The Adventures of Asterix (
French:
Astérix) is a
series of
French comic books by
René Goscinny (stories) and
Albert Uderzo (illustrations). Uderzo has continued the series since the death of Goscinny in 1977. The series follows the exploits of a village of ancient
Gauls as they resist Roman occupation. They do so by means of a magic potion, brewed by their
druid, which gives the recipient superhuman strength. This is often used for comic effect, as in a recurring sequence where the villagers sally forth from their village to rout the attacking Romans so easily as to consider it great sport. In many cases, this resistance leads the main characters to travel to various
European countries (but also
Egypt,
America,
India and other non-European locations) in every other book, while the remaining are set in and around their village.
The 33 main books or albums (one of which is a compendium of short stories) have been translated into more than 100 languages and dialects. Besides the original
French, most albums are available in
English,
Dutch,
German,
Danish,
Icelandic,
Norwegian,
Swedish,
Finnish,
Spanish,
Catalan,
Basque,
Portuguese (and
Brazilian Portuguese),
Italian,
Polish,
Romanian,
modern Greek,
Turkish,
Slovenian,
Serbo-Croatian and
Indonesian. Beyond modern Europe, some albums have also been translated into languages as diverse as
Esperanto,
Mandarin,
Korean,
Bengali,
Afrikaans,
Arabic,
Hindi,
Hebrew,
Latin and
Ancient Greek. In France and especially in Germany, several volumes were translated into a variety of regional
dialects, such as
Alsatian,
Swabian and
Low German. Also, in Portugal, a special edition of the first volume,
Asterix the Gaul, was translated into local language
Mirandese.
Hungarian-language books have been issued in
Yugoslavia for the
Hungarian minority living in
Serbia. Although not a fully autonomic dialect, it slightly differs from the language of the books issued in
Hungary. In Greece, a number of volumes have appeared in the
Cretan Greek and
Pontic Greek dialects.
The Asterix series is one of the most popular
French comics in the world, and familiar to people of all ages in most
European countries,
Canada,
Australia,
New Zealand and parts of South America, Africa and Asia particularly,
Brazil,
Argentina,
Colombia,
Uruguay,
South Africa,
Kenya,
Philippines,
Singapore,
India and
Indonesia. Asterix is less well known in the
United States and
Japan. In its early years the
Disney Channel aired the British-produced English translations of the Asterix films, but so far it has enjoyed only a modest success in establishing foothold with American audiences.
The key to the success of the series is that it contains comic elements for all ages: young children like the fist-fights and other visual gags, while adults appreciate the cleverness of the allusions and
puns that sparkle throughout the texts.
The names of the characters contain puns, and vary with translation into other languages. This article uses the names from the English-language translations by
Anthea Bell and
Derek Hockridge. For the French names see
below.
Apart from the 33 main comics, other Asterix books and film books have been made. See
List of Asterix volumes.
Several books have been made into
films, eight animated, and three with live actors. There have also been a number of
games.
Humour Wherever they visit, Asterix and and his friend
Obelix encounter people and things borrowed and caricatured from 20th century real life. In the early album
Asterix and the Goths for instance, the
Goths (early Germans) are represented as
militaristic and regimented, reminiscent of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century
Germans. The helmets worn by these Goths even resemble the German
Pickelhaube helmets worn up to
World War I and one of their leaders bears an uncanny resemblance to
Otto von Bismarck. The
British are shown as polite and
phlegmatic, drinking warm
beer or hot water with a drop of milk (before the first
tea was brought by Asterix to what would later become
England); they boil all their food and serve it with mint sauce, and they drive their chariots on the wrong side of the road.
Spain is the cheap country down south where people from the
North go on vacation and the locals are proud and hot-blooded.
Portuguese people are always depicted as short and plump - Uderzo once said that every Portuguese immigrant he knew was like that. All the tribes represented are treated humorously as prototypes for their modern counterparts, and many aspects of them are satirized. However, the French are not exempt from satire, and almost all of the peoples Asterix meets are portrayed positively, even the Romans. The only tribe depicted completely unflatteringly is the Goths, possibly a result of the Second World War. In later books, such as
Asterix the Legionary and
Asterix and Obelix All at Sea, the Goths were depicted much more sympathetically; possibly because the Asterix series became very popular in Germany.
Some caricatures of the traits of certain French regions are also used: people from
Normandy smother their food in cream and cannot give a straight answer; people from
Marseille play
boules and exaggerate matters, and
Corsicans don't like to do any work, are easily angered and have generations-long-standing
vendettas that they settle violently, and make cheese that smells so bad that it actually becomes an explosive.
Minor characters often resemble famous people or fictional characters, usually caricatures of existing French people of the same era, particularly from television and the spectacles. In
Obelix and Co., for example, the young Roman bureaucrat is a caricature of a young
Jacques Chirac, and it includes two Roman legionaries drawn to the likeness of
Stan Laurel and
Oliver Hardy. In
Asterix and the Falling Sky, the super-clones are a caricature of both
Superman and
Arnold Schwarzenegger, and their leader,
Toon, resembles
Mickey Mouse. Likewise the planet which Toon hails from, Tadilsweny, is an anagram of Walt Disney, in homage to the late cartoonist. At the back of the issue Uderzo also writes a short testimony to Walt Disney and gives away the anagram by mentioning "..Tadsil..., I mean, Walt Disney...". Such characters usually stand out visually, by not having the bulbous noses otherwise typical of Uderzo's style.
Other side characters allude to people related to the place Asterix is visiting. Notable examples include a very
Elizabeth Taylor-like Cleopatra in
Asterix and Cleopatra; Britain's most famous bards in the story
Asterix in Britain, who are four in number and look remarkably like
the Beatles; a pair of Belgian warriors in
Asterix in Belgium who resemble and also speak like Dupond and Dupont (
Thomson and Thompson) of
Tintin-fame (the two characters are drawn in Hergé's typical
ligne claire style, which is atypical for Uderzo); and both
Don Quixote and
Sancho Panza are depicted in
Asterix in Spain. More recently, this spoofing has occasionally extended to major characters as well: in
Asterix and the Black Gold, a Roman spy is a young
Sean Connery named Dubbelosix drawn in
James Bond style, and in
Asterix and Obelix All at Sea, the leader of the escaped slaves (named Spartakis, being Greek) is based on
Kirk Douglas' portrayal of the title character of
Spartacus. In
Asterix and the Cauldron, the head of the theatre is Laurensolivius, based on the actor
Laurence Olivier. In the same book, there is another theatre actor of the name Alecguinius, based on the actor
Alec Guinness.
The stories also feature allusions to major artistic works (such as
Pieter Bruegel's
Peasant Wedding and
Victor Hugo's story of the
Battle of Waterloo from
Les Châtiments, in
Asterix in Belgium; and
Théodore Géricault's
The Raft of the Medusa), as well as historical personalities (
Napoleon,
Louis XIV of France), and famous places (the
Moulin Rouge,
Bethlehem) and the
Statue of Liberty (played by Asterix).
However, in many other respects the series reflects life in 1st century BC fairly accurately for the medium. For example, the multi-storied apartments in Rome — the
insulae — which have Obelix remarking that one man's roof is another man's floor, and consequently, "These Romans are crazy": his favourite line. This line itself is also an intrinsic joke on
Rome and the Romans, as its
Italian equivalent is "Sono pazzi questi romani", which, like the banner of the Roman Empire ("Senatus Populusque Romanus"), abbreviates as "
SPQR". On the other hand, the presence of chimneys in the Gaulish huts is not accurate, as they used
gabled openings in the roof to let smoke escape. Also, it is now believed
menhirs were erected long before the Gauls.
It was reported in
September 2007 that an archaeological dig in
Corent near
Lyon,
France revealed the society of the
Gauls to be, in reality, more advanced than the Asterix series of books had suggested.
The text also makes relatively regular use of original
Latin phrases, and allusions to Julius Caesar's
De Bello Gallico, a book about the conquest of Gaul, often used as an introductory text to
Latin. Some jokes are made about Caesar's use of the
third person to write about himself. Such allusions were likely to be well-received by the better-educated sections of the French and Belgian public in the 1960s, when the teaching of Latin was still widespread in high schools.
Stereotypes and allusions A key feature of the
Asterix books in all translations are the constant
puns used as names: the names of the two protagonists come from
asterisk and
obelisk, Asterix being the star of the books (
Latin aster — derived from the
Greek word αστήρ (aster) [star] and
Celtic rix [king, cognate to Latin
rex,
Sanskrit rājā and related to
German Reich and
English reign]), and Obelix being a
menhir delivery-man. This is a double pun, since as well as meaning a stone monolith, the word
obelisk can also refer to the
typographical dagger (†) that is often used to denote the second footnote on a page after an
asterisk (*) has been used to reference the first.
Each cultural group in Asterix has a characteristic ending for names (though there are occasionally notable exceptions). Nearly all the male Gaulish characters' names end in
-ix (probably a reference to the real-life Gaulish chieftain such as
Vercingetorix although only the names of Gaulish kings — and not even all of them — ended in
-ix, and when they did, it was always
-rix). Other English language examples include the chief (
Vitalstatistix), the druid (
Getafix), and an old man (
Geriatrix) with a young wife, who is never named. Most Gaulish women's names end in "a', such as Bacteria, Impedimenta, and Influenza. Roman characters' names end with
-us as in
Noxious Vapus,
Crismus Bonus,
Sendervictorius and
Appianglorius. Normans use
-af (Bathyscaf, Toocleverbyhaf, Timandahaf), Vikings use "-ssen" (Herendthelessen, Haroldwilssen), Egyptians use
-is (Edifis, Artifis), Greeks use
-es or
-os (Diabetes, Thermos), Britons use
-ax (Hiphiphurrax, Dipsomaniax, Valueaddedtax, Selectiveunemploymenttax) and occasionally
-os (
Cassivelaunos, Mykingdomforanos), Goths use
-ic (
Rhetoric, Choleric, Electric, Metric) and Spaniards use Spanish-sounding names such as Huevos Y Bacon (Eggs and Bacon). Female names also have consistent endings, but these are different from male names and generally end in -a: for instance the wife of the Roman Osseus Humerus is Fibula, the wife of village fishmonger
Unhygenix is
Bacteria, and the wife of Chief Vitalstatistix is
Impedimenta.
Many names stand as solitary puns on their characters, like Getafix (who provides medicine and potions for the village) or Geriatrix—particularly with recurring characters, while others are simply
absurdist such as "Spurius Brontosaurus", and some in groups play on each other, as in the example of a Roman guard talking through a closed door to another guard: "Open up, Sendervictorius! It's me, Appianglorius!" This is a pun on lines from the UK's national anthem "
God Save the Queen": "Send her victorious, happy and glorious...".
Other names are puns derived from historical or literary quotations. An example is the British chief
Mykingdomforanos whose name is a reference to the line "A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse!" from
Shakespeare's play
Richard III.
Puns in names The speech of characters is written using
lettering according to the language spoken (although no difference appears between the language of the
Romans and the
Gauls themselves, unlike in the Italian translation, where the Romans are given 20th century roman accents). The Gauls cannot automatically understand certain languages even though the reader will understand.
The names of characters in Asterix, aside from being
puns, usually have suffixes representing their nationalities.
In the original it is more consistent (-is)
In Roman times Gaul, while centred on modern
France (which includes
Corsica), also included modern
Switzerland, most of
Belgium, and parts of western Germany and northern Italy — a fact the authors acknowledge by using the same suffix for the
Belgians,
Swiss and
Corsicans.
In the original (and most translations) -ine is most often used for female names
Cultural references indicate these (in
Asterix and the Great Crossing) are
Danes rather than the
Norsemen of
Asterix and the Normans Iberian: Sentences start with upside-down
exclamation marks ('¡') or
question marks ('¿'), as in real
Spanish Goth:
blackletter (language barrier with Gauls) Viking: Ø and Å characters are used for O and A
(language barrier with Gauls) Native American: Pictograms
(language barrier with Gauls) Egyptian:
hieroglyphics with footnotes
(language barrier with Gauls) Greek: as if carved, with no curves and a minimum of strokes.
Britons: -ax (
m); -a (
f)
Egyptians: -ep, -is, -ut, -up, -et
Gauls: -ix (
m); -a (
f)
Goths: -ric
Greeks: -s (
m); -a (
f)
Iberians: -on
Indians: -it, -at (
m); -ade (
f)
Normans: -af
Persians: -es
Romans: -us (
m); -a (
f)
Vikings: -ssen (
m); -ard, -ude (
f)
Representing languages A number of running gags recur in various albums. One of these is that the bard Cacofonix is inspired to sing whenever Asterix and Obelix leave or come back from a grand journey, but is usually prevented from performing by Fulliautomatix (the blacksmith). When an adventure concludes, the village holds a banquet, but the bard is nearly always seen tied up and gagged so as not to disrupt the festivities (most notable exceptions in
Asterix and the Chieftain's Shield, where it is Chief Vitalstatistix who is missing from the banquet,
Asterix and the Normans, where his help proved vital in stopping the Normans,
Asterix at the Olympic Games, where he is merely held at bay by Fulliautomatix's hammer,
Asterix and Caesar's Gift, where he is given the unique opportunity to court a pretty girl,
Asterix and the Magic Carpet, where he, Asterix and Obelix were in another country at the time, and
Asterix and the Falling Sky, where his hut had been destroyed and Unhygienix and Fulliautomatix were tied up instead as 'punishment').
There is also Obelix tapping his forehead and muttering "These [people] are crazy" every time he learns something new about the land he is visiting and their people. His most common targets are the Romans, which is ironic because they consider the Gauls as being the crazy ones.
Another running gag among legionaries is to express their discontent with a military life far less interesting than what was promised with (in French) "Engagez-vous, rengagez-vous, qu'ils disaient!" (tentative translation: "enlist and enlist again, as they said!"). In the official English translation, this is stated as "Join up, they said! It's a man's life, they said!".
It was revealed in the first volume,
Asterix the Gaul, that Obelix fell into a cauldron of magic potion as an infant, giving him super-human strength for life. Yet no matter how often Getafix explains that due to this exceptional circumstance, he cannot have any more potion, Obelix is jealous of Asterix and the other villagers and always tries to sneak some anyway. His various schemes to trick Getafix into letting him have a dose of potion are an ongoing joke in the series. Despite feeble attempts at disguising himself or simply begging, Obelix is always stopped by Getafix before he can drink any (the disastrous effects of Obelix ingesting any potion are seen in
Asterix and Obelix All at Sea, though no negative effects occur when Obelix is given a few drops in
Asterix and Cleopatra).
Another running gag is a group of
pirates that tend to get caught in the middle of conflict and have their ship sunk. Despite their best attempts to steer clear of "any Gaulish vessels," the hapless pirates inevitably encounter a ship with Asterix and Obelix in it and wind up getting sunk. Sometimes the pirates lose their ship without Asterix or Obelix, however. In
Asterix and the Roman Agent, they attack a ship carrying a Roman agent, who points at a random crew member and states he gave him a bagful of gold if he would not attack the agent. In the ensuing battle over the nonexistent bag of gold, the pirates sink their own ship. In
Asterix and the Cauldron, tired of being sunk, they give up pirating completely and open a ship-themed restaurant. Asterix and Obelix arrive in search of something and despite their initial attempts at being good hosts, they are soon persuaded to return to the oceans. As their ship slips inevitably beneath the waves after an encounter with the Gauls and they cling to floating debris, the elderly mate always makes an observation in Latin, usually a well-known aphorism or verse lifted from a famous author like Horace or Virgil. The pirates were originally conceived as a one-shot parody of the comic-book
Barbe-Rouge but proved so popular that they were fully integrated into the Asterix series.
In
Asterix the Legionary, after their ship was sunk, the pirates were left in a raft resembling the painting
The Raft of the Medusa by
Théodore Géricault. In this particular image the captain even makes the pun: "We've been framed, by Jericho!". In
Asterix and Cleopatra the pirates scuttle the ship themselves rather than be attacked by the Gauls again, the captain reasoning once that it "Saves us a few knocks, and comes to the same thing in the end".
These pirates — most notably the red-bearded captain, the constantly Latin-quoting peg-legged second-in-command, and the African lookout — are caricatures of the characters of "
Barbe Rouge, Le Démon des Caraïbes", a pirate series that was published at the same time in
Pilote, the weekly comics magazine in which Asterix appeared, and which Goscinny also edited.
Running gags In the albums, some historical facts are retold, and attributed to Asterix and Obelix.
In
Asterix and Cleopatra, when visiting Egypt, Obelix scales the
sphinx. As he is about to mount the sphinx's nose it breaks off and falls to the ground. Immediately all the nearby souvenir-shops chisel off the noses of their souvenir-sphinxes in order to maintain the resemblance to the real monument.
In the same book, at the end, Asterix asks Cleopatra to call upon his countrymen if she needs anything built, such as a canal between the
Mediterranean and the
Red Sea — describing the
Suez Canal (which was built by a French company).
In
Asterix in Spain, Asterix finds himself in a circus in front of an
aurochs. He evades the bull nicely, and gets applause from the audience. A guest of the Roman general drops her red cape in the arena. When Asterix wants to hand it back, the bull reacts and is finished after some dancing moves of Asterix, who is trying to save the cape from getting dirty, giving us the first bullfight.
In the same book, Unhygenix the fishmonger agrees to take payment for his boat rental in menhirs, as he wants to develop land on
Salisbury Plain — which explains the mystery of
Stonehenge. (In the French original, the land in question is at
Carnac in
Brittany.) An alternate explanation is proffered in
Asterix and Son.
In
Asterix and the Banquet (Le Tour de Gaule) Obelix travels around Gaul with a yellow knapsack on his back, as if wearing the
yellow jersey in the modern
Tour de France, complete with a white square patch on the backside, where we can imagine the cyclist's number.
In
Asterix in Switzerland, Asterix manages to carry an unconscious Obelix through the Alps, by tying ropes around himself, Obelix, and their guides, creating a famous technique in mountain-climbing. Asterix and Obelix also hide in the secure bank locker of Zurix (Zurich): an allusion to modern
Swiss banks.
In the same adventure above, the precision of Swiss watches and clocks is alluded to by the fact that the innkeeper who helps the duo never forgets to remind his customers to turn their hourglasses.
In
Asterix in Belgium, the chieftain of Asterix's Belgian hosts gains inspiration for
frites (French fries) and mussels, Belgium's two most famous culinary ambassadors, from a vat of boiling oil prepared as a Roman weapon, and a damp wooden plank belonging to the pirates after their ship was sunk by a rock Obelix tried to throw at a Roman camp on the coast (note that
potatoes were unknown in Europe at the time).
In
Asterix and the Goths, Getafix makes sure that the Goths are pushed into political turmoil so that they may never again regroup as a powerful nation and attack others. This is a reference to the strategy pursued by
Richelieu in the 17th century to prevent the various German principalties from uniting and posing a threat to the power of France. Particularly accurate is the use of equal support towards all contenders, reflecting the notion of
balance of power that was at the core of Richelieu's strategy.
In
Asterix and the Laurel Wreath, Asterix and Obelix accidentally invent the potion to get rid of alcoholic hangovers. This is still an active area of research with geneticists trying to identify the gene responsible for hangovers. In an epilogue, it is stated that the potion became so widespread and the Romans so dependent on it, that it actually caused the decline of the Roman Empire.
In
Asterix and the Normans, Justforkix, nephew of Vitalstatistix, arrives in an Italian chariot built for speed (a "sports cart"), an allusion to the famous Italian speedsters such as
Ferrari and
Lamborghini.
In
Obelix and Co., the effect of globalisation on rural (Asterix's Village) and urban (Rome's) economies is portrayed. At the end of the story, the Roman Empire is on the verge of bankruptcy due to buying menhirs which nobody wants.
In
Asterix at the Olympic Games, the use of Magic Potion is banned in the games but the Roman contingent still uses it. They are caught and disqualified owing to the fact that Getafix added a blue dye to the potion which coloured the tongues of the Romans. This reflects the burning issue of the use of performance enhancing drugs and their detection in modern sports.
In
Asterix and the Black Gold, Asterix, Obelix and Dubbelosix rest for some time in a stable in Bethlehem. Also the first oil slick in history occurs when the oil collected by Asterix and Obelix squirts out in a struggle. A bird drenched in oil cries out "Oi! Don't say you are starting already!"
In
Asterix and the Secret Weapon, the village women 'stand up' for their rights spurred on by Bravura, a female bard from Lutetia who wears breeches (Trousers in the modern world). Also Caesar commissions a secret legion of women soldiers to exploit the famous Gaulish gallantry and thereby conquer the village.
In
Asterix and Caesar's Gift, Cacofonix composes the protest anthem "
We Shall Overcome", which became the US civil rights movement song.
A recurring joke is references to the
assassination of
Julius Caesar by
Brutus. In
Asterix the Gladiator, Julius Caesar orders Brutus to join in the crowd's applause for him using the famous Shakespearean phrase "
Et tu Brute". In
Asterix and the Soothsayer a fortune-teller vouches for Brutus's fidelity to Caesar. In
Asterix and the Roman Agent, Caesar tells Brutus to stop handling his knife or he'll injure himself, and Brutus mutters threateningly under his breath, "One of these days..."; in the French version he referred to Brutus as "my son", something which some historians have suggested may have been the case.
In
Asterix in Britain, Asterix's cousin speaks about building an underwater tunnel from Dover to France and says that it's a dream project which he hopes to achieve some day. This is a reference to the modern
channel tunnel (which wasn't built yet at the time the album was written).
In the same book, Getafix gives Asterix some herbs to take to Britain. At the time Britons drink hot water, sometimes with a drop of milk. Asterix loses the barrel of magic potion and simply adds Getafix's herbs to their hot water instead as a morale booster. When they return to Gaul, Getafix informs Asterix that the herbs are called
tea.
Also in this volume, there is a scene where Asterix and Obelix are being chased by the Romans. There is a cutaway with the caption, "Somewhere near
London", and a Briton cutting individual blades of grass with a finger-sized scythe. He says to himself, "Another 2,000 years of loving care and this will make a decent bit of turf!", a reference to
Wembley Stadium. In the next frame Asterix, Obelix and the Roman army all trample over it, ruining the sod completely.
In
Asterix and the Great Crossing, Asterix signals to a Viking ship, on a small island off the coast of North America. He stands with a raised torch atop a pile of stones, holding a folded map under his arm. This represents the
Statue of Liberty, a gift from the French to the Americans.
In
Asterix and the Cauldron, Obelix predicts the popularity of Asterix and Obelix stories. Albeit, Obelix assigns himself a more prominent place in the title of the series.
Influences Detailed list of the Asterix Volumes Recurring characters in Asterix List of Asterix films List of Asterix games English translations of Asterix Roman Gaul, after Julius Caesar's conquest of 58–51 BC that consisted of five provinces.
Private Schools
Tariffs
Efficiency
State Election Results
Origin
See also
Lefthit