Asterix the Gaul

Astérix the Gaul (in French, Astérix le Gaulois) is a French comic strip series created by screenwriter René Goscinny (1926 -1977) and cartoonist Albert Uderzo (1927-2020), which first appeared on October 29, 1959 in the Pilote magazine before being published as an album. The series was conceived in the suburb of Bobigny (Seine-Saint Denis), France.

It has been translated into 111 languages and dialects (including Latin and ancient Greek), making it the most popular French comic in the world. 380 million copies have been sold and it is the most popular in the French-speaking world, along with the Belgian Tintin.

Details of a mural painting in Brussels where Astérix and Obélix appear

Plot

Asterix lives around 50 BC. C. in a fictional village northwest of Gaul, the only part of the country that has not yet been conquered by Julius Caesar, also a character in the series. The village is surrounded by four Roman camps: Babaorum (also sometimes translated as Pastelalrum), Aquarium, Laudanum, and Petibonum ("petit bonhomme"), sometimes translated as Hombrecitum. In this regard, we must cite the characteristic introduction of all comics:

We are in the year 50 before Jesus Christ. The whole Gaul is occupied by the Romans... All of it? No! A village populated by irreducible gallows still and as always resists the invader. And life is not easy for the garrisons of Roman legionaries in the small camps of Babaorum, Aquarium, Laudanum and Petibonum...

The stamina of these villagers is due to the superhuman strength they gain after drinking a magical potion concocted by their druid Panoramix. Many Asterix books have as their main plot the attempt of the Roman army to occupy the village and prevent the druid from preparing the potion or from getting some of it for his own benefit. These attempts are always frustrated by Asterix and Obelix thanks to the magic potion. Other important villagers are Assurancetúrix (the bard), Abraracúrcix (the village chief) and his wife Karabella, Ordenalfabetix (the fish seller), Esautomátix (the blacksmith), Edadepiedrix (the oldest in the village) and Ideafix, Obelix's dog There are many other recurring characters in the series, such as the wives of Edadepiedrix, Esautomátix and Ordenalfabétix (Yelosumarín) and, outside of the village population, pirates, Phoenician merchants, and historical figures such as Julius Caesar, Brutus and Cleopatra.

History

The paintings on Evariste Vital Luminais goths (1821-1896) had been popular in France and are a possible model for the Astérix series.

In Pilote magazine

Before creating the Asterix series, Goscinny and Uderzo had been successful with their Oumpah-pah series, published in Tintin magazine. In 1959, the publicist François Clauteaux launched Pilote, a magazine financed by Radio Luxembourg, and entrusted Goscinny, Uderzo, Jean-Michel Charlier and Jean Hébrard with the comics section of the new magazine. Uderzo and Goscinny first offered to adapt the Roman de Renart (a French medieval collection of animal stories) and produced some strips for the magazine. However, cartoonist Raymond Poïvet informed them that cartoonist Jean Trubert had already made a comic strip on the same subject for the Vaillant newspaper. Disappointed, they searched for a new idea.

Two months before the publication of the magazine, they met at Uderzo's flat in Bobigny. Goscinny came up with the idea of making a strip about French folklore and asked Uderzo to name the main periods of the magazine. history of France. Uderzo started with the Paleolithic and then moved on to the Gauls, a period that was obvious because it had never been depicted in comics. Within a few hours, the two partners created the Gallic village and its inhabitants. Uderzo's early sketches featured Asterix as a huge and strong traditional Gallic warrior. However, Goscinny had a different idea in his mind, envisioning Asterix as a cunning little warrior who would possess intelligence and wits rather than brute strength. Still, Uderzo felt the dwarfed hero needed a strong but dim-witted partner, to which Goscinny agreed. Thus Obelix was born.

Asterix was originally published in installments in Pilote, in whose first issue it appeared on October 29, 1959. In 1961 the first album was released, entitled Asterix the Gaul. Thereafter, albums were generally released on an annual basis. Its success was exponential: the first album sold 6,000 copies in its year of publication; a year later, the second sold 20,000. In 1963, the third sold 40,000; the fourth, published in 1964, sold 150,000. A year later, the fifth sold 300,000 copies; in 1966, Asterix and the Boss Fight sold 400,000 copies in its initial publication. The ninth volume of Asterix, when it went on sale in 1967, sold 1.2 million copies in two days. Despite the growing popularity of Asterix among readers, financial support for the publication of Pilote ceased. The magazine then passed into the hands of Georges Dargaud.

The last Asterix story in Pilote magazine was Asterix in Córcega, published in 1973 between numbers 687 and 708. Goscinny left magazine in 1974.

Post-Pilote Period

The year 1974 marked the founding of Studios Idéfix, which led to the publication of the third cartoon in the series, The Twelve Tests of Asterix, two more years late. Unlike the two previous films, this was not the result of an album adaptation, but Goscinny's writing of an original script, with the help of Pierre Tchernia.10 In 1974, the twenty-first film was also published. Asterix album, entitled Caesar's Gift, first published in Le Monde newspaper as a summer serial, becoming the first not to be published in Pilote. In 1975 La gran travesía appeared, after being published in the newspaper Sud Ouest, and in 1976 Obélix and company, which had previously appeared in the pages of Le Nouvel Observateur. In 1977, a dispute arose between Goscinny and his friend and publisher Georges Dargaud, relating in particular to the management of foreign rights to Asterix. Goscinny then thought of creating his own publishing company and asked Uderzo to suspend the production of the plates for the next episode of the series, Asterix in Belgium. However, on November 5, 1977, Goscinny died suddenly of a heart attack. Uderzo carried out Goscinny's solo project (painting dark skies on the remainder of the album from the point Goscinny died), which was completed in 1979 on Le Monde and then as an album, later creating Éditions Albert René , 20% financed by Gilberte Goscinny, the widow of the deceased.

After Goscinny's death

Uderzo continued the series at the popular request of readers, who implored him to continue. He continued to publish new volumes in the series, albeit less frequently. Many critics and fans of the series prefer the early collaborations with Goscinny. In 1979 Uderzo created his own publishing house, Éditions Albert René, which has published all the albums drawn and written by Uderzo alone since then. However, Dargaud, the initial publisher of the series, retained publishing rights to the first 24 albums made by Uderzo and Goscinny. In 1990, the Uderzo and Goscinny families decided to sue Dargaud for the rights. In 1998, after a long trial, Dargaud lost the rights to publish and sell the albums. Uderzo decided to sell these rights to publisher Hachette instead of Albert-René, but the publishing rights for the new albums remained the property of Albert Uderzo (40%), Sylvie Uderzo (20%) and Anne Goscinny (40%).

In December 2008, Uderzo sold his stake to Hachette, which took control of the company. In a letter published in the French newspaper Le Monde in 2009, Uderzo's daughter Sylvie attacked the decision. of his father to sell the family publishing company and the rights to produce new adventures of Asterix after his death. She stated that:

... the co-creator of Astérix, the hero of the French comic, has betrayed the Gallo warrior to the Romans of today – the men of industry and finance.

However, René Goscinny's daughter Anne also agreed to the continuation of the series and sold her rights at the same time. She is claimed to have said that "Asterix has already had two lives: one during my father's lifetime and one after." Why not a third?" A few months later, Uderzo appointed three illustrators, who had been his assistants for many years, to continue the series. In 2011, Uderzo announced the release of a new album of Astérix in 2013, with Jean-Yves Ferri as story writer and Frédéric Mébarki as cartoonist. A year later, in 2012, the publishing house Albert-René announced that Frédéric Mébarki had given up drawing the new album, due to the pressure he felt following in Uderzo's footsteps. It was officially announced that cartoonist Didier Conrad would take over Mébarki's drawing duties, with the new album's 2013 delivery date unchanged.

In January 2015, following the murders of seven cartoonists for the Parisian satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, the creator of Asterix, Albert Uderzo, came out of retirement to draw two paintings of Asterix in honor of the memory of the victims.

Characters

Comical traits

The humor featured in Asterix is often based on anachronistic caricatures and stereotypes of contemporary European nations:

• In Asterix and goths, for example, godos are represented as militarized and regimentated, similar to the Prussians of the end of the centuryXIX and early centuriesXX.. The helmets used even resemble the German Pickelhaube used in the First World War, and one of its leaders resemble Otto von Bismarck a lot.
• A characteristic anachronism is when a Belgian enters on stage, which will always make an allusion to fries that, however, were not discovered by the Europeans until 1500 years later.
• Bretons (actually the bretanos) are shown as educated: they drink warm beer or hot water (before Asterix took the first tea to England) and boil all his food. In this chapter, Winston Churchill is characterized as Zebigbos (the big boss: ‘the great boss’), head of the village that resists the Romans, and there are minor appearances of The Beatles and Sherlock Holmes. The jokes about English gastronomy and its bad taste are common.
• Hispania is the cheap country in the south where people from the north go on vacation (and ask to eat the same food they eat in their homes), causing tremendous bottlenecks in the Roman roads during their journeys. Other recurrent topics include flamenco, bulls and olive oil in gastronomy. Reference is also made to the famous character of Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote de la Mancha.
• The Greeks are shown as individuals with huge families, as noted in the continuing allusions to "primos".

In an interview for Bang! of 1973, Goscinny defended himself against the accusations of chauvinism in the following terms:

Asérix It's a parody. I would say, if anything, that it is precisely a parody of chauvinism. From departure it is French, as it could be from any other country that today is in similar circumstances. Their themes, if you look closely, are those of the people around us, although to determine the nationalities you must go to the topics. The average Spanish, like the middle French or the middle Italian, have their pluriemple and their labor problems, and on the street they are not recognizable, but to determine them I have to laugh at precisely their topics, dress the Spanish bullfighter, turn the French into a "Monsieur Dupont" and make the Italian ardent.

The truth is that stereotypes of French regions are also caricatured: people from Normandy cannot give a direct answer; the people of Marseille play petanque and exaggerate everything, the Corsicans are extremely touchy, lazy, they fight over everything and don't forgive a good nap. On the other hand, in the book Asterix in Córcega a parallel is established between the biography of the young Napoleon and the story itself, when they take refuge in a cave. The Bonaparte family had to live hidden in the mountains when his father withdrew his support from his former companions, the Corsican independentistas.

The character names, on the other hand, invariably play on French phonetics and lose much of their hook in translations. The ending -ix of Gallic nouns is very useful in French, as it coincides phonetically with common endings such as -ixe or -isque, which It doesn't happen in Spanish. This is the case of Idéfix or Ideafix, for example, whose French name phonetically coincides exactly with idée fixe ("fixed idea"), which does not occur in its Spanish adaptation, or that of the bard Assurancetourix (assurance tous risques: 'all risk insurance), which loses sound in its adaptation Seguroatodoriésguix and is not understood in Asegurancéturix. The same goes for non-Gallic names:

• Egyptians: Courdeténis, whose Spanish translation allowed to maintain the same sound in "Campodeténis".
• Godos: they are based on Germanic names, which in French end in - Yeah. (as in Téodoric), which allows to play with termination - (as in alégorique). Spanish equivalencies would be - Boy. with i tonic in the first case (Theodoric) and atone in the second (allegorical/a). The phonetic game is difficult in Spanish and the equivalence is not maintained:figure alégorique: ‘Alegric configuration’) sounds in French in German, but not in Spanish.
• Iberos: Soupalognon and Croutonsoupe à l’oignon and crouton: ‘onion soup’ and ‘pictoste’), in Spanish Sopalajo de Arriérez and Torrezno; Dansonsurlepon and Davignon (dansons sur le pont and d’Avignon, ‘bailemos on the bridge’ and ‘ Avignon’), refers to the lyrics of a traditional French song. In Spanish it was called Porrompompero and Fandánguez.
• Normans: Grossebaf (grosse baffe: ‘great slap’).
• Romans: BabaorumBaba au rhum: ‘pastel drunk al ron’), in Spanish, Pastelalrum; Petibónum (petit bonhomme: ‘man’ or ‘person on foot’), in Spanish, in some books, Malecitum; Joligibus (joli gibus: ‘bonita chepa’), in Spanish, Caius Magníficus.
• Vikings: Zoodvinsen (Vincennes Zoo, name of the Paris Zoo, Neuillisursen (Neuilly-sur-Seine, a French population).

Some of the supporting characters are caricatures of famous people or characters, including Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, Jacques Chirac, Laurel and Hardy, Sean Connery, Kirk Douglas, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Julian Assange, and even the detectives Hernández and Fernández, thus paying homage to the Belgian cartoonist Hergé, creator of Tintin. Another reference of this type is found in the figure of Franquin's Marsupilami (Spirou and Fantasio), presented here as an amusement fair rarity, with the name of Marsupilamix, or Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse.

In the form of a posthumous tribute, Uderzo made René Goscinny appear as a character in The Odyssey of Asterix, in the figure of the Hebrew Saúl Oysolteroenlaví, who guides Asterix and Obelix to the shore of the Dead Sea. The couple Uderzo and Goscinny appear caricatured on three other occasions.

Published albums

Uderzo drawing Asterix, 1971

The following is the title in Spanish and French, and the year of the album release in French. The * symbol has a link to the official website.

Albums 1 through 24 were published in French by éditions Hachette, and from 25 onwards by Les Éditions Albert René.

Lots of French editions of albums, from No. 1 to 34; missing 28: Asterix in India (Asterix chez Rahàzade).

Albums signed by René Goscinny (guionist) and Albert Uderzo (bujante)

• 1. Asterix the Galo (Asterix le Gaulois, 1961) *
• 2. The Golden Hoz ( The Serpe d'or1962 *
• 3. Asterix and goths (Asterix chez les Goths1963) *
• 4. Asterix gladiador (Astérix Gladiateur, 1964) *
• 5. Back to the Galia of Astérix (Le Tour de Gaule d'Astérix, 1965) *
• 6. Asterix and Cleopatra (Astérix et Cléopatre, 1965) *
• 7. The Fight of the Chiefs (Le Combat des Chefs, 1966) *
• 8. Asterix in Brittany (Asterix chez les Bretons, 1966) *
• 9. Asterix and Normans (Astérix et les Normands, 1966) *
• 10. Asterix Legionnaire (Asterix Légionnaire, 1967) *
• 11. The Arvernal Shield (Le Bouclier Arverne, 1968) *
• 12. Asterix and Olympic Games (Astérix aux Jeux Olympiques, 1968) *
• 13. Astérix and the Caldero (Astérix et le Chaudron, 1969) *
• 14. Astérix en Hispania (Asérix en Hispanie, 1969) *
• 15. The tares (The Zizanie1970 *
• 16. Asterix in Helvecia (Astérix chez les Helvètes1970 *
• 17. The residence of the gods (Le Domaine des Dieux, 1971) *
• 18. The Laurels of Caesar (Les Lauriers de César, 1972) *
• 19. The adivin (Le Devin, 1972) *
• 20. Asterix in Corsica (Asterix in Corse1973 *
• 21. The gift of Caesar (Cadeau of Caesar, 1974) *
• 22. The great journey (The Great Traversée1975) *
• 23. Obélix and company (Obélix et Compagnie1976) *
• 24. Asterix in Belgium (Asterix chez les Belges, 1979) *

Lots of French editions of albums, from n.o 1 to 38, more The Secret of the Magic Potion (Le Secret de la potion magique), album relative to the film Asterix: The Secret of the Magic Potionmissing number 7: The Fight of the Chiefs (Le Combat des chefs).

Albums signed solo by Albert Uderzo after the death of René Goscinny in 1977

• 25. The great ditch (Le Grand Fossé, 1980) *
• 26. The Odyssey of Astherix (L'Odyssée d'Astérix1981) *
• 27. The son of Astherix (Le Fils d'Asterix1983) *
• 28. Asterix in India (Asterix chez Rahàzade, 1987) *
• 29. Asterix, rose and sword (La Rose et le Glaive1991) *
• 30. The evil drink of Obélix (La Galère d'Obélix1996) *
• 31. Asterix and Latraviata (Astérix et Latraviata2001) *

Album signed by René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo

• 32. Asterix and never seen (Astérix et la Rentrée gauloise1993 and reissued in 2003

Album signed solo by Albert Uderzo

• 33. Heaven falls on us! (Le Ciel lui tombe sur la tête, 2005) *

Album signed by René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo

• 34. The anniversary of Astérix and Obélix. The book of gold (L'Anniversaire d'Astérix et Obélix - Le Livre d'or, 2009) *. This album celebrates the 50th anniversary of the creation of Astérix.

Albums signed by Jean-Yves Ferri (guionist) and Didier Conrad (dibujante)

• 35. Asterix and pictos (Asérix chez les Pictes, 2013) *
• 36. The Papire of Caesar (Le Papyrus of Caesar, 2015) *
• 37. Asterix in Italy (Astérix et la Transitalique, 2017) *
• 38. The daughter of Vercingétorix (La fille de Vercingétorix, 2019) *
• 39. Asterix behind the tap tracks (Astérix et le Griffon2021) *

There is also a book called How Obelix fell into the Druid's kettle when he was little (Comment Obelix est tombé dans la marmite du Druide quand il était petit, 1989), illustrated by Uderzo in the early 1980s, based on a short story written decades earlier by Goscinny to explain this particular point in history. This book, despite having the classic drawing style, is not considered a comic, since it lacks boxes and has only 10 pages. The adventure is narrated in the first person by Asterix himself and the illustrations show the heroes of the Gallic village as children.

In addition, in 2020 El menhir de oro was reissued as an illustrated album and audiobook on the internet. This is an album by Goscinny and Uderzo, not in comic format, first published as a record book in 1967 and which today was practically impossible to find.

Translations

The amount of translations of Asterix albums is extraordinary; They have been published in more than 100 languages and the total number of editions reaches 1,460.

In Spain, Astérix was published for the first time by the Molino publishing house in 1965. Shortly after, Bruguera publishing house began to include it in its magazines DDT (1967), Gran Pulgarcito and Mortadelo.

In Argentina, the publishing house Libros del Zorzal relaunched in May 2021 the complete collection in its final edition, with new translations from French made directly from the original scripts by René Goscinny. The 38 volumes of the series include not only the classic period of the character, but also the entire cycle of Albert Uderzo as an integral author, in addition to the new adventures conceived in recent years, by Jean-Yves Ferri and Didier Conrad.

Adaptations to other media

Animated films

1. Asterix the Galo (1967)
2. Asterix and Cleopatra (1968)
3. The Twelve Tests of Asterix (1976)
4. Asterix and the Surprise of Caesar (1985)
5. Asterix in Brittany (1987)
6. The Menhir coup (1989)
7. Astrology in América (1994)
8. Asterix and Vikings (2006)
9. Asterix: The Residence of the Gods (2014)
10. Asterix: The Secret of the Magic Potion (2018)

Live Action Movies

1. Asterix and Obélix against Caesar (1999)
2. Asterix and Obélix: Cleopatra Mission (2002)
3. Asterix at the Olympic Games (2008)
4. Asterix and Obélix at the service of their majesty (2012)
5. Asterix and Obélix: The Middle Kingdom (2023)

Other related books

1. Asterix and the real story, by René Van Royen and Sunnya van der Vegt (1999). Study that — across the world of Astérix — shows the world of grecorromean antiquity. The authors specialize in History and Philology, respectively.
2. Asterix alea jacta est, role play with characters Asérix.
3. Parodias de Astérix as Isterix or Hysterix (published in Spain as Istérix inside the "Collection big parodies", Dragon Comics, 1989)
4. The kitchen with AstérixAsterix's recipe book.
5. Asterix and nuclear, a book (original in German: "Astérix und Atomkraftwerk") published in Spanish in 1981 by the ecological group Brisa. It is edited in black and white with vignettes of other books with the totally altered text. The final result was a new story aimed at spreading the danger of nuclear power plants.

Video Games

1. Asérixvideo game for Atari 2600 (1983)
2. Obélixvideo game for Atari 2600 (1983)
3. Asterix and the magic caldero, video game for Sinclair ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC and Commodore 64 (1984)
4. Asérix, video game for Master System (1991)
5. Asérix, video game for arcade (1992)
6. AsérixNES, SNES (1993)
7. Astérix and the secret mission, video game for Sega Master System and Megadrive (1993)
8. Astérix and the great rescue, video game for Megadrive, Master System, Game Gear (1993)
9. Asterix and OBELIX, video game for Gameboy Color, SNES and Gameboy Advance (1999)
10. Asterix looking for Ideafix, video game for Gameboy Color (2000)
11. Asterix in the War of Galiasvideo game for PlayStation (2000)
12. Asterix mega maddnessvideo game for PlayStation (2001)
13. Asterix " Obelix XXL video game for PlayStation 2, GameCube (2003)
14. Asterix & Obelix XXL 2: Las Vegum Missionvideo game for PlayStation 2, GameCube (2005)
15. Asterix at the Olympic Games, video game for PlayStation 2, Windows, Xbox 360, Nintendo DS, Wii (2008)

Spoofs

1. In Spain, in the humor program Wow., emitted by the autonomic chain ETB 2, there appear some humorous sketches on a "vascongala" village that resists the Romans, with characters such as Antxonix (Asterix's guild), Boronix (Obelix's guild) and Arguiñanix (Panoramix's parody).
2. Also in Spain, in the humor program Oregon Television, broadcast by the autonomic chain Aragón Televisión, developed a section entitled Asterixco and Obélixco, the Maña village.
3. In 2008, in Argentina, Ediciones Nah! (responsible of the magazine Nah!) published a comic book in the same format and style of Dargaud editions entitled "Marihuanix, the Dutch". The book is a parody-homenaje of Astérix, by René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo. In this way, two fundamental facts of 2009 were anticipated: the decriminalization of marijuana for personal consumption in Argentina and the fiftieth anniversary of the French cartoon.

Influence on popular culture

• The first satellite launched by France in 1965 was called Asérix.
• The name of the pet of the 1998 Football World Cup in France, Footix, was originated by suffix -ix. of the names of the characters.
• During the Paris campaign to the 1992 Olympic Games headquarters, Astérix appears in many posters on the Eiffel Tower.
• The FIFA World Cup final football match in 2006 between France and Italy was represented in the French newspapers as a struggle between Roman legions and Galician villagers.
• Obélix is mentioned in the theme "My Boulder" by The King Blues.
• A total of 34 stars from the international comic, from David Lloyd V de Vendetta) until Zep (creator of Titeuf), the Italian Milo Manara or the Spanish Forges and Juanjo Guarnido participated in a comic in homage to Uderzo for its 80th anniversary and a tribute to Asérix.
• France issued 310 000 commemorative coins of 2 euros in 2019 celebrating the 60th anniversary of Astérix.