The women of The Indomitable Village have called to replace Cacofonix as the schoolteacher, prompting him to leave. Not long afterwards, his replacement arrives; a female bard from Lutetia named Bravura. Not long after her arrival, she begins holding classes for the women, and her teachings start to develop rifts between them and their husbands. Meanwhile, the Roman agent Manlius Claphamomnibus is sent to Gaul with the eponymous secret weapon; an all-female unit of legionaries, taking advantage of Gaulish gallantry in that they will never fight a woman.
Not very secret, I know. A lot of the humour in this one simply revolves around gender stereotypes. Those kind of jokes you could get away with in the Nineties, when this album was published, but they haven't aged well. As for the story, it borrows a lot of elements from Asterix and Caesar's Gift, with an outsider prompting a leadership challenge in the village.
My main issue with this one is Bravura. She's what you might call a "straw feminist" who believes in gender superiority rather than gender equality, and merely exists to be proven wrong. She influences the village women to essentially take over, and make Impedimenta the chieftain, which results in Vitalstastix leading an exodus into the forests. She also makes some rather questionable advances on Asterix.
Now, to be fair, there are some moments which still make me laugh, cringe-inducing as this particular comic turned out to be. The women of the village set up a shopping mall to defeat the secret weapon, and Claphamomnibus tries to recruit the standing garrisons. Because Obelix feels sidelined, Asterix encourages him to follow the agent, so he can single-handedly clobber the garrison at Aquarium. After they're leaving, Asterix makes a comment about his friend not flattening the camp completely, when someone sneezes and the fortifications collapse.
Sorry, this one wasn't really my cup of tea. I think Rick and Morty explored this kind of story a little better.
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