Asterix

by Anthea Bell

The Astérix series originated in the pages of a bande dessinée magazine called Pilote in 1959. René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo had originally both written and drawn their own strip cartoons, but when they met and found how well they worked together, they discovered that Goscinny preferred writing the scripts while Uderzo was strongest on the artwork. They collaborated in that way on a number of stories, including five albums about an 18th-century Native American called Oompah-Pah.

Then, looking for a new character as the basis for a series in the new magazine Pilote, they came up with the ancient Gauls — for in the same way as all British children know about William the Conqueror and 1066 and all that, every French child’s first history book is supposed to begin with a remark about ‘Our ancestors the Gauls’. Their ancestors the Gauls were brave and noble and (like the real historical chieftain Vercingetorix) stood up to Julius Caesar and his invading Roman army.

In fact they were all defeated in the end, even Vercingetorix, but the premise behind Asterix is that one little village stands up to the Romans and always wins, thanks to the prowess of its leading warrior Asterix (from French astérique = asterisk) and the magic potion brewed by the village druid (Panoramix in French, from panoramique; Getafix in English) which gives anyone who drinks it supernatural strength … for a limited period of time.

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