Obelix is a professional mover of menhirs, meaning big hunks of stone of the kind that comprise Stonehenge, also known as obelisks. Our hero is so named because he is the “star,” hence the play on asterisk and the old Gaulish suffix -ix, which indicated a king (as in the real historical Gaulish leaders Vercingetorix, who sometimes pops up in Asterix, and Orgetorix). The original name-puns are facetious and wonderful. Everybody’s name explains who they are, from Unhygienix, the fishmonger, to Cacofonix, the atrocious bard. Obelix gets none as he fell entirely in the cauldron as a baby and was permanently affected-an allusion to Achilles and his babyhood dunk in the Styx. Asterix is indomitable, however, because his druid friend Getafix gives him a special potion to drink. and star the tiny Asterix and gigantic Obelix, his superstrong sidekick, as they resist Julius Caesar’s attempts to finish his conquest of Gaul by beating these holdouts. All the books are set in the year 50 B.C. readers.”Īsterix first came to life in the magazine Pilote, before appearing in his first full-length comic “album,” Asterix the Gaul, in 1961. audience, and making the Ancient European and Latin references more understandable to U.S. Comics translator Joe Johnson has redone the text, according to Papercutz, “with a focus on making the French puns work for a U.S. There will also be new stories, starting with The Chieftain’s Daughter, which stars a new teen girl character named Adrenaline. rights to the Asterix books, which it is newly publishing in omnibus form. Last fall, children’s press Papercutz bought the U.S. Writer René Goscinny died in 1977, marking a drop-off in the quality of the franchise’s text, but illustrator Albert Uderzo lived until March of this year and administered the Asterix empire himself until 2013, when he sold it to Hachette. Generations of readers have grown up with Asterix, especially in France, where he is a sort of national icon (there is a Parc Astérix outside Paris). Like its contemporary Tintin, it has led a lucrative and long commercial life. The jokes are all a little bit too adult to understand and rich with the promise of unknown, grown-up information.Īsterix is one of the great postwar Franco-Belgian comics (or bandes dessinées in French, meaning “drawn strips”). But that’s precisely the appeal of the Asterix comics to the children who have loved it since its first publication in 1959. “I hate too much pearl in my vinegar.” I loved this page of Asterix and Cleopatra as a kid, even though I didn’t really get the joke (it’s a riff on an old story in which Cleopatra drank her own earrings at dinner). From inside his comic strip rectangle, one of Cleopatra’s lackeys makes a face as he tastes her snack for poison.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
January 2023
Categories |