Gaston #18

Volume 18 of Franquin's beloved Gaston series arrives with a cover that says it all — the title "Lagaffe Mérite des Baffes" ("Lagaffe Deserves a Smack") is right there in bold green lettering, and the scene beneath it delivers on that promise with gleeful chaos. Gaston stands grinning amid what appears to be a crumpled vehicle disaster, while a exasperated uniformed officer looks on in dismay and a startled bird shrieks "HIHIHAAARRH" overhead. Published by Dupuis in 2017, this is the kind of cheerfully anarchic slapstick that has made Gaston Lagaffe one of Franco-Belgian comics' most enduring and lovable disasters-in-human-form.