René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo

Born August 14, 1926 (Paris, France)
Died November 5, 1977 (Paris, France)
French author

Born April 27, 1927 (Fismes, France)
French artist

"Cartoons, especially humorous cartoons, were not very good at the time [the late 1950s] in France. Our ambition was to really bring up the standards."

ALBERT UDERZO

In the years following the end of World War II (1939–45; war in which Great Britain, France, the Soviet Union, the United States, and their allied forces defeated Germany, Italy, and Japan), the French people wanted to recover from their country's occupation by the German Nazi forces and rebuild their national identity. In 1949, a law was passed in France to govern the types of characters acceptable in children's literature. It banned characters like Batman and Tarzan, who represented physical strength and perfection and were a reminder of the kinds of images used by the Nazis in their wartime propaganda. The law also tried to shield French children from American culture, which was seen by many in France as a threat to their traditional way of life. So, as Russell Davies explains in The Times Literary Supplement, when René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo began working on Astérix together in the late 1950s they were under pressure to create something that was both recognizably French and contained no physically attractive characters. Astérix, Obelix, and their many strange-looking friends who inhabit the dozens of books that make up the long-running and best-selling series were the result.

Best-Known Works

The Astérix Series (Goscinny and Uderzo)

Astérix le gaulois (1961), as Asterix the Gaul. 1969.

La Serpe d'or (1962), as Asterix and the Golden Sickle. 1975.

Astérix et les goths (1963), as Asterix and the Goths. 1974.

Astérix gladiateur (1964), as Asterix the Gladiator. 1969.

Astérix et Cleopatre (1965), as Asterix and Cleopatra. 1969.

Le Tour de gaule d' Astérix (1965), as Asterix and the Banquet. 1979.

Astérix et les normands (1966), as Asterix and the Normans. 1978.

Astérix chez les bretons (1966), as Asterix in Britain. 1970.

Le Combat des chefs (1966), as Asterix and the Big Fight. 1971.

Astérix legionnaire (1967), as Asterix, the Legionary. 1970.

Astérix aux jeux olympiques (1968), as Asterix at the Olympic Games. 1972.

Le Bouclier arverne (1968), as Asterix and the Chieftain's Shield. 1977.

Astérix et le chaudron (1969), as Asterix and the Cauldron. 1976.

Astérix en Hispanie (1969), as Asterix in Spain. 1971.

Astérix chez les helvetes (1970), as Asterix in Switzerland. 1973.

La Zizanie (1970), as Asterix and the Roman Agent. 1972.

Les Maisons des dieux (1971), as The Mansions of the Gods. 1971.

Le Devin (1972), as Asterix and the Sooth-sayer. 1975.

Les Lauriers de Cesar (1972), as Asterix and the Laurel Wreath. 1974.

Astérix en Corse (1973), as Asterix in Corsica. 1979.

Le Cadeau de Cesar (1974), as Asterix and Caesar's Gift. 1977.

La Grande Traversee (1975), as Asterix and the Great Crossing. 1977.

Obelix et compagnie (1976), as Obelix and Co. 1978.

Rene Goscinny et Albert Uderzo presentent les douze travaux d'Astérix (1976), as Rene Goscinny and Albert Underzo Present the Twelve Tasks of Asterix. 1978.

Three Adventures of Asterix. 1979.

Astérix chez les Belges (1979), as Asterix in Belgium, 1980.

The Astérix Series (Uderzo alone, but credited as Goscinny and Uderzo)

Le grand fossé (1980), as Asterix and the Great Divide. 1981.

L'Odyssée d'Astérix (1981), as Asterix and the Black Gold. 1982.

Le fils d'Astérix (1983), as Asterix and Son. 1983.

Astérix chez Raházade (1987), as Asterix and the Magic Carpet. 1988.

La rose et le glaive (1991), as Asterix and the Secret Weapon. 1991.

La galère d'Obélix (1996), as Asterix and Obelix All at Sea. 1996.

Astérix et Latraviata (2001), as Asterix and the Actress. 2001.

Astérix et la rentrée gauloise (2003), as Asterix and the Class Act. 2003.

Astérix et le ciel lui tombé sur la tete (2005), as Astérix and the Falling Sky. 2005.

Movies

Astérix le gaulois. 1967.

Astérix et Cleopatra. 1970.

Douze Travaux D'Astérix. 1976.

Astérix in Amerika. 1994.

Astérix and the Vikings. 2005.

René Goscinny

René Goscinny was born in Paris, France, in 1926. His parents were both from Eastern Europe and met in Paris. His father, Stanislas Goscinny, was a Polish chemical engineer from Warsaw, Poland, and his mother Anna came from Ukraine; Goscinny also had an older brother, Claude. In 1928, the family moved to Argentina when Stanislas took a job there. Goscinny finished his secondary education at the College de Francais in Buenos Aires, but began to work as an assistant accountant at the age of seventeen after the sudden death of his father. He parlayed his self-taught drawing skills into a job working as an illustrator at an advertising agency, then moved with his mother to New York City in 1945. He also traveled to France, where he joined the French army in 1946. After his return to New York, Goscinny struggled at first to find work as an illustrator, but in 1948 he became art director for Kunen Publishers, produced cartoons for MAD magazine, and began writing books for children before returning to Paris in 1950.

Albert Uderzo

Albert Uderzo's family came from Italy, but he was born in Fismes, near Reims, in northeast France, on April 27, 1927. At the age of fourteen, Uderzo went to Paris and, like Goscinny, found work as an advertising company illustrator, despite suffering from color blindness. When the Nazi occupation began he fled to Brittany with his brother, Bruno; Uderzo would later make Brittany the setting for the village in which Astérix lives. After World War II he worked as an engineer before returning to work as an animator and illustrator at various magazines and newspapers. In France, comics (the French call them bande dessinée) appeared in magazines and newspapers either as comic strips or as single illustrations; there was not yet a steady industry for book-length comics. He created several comic characters in the late 1940s, including Clopinard, a one-legged, aging soldier from the Napoleonic wars whose battling spirit has been likened to Astérix.

Goscinny and Uderzo met in the early 1950s, when they were both working at the Paris office of Belgian publisher World Press. Goscinny continued to work for American publications, including writing the "Lucky Luke" cowboy comic strip from 1955 until his death in 1977. The pair also began to develop projects together, including "Jehan Pistolet," for La Libre Junior, and "Sylvie" for the women's magazine Bonne Soirées. In 1955, along with Jean-Michel Charlier and Jean Hébrard, they formed their own advertising and press agency, Edifrance/Edipresse, which provided them with an outlet for several comic strips, including "Bill Blanchart" (Goscinny and Uderzo), and "Clairette" (Charlier and Uderzo).

In the early 1950s, Goscinny and Uderzo worked on a strip called "Oumpah Pah le Peau Rouge" ("Oumpah Pah the Red Indian"), which was abandoned for several years but eventually appeared in Tintin magazine in five episodes ending in 1962 (the magazine was started by the great Belgian comics creator Hergé whose Tintin books were among the most popular in Europe). "Oumpah Pah" is set in eighteenth-century North America among French colonists and centers on the hero Oumpah Pah, whose tribe must learn to live alongside an occupying force. There are a lot of similarities between this and the small Gaulish village of the later and much more successful Astérix stories. Just as Astérix irritates the Romans, Oumpah Pah gets mixed up in various adventures, most of which involve making fun of the colonists. The series was translated into several languages and even appeared in English in the United States. But possibly because of its questionable view of Native Americans, the series did not last long.

Invented very French hero

The strip "Astérix" first appeared in Goscinny and Uderzo's magazine, Pilote, on October 29, 1959, and quickly became the most popular comic strip in France. As Goscinny's Times (London) obituary notes: "From the first appearance of Astérix le Gaulois in [1959], the exploits of the Gaul whose village has never surrendered and will never surrender to the Romans, were translated into 15 languages.… Like Popeye and his spinach, Astérix, his magic potion and the tortuous jokes put into his mouth by Goscinny, became household figures." Set in Gaul, France, in 50 bce, the stories center on Astérix, a plucky little warrior with a large nose. The main characters live in a small village that is managing to resist the Roman occupation of Gaul only through defiance, ingenuity, and a potion devised by the druid Getafix (Panoramix in the original French) that gives anyone who drinks it enormous strength. Obelix, a huge block of a man and Astérix's sidekick, fell into the potion as a baby, making the effects permanent. As a result, he has carved out a career as a delivery man, toting huge rocks for use in building dolmen (monuments made from large pieces of stone).

Astérix is partly a comment on the wartime Nazi occupation of France, but it is also an affectionate nod toward France and its attempts to hang on to its own identity in the face of a tidal wave of American popular culture. When in 1989 the theme park Parc Astérix opened near Euro Disney in northern France, it made a point of including "inventions that are 100 percent made in Gaul." In fact, one of the few places where "Asterix" has not been a largescale hit is in the United States. Some observers have commented that the differences between Astérix and Mickey Mouse say more about Europe and America than first appears, for Astérix wants to be left alone to do things his way, while Mickey is more approachable. Helen Laville, of The New Statesman, makes the point that "Astérix is not so much French as non-American. And we are just as much in need of this non-American hero [in 2001] as in 1959."

The comic album (the European equivalent of a graphic novel) series began with Astérix the Gaul in 1961, which had an initial print run of six thousand copies. Its popularity grew quickly, and by 1967 Goscinny and Uderzo felt confident enough to concentrate on Astérix as their primary work. Russell Davies notes in the Times Literary Supplement that by the mid-1970s the first album in the series alone had sold 23 million copies, roughly the same number as the entire Tintin series sold over a period of forty years. Those sales figures seem even more remarkable when it is remembered that Astérix is a celebration of French culture, pokes fun at obscure elements of French life, and features jokes in Latin.

French Humor

At first the Frenchness of the humor in the Astérix books stood in the way of translating Goscinny's and Uderzo's creation into other languages. Astérix is full of puns and word games that are specific to the French language. Even the names of the characters did not always translate directly. For example Obelix's dog is called Idefix in the original French editions, a pun on the French phrase that translates as "fixed idea" in English. Because "Fixed Idea" is not a good name for a dog, the translators Anthea Bell and Derek Hockridge changed the name to "Dogmatix," making a pun similar to Goscinny's on the English word "dogmatic." Much of the humor in the series is in the names, and these vary even between British English and American translations. For example, a character who sells fish is called "Unhygenix" in England and "Epidemix" in the United States; "Arthritix," the village elder, is known as "Geriatrix" in England. Even the accent over the "e" in Astérix's name was removed in English translation, becoming Asterix. But whatever the language is, the playful spirit of these bad-yet-good puns, combined with Uderzo's distinctive drawings, helps make Astérix the best-loved comic series of all time in France, and a popular series throughout Europe.

Fifty years of Astérix adventures

Each of the albums takes Astérix on a new adventure, often to a new part of the Roman Empire, with some of the notable volumes being Astérix and Cleopatra (1965), Astérix in Britain (1966), and Astérix in Spain (1969). Each of the stories makes fun of the mannerisms, traditions, and obsessions of the nations Astérix visits. The English, for example, drink hot water and milk because tea has yet to be discovered; in Spain, Astérix invents bullfighting. In other books, well-known characters from real life, classic literature, the entertainment world, and other comics appear as caricatures (exaggerated representations of themselves). For example, wartime Italian dictator Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) appears as a Roman centurion in Astérix and the Big Fight (1966), Thompson and Thomson from the Tintin comic album series appear in Astérix in Belgium (1979), while actor Sean Connery (1930–) appears as a spy in Astérix and the Black Gold (1981). In the early 1970s, Goscinny and Uderzo also had success with a spin-off series featuring the dog, Idefix.

Goscinny died suddenly from a heart attack on November 5, 1977, leaving behind his wife, Gilberte, and his daughter, Anna (born in 1968). After Goscinny's death, Uderzo completed Astérix in Belgium, drawing in the book's final frame a small, lonely rabbit in an empty field. This represents Gilberte Goscinny; her husband's pet name for her was "petite lapin," or little rabbit. Uderzo did not return to the Astérix series until 1980, with the book Astérix and the Great Divide. Uderzo retired temporarily in 1991 following the publication of Astérix and the Secret Weapon. By 1995 he decided he had been too hasty in retiring Astérix and revived the series with Astérix and Obelix All at Sea (1996). Since that time, he has continued to produce albums: the thirty-third in the series, Astérix and the Falling Sky, came out in 2005 and was, like so many others, an immediate success. All of the albums produced by Uderzo continue to carry Goscinny's name as a loving tribute to his former partner.

Although Uderzo's solo output of Astérix books has been much lower than during the years of his partnership with Goscinny, the series has retained its popularity, especially in Europe. The most recent album sold more than 5.5 million copies, and only half of these were in French. In France it is by far the most popular comic book series, and the French are so proud of the little hero that the first French satellite, launched in 1965, was named Astérix. The Astérix books have been translated into one hundred languages and are the basis for a multi-million-dollar European franchise that includes toys and memorabilia, a series of movies, and computer games. Unusual for a comic book series, Astérix has also been used in education, to teach history, Latin, and other languages; the books have even appeared on college history course reading lists.

For More Information

Books

Duchane, Alain. Albert Uderzo. Paris: Le Chane, 2003.

Kessler, Peter. Complete Guide to Astérix. London: Hodder, 1996.

Periodicals

Davies, Russell. Times Literary Supplement (London) (April 2, 1976): p. 384.

Horn, Caroline. "The Obelix Man: Albert Uderzo." The Bookseller (July 15, 2005): p. 24.

Laville, Helen. "A Little Star." New Statesman (London) (June 4, 2001): p. 42.

Obituary. Times (London) (November 7, 1977): p. 17.

Web Sites

Astérix International. http://www.asterix-international.de/index.shtml (accessed on May 3, 2006).

Astérix: The Official Site. http://gb.asterix.com/index1.html (accessed on May 3, 2006).

Parc Astérix. http://www.parcasterix.fr/v2/ (accessed on May 3, 2006).

Selles, Hans, and Hendrick Jan Hoogeboom. Astérix Around the World. http://www.asterix-obelix.nl/ (accessed on May 3, 2006).