Written by: Franquin
Illustrations: Franquin
Coloring: Franquin
Publisher: Dupuis
Guust #19 Een Flater Komt Nooit Alleen – Comic Book Review
Working at the office, it can be quite a boring job. So what better than sleeping and inventing useless things? It’s all Guust Flater seems to be able to do, which simply drives his boss Pruimpit crazy. Today we can present you with his latest album ‘Een Flater Komt Nooit Alleen’.
Guust’s job consists mainly out of sorting the mail and delivering it properly. For him this is not as simple as it seems, as he falls asleep wherever he goes. When there is post to be sorted, he likes to invent (often useless) things. Although he always means well, things often go wrong with his inventions. Besides from all that, he also has some funny pets who will make their appearance every now and then in the gags.
Given the album consists out of a series of small gags, there isn’t much of a story to tell. Nonetheless, some gags do fit together as they have the same subject. This is usually indicated by a small amount of text at the top of the page, explaining the occasion for which the gags were created. The gags in this album aren’t new, but have already been published twice, the last time being in 1997. The cover, other than the 1997 edition, is original, though the coloring has been updated.
The gags themselves, although being of a certain age already, prove to be timeless. Jokes about silly people simply don’t go out of style. They’re often quite funny, although of course there are also some minor ones. A fun extra is the fact that there is quite some variety in the length of the gags. While most of them are either a half or a full page long, using several panels, others are one panel gags, one or two per page or even spread out over two pages.
The last gag is one that has never been completed, with the soft pencil lines still visible, only a few parts of each panel colored and the original French text only vaguely visible. Of course this adds some character to this comic book.
If you haven’t had enough yet after flipping the last page, you’ll be very happy to see that even the space on the back of the cover is well used, picturing an extra one page gag.
It’s clearly visible in this album that Franquin’s drawing style has changed over the years. While Guust used to look a bit retarded at first, in later gags he looks more clumsy and less stupid. Despite still wearing the same old green sweater and his old blue shoes, he looks a lot less like a vagabond in the later comics.
Conclusion
Guust is probably the most clumsy, lazy employee you could imagine, yet at the same time he makes himself very likeable as everything he does is meant well. Nonetheless it never ends well. While this might sound like the gags are fairly predictable, the outcome of most of them is quite unexpected. The drawings themselves are also quite fun to watch, making this album a nice whole to get you in the right mood.
Guust #19 Een Flater Komt Nooit Alleen - Comic Book Review,
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