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A few days behind schedule, here’s the third part of Nic & de Kuyssche’s football opus (which still hasn’t featured any actual football). (See Part 1, Part 2.)
[Not a valid template]Moustique (“Mosquito”) is the magazine Fantasio usually works for, and is actually one of Dupuis’ other publications. A weekly news, culture and lifestyle magazine, it features an extensive TV guide, and was therefore rebranded Telemoustique from the late 1960s to 2011. Leon appears to be an original character.
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Leon is also the first name of Prunelle, the main boss of Gaston Lagaffe, after Fantasio had to take a general leave.
I can see some superficial similarities between this Leon, and Prunelle, actually. Even though he appears to have been neutered even further than Fantasio, it looks somewhat like Prunelle being redrawn since someone objected to his inclusion… (A conspiracy…)
Yes, I noticed that, but why would he suddenly be a reporter in some [i]Telemoustique[/i] regional office? (Of course, you might ask the same about Fantasio’s jobs as globetrotting [i]Moustique[/i] photojournalist freelancer vs. [i]Journal de Spirou[/i] editor.)
Anyway, I can’t believe de Kuyssche would have imagined he could use a [i]Gaston[/i] character in such a major role. After all, Franquin was still doing [i]Gaston[/i] regularly at that point (I count 15 pages published in 1981), and he insisted on keeping the two comics pretty separate. Also, as it happens, a scan of the original of the first page here is [url=http://www.europauction.com/html/fiche.jsp?id=3322841]available online[/url], and although it’s too small to say for sure, I can see no signs of alteration of the character.
This was written (and maybe drawn?) in a hurry, right? So I think it makes sense they would have based the character on a pre-existing one (in this case Prunelle), not on purpose, but because they had to come up with something quickly, and through assosiation, came up with something that resembled someone else.
I like that explanation! Makes sense to me.
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