Asterix: A Retrospective

I've been feeling nostalgic again. In one of my recent searches for inspiration (or procrastination), I've been looking at works which incorporate the archetypal "big one, little one" duo I've been working with. And it was through this I re-discovered Asterix, a French comic series written by Rene Goscinny and illustrated by Albert Uderzo. The stories were initially serialised in the comics magazine Pilote, but were later published as individual "albums".

In 50 B.C.E., Julius Caesar has conquered the land of Gaul and subjugated its peoples, with one exception; a small coastal village in the region of Armorica (present day Brittany). Ruled by Chief Vitalstatistix, the villagers have managed to resist Roman occupation through a magic potion brewed by the druid, Getafix, which grants superhuman strength to whoever drinks it.  Our main protagonist is Asterix, one of the village's warriors who is renowned for his wits and cunning. It's these qualities which result in him being entrusted with the most important missions. Asterix is accompanied on his adventures by his best friend, Obelix. A much larger man, Obelix carves and supplies "menhirs", and his primary pleasures in life are eating and fighting. While he's not as intelligent as Asterix, he makes up for it with his strength; he fell into a cauldron of magic potion as a baby, and so it has a permanent effect on him. The stories revolve around either Asterix and Obelix going on adventures away from the village to other parts of Gaul and further afield, or are centred on the village with whatever plot the Romans cook up to try and achieve victory.

The humour is very accessible, with a mix of slapstick fight scenes, silly names, subtle social commentaries, and Classical Age versions of pretty much every European stereotype imaginable. However, these stereotypes are rarely anything other than good-natured...with the possible exception of Asterix and the Goths, which depicts the Germanic peoples as militaristic and warmongering, but that album came out when the Second World War was still in recent memory, and they did feature more sympathetic Goth characters in later albums. While the comics were originally written in French, they have nonetheless exported very well. Translators were given a lot of leeway over the puns, providing that they kept the story the same. While the protagonists are always called Asterix and Obelix, the rest of the characters have different names in every version, just so the puns will work. And while there are plenty of fights, nobody actually gets killed in these stories (at least, nobody's shown getting killed).

I think my favourite of the albums I revisited is Asterix and the Banquet. The Roman general Overanxious seeks to build a wall around the village to cut them off from the rest of the world (and possibly make them pay for it). In response, Asterix proposes a bet that the wall is to be taken down if he and Obelix can escape and go on a round trip of Gaul, bringing back various regional delicacies. This was the fifth album to be published, but the twenty-third to be translated, as much of the humour revolved around French regional stereotypes. With that in mind, I think they're a lot funnier this time around.

That said, I feel that I need to find some of the albums published in the 1970s, when Goscinny tried to incorporate some more adult satire. For example, in Oblelix & Co, a Roman official tries to conquer the village by introducing them to capitalism. I've heard it's such an accurate depiction of business and economics that it's actually used in some schools to teach the subject. That period is seen as when the series peaked.

However, it didn't last. Goscinny died in 1977, prompting Uderzo to assume the role of both writer and illustrator. Uderzo later admitted that he didn't really know what direction to take, and his stories incorporated more fantasy elements (I will say that Asterix and the Magic Carpet was my introduction to the series, through an audio-book done by Willie Rushton). Some of them still hold up, and I get a few laughs out of them, but they don't quite have the humour of Goscinny's stories. The most recent one I read was Asterix and Obelix All at Sea, and that one was really heavy-handed, with very little humour. And Kirk Douglas, for some reason.

Uderzo himself retired in 2011, and sold the rights to another publishing company. They're still making the stories, now written by Jean-Yves Ferri and illustrated by Didier Conrad. I've not read any of those ones, so I can't really comment on them.

Sorry, I seem to have rattled on a fair bit. If you can ever get your hands on the albums, I definitely recommend that you check them out. You never know, I might even do a franchise review on them if I can get my hands on a collection.

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