ous work by comicdom’s most influential creator: Page 3 from 1967’s Fantastic Four No. 27, by — who else? — Jack Kirby with an assist from George Roussos. Pages from this issue have long been coveted by collectors for whom the story “The Search For the Sub-Mariner” is something of a touchstone, given its guest stars (Namor and Dr. Strange) and its story, which involves the Sub-Mariner kidnapping Sue Storm to make her his underwater bride. This page is particularly significant, as Reed Richards intends to propose to the Invisible Girl who feels particularly unnoticed.
Modern master Alex Ross, the man who makes superheroes look like they might walk and fly among us, soars in this event with the cover of Marvel’s Paradise X No. 1 — the beginning of the end of his Earth X trilogy with Jim Krueger, which examined the roles of superheroes as nothing more than “biological antibodies” meant to “protect a growing embryo within the Earth.” The book gets deep at times, but Ross shines by making pretty surfaces, too, among them this sumptuous rendering of the original Guardians of the Galaxy alongside Ross’ iconic rendering of the resurrected Captain America, an international icon no matter the venue.
