Asterix : Search and Destroy

Legionary is indeed probably the funniest, Mansions of the Gods probably the best story. But there are scenes in Gladiator that have never left me--for some reason the whole recurring business with the gladiators playing "yes, no, black or white" in the arena has never stopped being howlingly funny.

The English translations by Bell and Hockridge are legendarily good--the originals have a ton of untranslatable French wordplay, and Bell and Hockridge very wisely substituted a ton of untranslatable English wordplay. (The little dog Dogmatix's name in French, for instance, is Idefix, and as good as Panoramix (French) is as a name for a druid, Getafix (English) is much funnier...)

Y'all are forgetting about the dopest joint of them all- Asterix In Switzerland! "Anything to declare?" "I'm hungry" "What you got in there?" "A great big hole" HAHAHAHA CLASSIK! (even better than Wilde's reaction)

I stuck with Uderzo for a long, long time, but the last one was just such total crap that I couldn't even bear to read it.

Long live the Gauls!

...actually yes - Tintin disturbed me as a kid - I was scared for about a year to have my bed covers any lower than my chin when I slept incase some ULTRA-SCAREY voodoo dude came and blew a poison madness dart in my neck.

Search: Legionary, Goths, Roman Agent, Obelix and Co., Black Gold
Destroy: Gaul, Golden Sickle, Actress (truly awful), basically the earliest stuff and the latest stuff

I also enjoy Tintin quite a bit, but I've only read like half of them.

grrr bcz now i haf to get them OUT!!

(when did Goscinny die/retire?)

Oh YES by Toutatis.

(I suddenly have the ph34r that I am wrong....)

Obelix=Classic.

Discovering the humour of all the characters names when you're older=classic.

Morris (coauthor and artist of Lucky Luke) died a year or two ago, as well, and I didn't even find out until the last Goscinny-mentioning thread on ILX.

(Are the Morris-only Lucky Lukes noticeably any less sharp and funny than the ones with Goscinny? If only they'd do the full series in English then I would know; as it is, reading them in languages I barely understand, I can make out no more than the plot, and sometimes not even that. Sigh...)

Are the Morris-only Lucky Lukes noticeably any less sharp and funny than the ones with Goscinny?

A bit, but the drop in quality isn't nearly as extreme as with Asterix.

http://www.ring.net/coni/obelix01.jpg

THIS DUDE IS MY LEADER

The writing in the later Goscinny ones (Obelix &Co, Belgium) is of a ridiculously high quality, I think the guy had many years of great stories still in him. It's a real pity.

What's this about Uderzo allowing the strip to continue after his death, Goscinny's daughter allowing it but Uderzo's own daughter calling him out on the decision?

Oh, and ORGIES! WE WANT ORGIIIIES!

"OLD HAIRY HANDS"

For years I thought an orgy just involved eating shitloads of food because of Asterix.

As did I. That was an explanation I'd rather not have had from my dad.

http://www.stim.com/Stim-x/9.4/asterix/Pix/asterix-panel.gif

lol

http://bit.ly/oL6TyJ

THIRTY YEARS TOO LATE

Now Asterix is a popular French brand and vehicle for French actors with weak bladders, any replacement will drive it further into the ground anyway.

I stick by this:

The writing in the later Goscinny ones (Obelix &Co, Belgium) is of a ridiculously high quality, I think the guy had many years of great stories still in him. It's a real pity.

― chap, domingo 27 de julio de 2008 13:44 (3 years ago) Bookmark

His last two were Obelix & Co and Belgium, both of which are so so good.

when I was little, my parents gave me all the Asterix comics and all the Tintin comics, in German!

That's how I first learned German, when I was about 7 years old...I really struggled to understand those comics

they were really funny once I finally decoded them

Tintin has to be read in the original. The English translations of Asterix tend to be pretty good and even have jokes that aren't in the French versions.

I read this (as I'm sure others have) as "Asterisk: Search and Destroy." I was going to say destroy Roger Maris's (even though it never actually existed), and after that I'm stuck. Carry on.

THIRTY YEARS TOO LATE

nonsense, it should just be retired

For years I thought an orgy just involved eating shitloads of food because of Asterix.

yeah, I wrote, and read out to the class, when I was seven, a story that was predicated on this misunderstanding. the teacher took me aside later to quietly enquire where I'd learned the word, but chose not to annotate.

For years I thought an orgy just involved eating shitloads of food because of Asterix.

hooooooly shit, me too, I forgot about this

Herge apparently preferred the English translations of Tintin to his originals. The Asterix translations are far less faithful to the originals, for obvious, pun-related reasons.

I suspect that this unnamed artist who will 'take over' drawing the strip has actually been doing most of the illustration work signed by Uderzo for some time, now.

Chap OTM about Goscinny - died far far too young, and his final scripts for Asterix and Lucky Luke show no sign of diminishing quality.

Ha, me too on the "orgy" thing.

What is Goscinny's work on Iznogoud like? If I love Asterix and like Lucky Luke and Le Petit Nicolas, it's probably worth a go, but where to start?

Not that I know where I'd find them any more - Blackwells bookshop in Oxford used to have a stand of less well-known-in-the-UK Euro comic books but I never knew where to start with any of them and now the stand isn't there, as I discovered when I had a craving to buy things by André Franquin.

Spacecadet, the Iznogoud books are terrific - w/ fantastic psuedo-exotica illustrations by Tabary - tho' they are incredibly formulaic - they seem to be pitched at a slightly younger audience than Asterix. There's a British-based company called Cinebooks who have, so far, published eight Iznogoud books, and lots of Lucky Luke volumes - you can order from their website, although I think Amazon is generally cheaper. I recently had to review Izngoud on Holiday for a 1001 Comics to Read Before you Die book (yeah I know), so that would be a good one to go for, imho. Each volume generally features four different short stories, unliked the book-length Asterix and Tintin volumes.

STILL waiting for Franquin to be properly translated!

OMG orgies! I remember a bunch of us telling one of our parents we were going to have an orgy - no wait, I think they were having some friends over and we asked if they were going to have one!

This is the best shared experience discovery ever.

Count me in the "orgy" gang too (phwoar!)

I'm still waiting for a good reason why the Franquin comics haven't been translated into English. It's one of the biggest insults to art IMO.

nonsense, it should just be retired

er, that's what I'm alluding to.

The series might have had a chance if a proper writer was brought on board. Only a slim chance, but a chance nonetheless. Now it's too deep in merde.

(I am saying thirty years btw because I'll always rep for Black Gold - it's the only book that Uderzo could've and should've written. And then it went downhill steeply. Down that cliff those Normans flew off.)

I suspect that this unnamed artist who will 'take over' drawing the strip has actually been doing most of the illustration work signed by Uderzo for some time, now.

this is p much openly stated by Uderzo in the article

sadly those Cinebooks versions of Lucky Luke are re-lettered in a clunky computer font that stopped this punter from buying the entire lot in Gosh last year (/pvmic)

Have we done an Asterix poll?

Best supporting characters = The Pirates
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-PYnhgcSRCZc/TbKnJSOFGUI/AAAAAAAAAI0/MkIZqEIRMVo/s1600/asterix3.JPG

I once published an article about the translations - the writer felt there was lots added, much of it good, some of it idiotic.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Tuesday, 12 November 2002 19:30 (8 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ah man I'd really like to read this but it doesn't seem to be online

Aha, I have a few of the Cinebooks Lucky Lukes but didn't realise they'd also published some Iznogoud books. Thanks for the recommendation, Ward F.

Is the problem with English translations of Franquin that they're bad, or that they don't exist? I've never seen an English Gaston but I thought I'd seen English translations of Spirou & Fantasio, though I don't remember which era/writer and I'm not finding any on Amazon, so I may be mistaken.

xp I would also love to read that article. I think the Asterix translators did a very impressive job, though my French is too rusty to do justice to the originals, so I can't really compare and contrast.

They just haven't been translated - think there's a legal/political reason. I'd love to see Les Idées Noir translated into English.

How are the Lucky Luke translations?

The Luke translations from Cinebooks are dece, yeah - Morris didn't like pun-based humour, so linguistically they're far less tricky than Asterix.

No unicorns in Magic Carpet to my recollection - it's an Arabian Nights riff.

My fave as a kid was Legionary.

Peak period for me would be roughly 68-72, and especially

Asterix and the Laurel Wreath (my number one favourite)
Asterix and the Roman Agent
Asterix and the Chieftain's Shield
Asterix and the Cauldron
Asterix in Switzerland

The Nicolas stories had nice English paperbacks in the 80s; they've been reissued as fancy Phaidon hardcovers, which in the usual Phaidon style are pretty to look at but annoying to hold and read. Either way, they're great - quite low-key, and excellent translations as usual by Anthea Bell. They're closer in spirit to Emil & The Detectives than Asterix.

The Goscinny stories are incredibly consistent - almost every book was a favourite at one point or another in my childhood. and it's amazing how different the stories are, given that the main characters never change from book to book. Probably easier to list the ones I like less: Great Crossing, Asterix the Gaul, Belgium - but that's about it.

I suppose Chieftain's Shield is the exception to the rule about the characters never changing - it's a weirdly deep character dive into Vitalstatix - I always felt quite sad, finishing the book, when the character returns to usual self.

I saw the first Petit Nicolas movie when it came out and remember it as pretty close to the source material. Those books are great - just as chaotic as Asterix in their way. Stuff I remember includes the kids strategizing to attack older kids by kicking them in the shins and the one where the rich kid shows up on picture taking day dressed as an astronaut.

Laurel Wreath is a great one, it's interesting when the tone deviates slightly for a whole book and LW is almost a little salty by comparison. The in medias res style beginning, Vitalstatistix's rather aggressive hubris in the face of his Brother In Law's flexing and the weird mood that Asterix and Obelix are in on the first page, not to mention the drunken Zigackly! and Ferpectly!

Yeah, I noticed a little while ago that the Wiki entry for Laurel Wreath claims

This is by far the most adult-oriented of all the Asterix stories. It includes drunkenness, human slavery, debauchery, particularly graphic violence, androgyny, and instances of humour requiring (for Asterix) an unusually sophisticated knowledge of art and history to fully understand it. There is an implicit acknowledgement of this in that Dogmatix (a favourite with younger readers) makes only a token (2 panel) appearance, and the lettering in the original version of this album uses a style more cursive and difficult to read than usual, again discouraging younger readers (the updated version released in 2004 uses the same lettering style as all the other Asterix stories).

But I like it as much for all the family stuff, which again seems to cut a little deeper than in other Asterix albums - the conflict between the chief and his brother-in-law (the dinner party sequence at the beginning might just be Goscinny/Uderzo's finest moment), the alienated father and son reunited by Asterix and Obelix.

No food on earth tastes as delicious as the grilled boars in Asterix look.

*Scronch* *Scronch* *Scronch*

the conflict between the chief and his brother-in-law (the dinner party sequence at the beginning might just be Goscinny/Uderzo's finest moment)

ZIGACKLY!

thanks to this thread i've just laid down for the Asterix Omnibus that includes Laurel Wreath, Switzerland, Mansion of the Gods, plus I bought Chieftain's Shield separately. Can't wait to revisit these

That's a great run. I'll second Asterix the Legionary as a personal favorite

XP - Yeah that is a good selection, those are some of my very favourites.

Got a first edition hardback of Big Fight in the post from eBay today, was never sure about it though, I remember really not liking the transformation of Getafix, as a kid.

Was down in London for a few days, and managed to get to the Goscinny exhibition at the Jewish Museum in Camden - highly recommended to anyone with an interest in post-war European humour comics. The exhibition is smallish, but very nicely presented and contains a surprising number of original pages. I had never seen an actual page from an Asterix album before and here there are five, including the first page of Laurel Wreath; there are also pages from Iznogoud, Ompa-pa, a western strip by the legendary Jijé, and some really gorgeous Nicholas originals - I took a shaky snap of this one:

http://i1194.photobucket.com/albums/aa362/Andrew_Littlefield/P1030584_zpsjlhbmbs4.jpg

I must get to see this soon!

So I was knocking around on eBay yesterday, I've been trying to complete a set of hardback first editions and I'm looking at ...The Gaul, so expensive for what isn't really a very good story, but I found out that there are officially sanctioned translations of a few of the stories into Scots slang, so I purchased 'Asterix The Gallus' and also TinTin's 'The Derk Isle' it's going to be pretty weird but interesting.

RIP Anthea Bell:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/oct/18/anthea-bell-magnificent-translator-of-asterix-and-kafka-dies-aged-82

RIP. My school French teacher always said her translations were funnier than the originals.

Nooooooooooooooooooo

Didn't realise she'd translated Kafka! Definitely gonna pick that up. Some of the old translations are dire!

This new one that just came out looks gorgeous but the story is ever so slight, sadly.

I have recently watched the latest Asterix animation movie (the secret of the magic potion).
It's nicely done and manages to recreate the spirit/humour of the original books.

but the story is ever so slight, sadly.

Has there been one since, generously, 1981 of which you wouldn’t say this?

You're right, Black Gold was the last decent one until the 2013 comeback of sorts with The Picts.

The three since then, I found to be really enjoyable, but this new one is lagging far behind, which is a shame because the art is absolutely on point.

Translation/interpretation must be so difficult and that's when I realised how vital Bell & Hockridge were to the process.

RIP Albert Uderzo (to be fair, I didnt even realize he was still alive)

aw RIP

and I didn't post here to say RIP Anthea Bell, so that too

Oh no! But what an incredible legacy.

I read an Asterix book for the first time in years recently, Asterix and the Cauldron. It’s not one of the best - although the marketplace scene is a classic (the “BOOOOOOOAAAARSSSS” bit) (and the avant-garde theatre troupe) (and other bits, probably).

Uderzo’s drawings of Obelix are incredible throughout, though - it’s amazing how much facial expression he gets out of a character who doesn’t have a mouth 90% of the time.

Spotted on Facebook - Leicester Chronicle story about Anthea Bell and Derek Hockridge from 1969:

https://scontent.fman2-2.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/s960x960/90594706_10157958261326832_1418784090512949248_o.jpg?_nc_cat=104&_nc_sid=8024bb&_nc_ohc=TgY0dQcrzsUAX8FX6GV&_nc_ht=scontent.fman2-2.fna&_nc_tp=7&oh=11304ae4d48786c64d549dc3fe0b7c9b&oe=5E9EFEFF

Wow. Love that <3

Mr Roy Oddling (what a name) is the Pete Best of the Asterix story here, I guess

"it’s amazing how much facial expression he gets out of a character who doesn’t have a mouth 90% of the time."

ahah. never thought of it that way !

New one arrived today, again, the art is great, very faithful. The storyline looks like it might be a retread of '& The Roman Agent', but with a new-age type infiltrating the village and putting ppl at loggerheads.

One thing though, it's very dense, high panel count on most of the pages, more text.

Have any of the new lots’ books been worth reading? Magic Carpet must’ve been the last semi-decent one from Uderzp.

I don't think these fake Asterixs are a patch on the fake Blake and Mortimers that Cinebooks put out.

The B&Ms have the benefit of never being that good in the first place