TINTIN vs. ASTERIX

Traumatic brain injuries in illustrated literature: experience from a series of over 700 head injuries in the Asterix comic books

Arse, forgot the http:// -- www.springerlink.com/content/x161246067q0h638/

I'm a huge fan of both of these, and Lucky Luke and all that. Ultimately, I think it's Asterix's humour and attention to historical detail that tops the list. Has anyone visited the comic museum in Brussels? Not very Anglophone friendly, but I highly recommend it. Comics are like a religion in that part of the world and it's a crying shame that artists like Franquin haven't been translated and released in the English speaking world.

i liked asterix more as a kid but tintin kind of stands now as one of the great edifices of 'what you can do in comics' so er well

aaah, how I loved these. a huge part of my childhood memories. including lucky luke (and les schtroumpf, at a younger age !). tintin is by far considered more artsy with the "ligne claire" ecole. funny cos I've just read one for the first time in years (rackham/licorne). nice but not sure there's much there for me anymore. the storyline was a bit thin (and that's a 2 albums story). haven't read any lucky luke or asterix. lately.

can someone explain exaclty what "ligne claire" is?

i liked asterix more as a kid but tintin kind of stands now as one of the great edifices of 'what you can do in comics' so er well

This seems pretty true but I still like Asterix more.

I have bought a few Lucky Lukes lately because some little publisher has finally taken on the project of a full set of English translations - finally I'm reading the actual text to comics I previously bought as a kid on holiday in languages I didn't really know and guessed wildly at. They're no Asterix but it's still nice to pick up nuances I'd missed before

also I just bought a set of Asterixes in German and (ahem) downloaded a set of Tintins in German on the flimsy pretext of needing to practise my German (which is not really up to the task, but), so maybe I'll have more of an opinion soon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ligne_claire

Roman nationality, hypoglossal paresis, lost helmet, and ingestion of the magic potion were significantly correlated with severe initial impairment of consciousness

come to think of it I have wanted to be a cowboy and have some magic potion but never wanted to be a journalist with an alcoholic sailor friend.

I have bought a few Lucky Lukes lately because some little publisher has finally taken on the project of a full set of English translations

The lettering in this is so ugly that I can't bring myself to buy them. Although even TINTIN has recently been relettered with shitty computer fonting! Why on earth I don't even. It's grotesque vandalism.

i could never get into asterix as a kid and so i haven't read enough to have an informed opinion but when i discovered tintin i remember being almost unable to believe something so cool could exist in so many volumes

for reference i was also a fan of novels set in the indiana jones extended universe

So many volumes, but not enough.

I'm really glad I still have several of my old Tintin books with the handwritten font, that new one is crazy ugly. "Grotesque vandalism" totally OTM. And weirdly, they've kept the old sound effects.

Although even TINTIN has recently been relettered with shitty computer fonting!

Blimey, this makes me a bit sad.

funny cos I've just read one for the first time in years (rackham/licorne). nice but not sure there's much there for me anymore. the storyline was a bit thin (and that's a 2 albums story)

Despite being probably the most famous Tintin story, this two parter is far from the best. Try The Calculus Affair or Tintin in Tibet.

(If there's a better Franco-Belgian comics thread do please point me at it)

Pleased to see Gaston Lagaffe finally get published in English but "Gomer Goof" is a terrible name. Amazon / publisher

also it's a Cinebooks release (unsurprising as they've been the publisher taking on other golden era Francophone comic translations including the Gaston-related Spirou & Fantasio) so sic will not be buying it for ugly computer lettering reasons I guess

wonder if we'll ever see Franquin's non-Gaston/Spirou stuff e.g. "Idées noires" in English

Gomer Goof? ugh..

Idees Noires is amazing. I really wish they'd translate that. Still no idea why the majority of all these comics are lost to Anglophone audiences

Agree that Gomer Goof is a terrible name - and I don't really buy Cinebook's justification that 'Gaston' means nothing to English speaking audiences. But if it's the price we have to pay for translated Franquin so be it, fugly computer lettering and all.

Aside from Idées noires (and all of Franquin's best Spirou volumes), what other major Franco-Belgian comics now remain untranslated?

has lucky luke been fully translated?

Pretty much - Cinebooks have published all of the Goscinny-written ones, and made a good dent on the ones produced before and after his run.

What idiot thinks "Gomer" is a more well-recognised name than "Gaston"? Sounds like a 1970s Beezer strip.

I'm glad to have the Spirous (very, very gradually!) in English but TBH I prefer reading the French ones even if my translation skills aren't quite there. It's ever clearer from reading their bland transliterations just what an incredible job the Tintin & Asterix translators did. (Actually I believe the Tintins are being retranslated, which is idiotic.)

Whoever's on the Lucky Lukes has done a better job on the dialogue, but that's Goscinny I guess.

Dailt Star and the Bounty Hunter are both vg non-Goscinny stories.

Gomer Goof is actually the name that Fantagraphics used when they ran a few Gaston strips in their anthology magazine Prime Cuts. But that was produced for a predominantly North American audience, who would be familiar with the name Gomer Pyle from The Andy Griffith show.

It's ever clearer from reading their bland transliterations just what an incredible job the Tintin & Asterix translators did.

Anthea Bell & Derek Hockridge's Asterix translations for Hodder Dargaud were great and v good with puns, yes! A remarkable achievement which I become more and more impressed by as I get older and fail to learn any languages with pun-spotting fluency.

So it surprised me that I actually prefer the Cinebooks translation of the first Iznogoud book to the B&H-translated 1970s edition which I found second-hand. The 70s edition has kept some puns which don't really make sense in English and the typesetting looks scrappy and doesn't fit the bubbles well in places. Not up to their Asterix translation standards but maybe a rushed job. The Cinebooks edition, on the other hand, was also not 70s Asterix standard but at least perfectly serviceable with no conspicuously literal pun translations.

(slightly vague as I don't remember the specifics, sorry - will have a look for the books over the weekend. Also apologies if I've already written this on ILX as it seems v possible that I have)

Gomer a jarringly odd name to me (plus Gaston perfectly pronounceable in English, and the Germans cope with him being called Gaston, after all) and "Gaffe" works perfectly well in English, with or without the "La", but oh well. Also "Mind the Gaffe" would have been an A+ pun and "Mind the Goof" is just, eh

(quick fact-checks: it's not the 1st Iznogoud that I have both editions of but the 2nd, "The Caliph's Vacation", and apologies for repeatedly & incorrectly pluralising Cinebook)

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/ed/Gaston_smirking.jpg

Anthea Bell interview here btw: https://www.connexionfrance.com/Archive/Making-Asterix-funny-in-English

I have one of those 70s Iznogouds too, they do seem like cheap knockoffs. Before Cinebooks, I had one English Lucky Luke that I read to death, "The Dalton Brother's Analyst" - translation is v. good, and Sic would prob approve of the hand lettering too.

Have many fond memories of avoiding the sun on childhood holidays so I could sit in a librarie and read Lucky Luke books for hours instead.

Great interview btw. This is amazjng:

Some of the later ones by Goscinny have long passages of extended literary allusions. In Le Cadeau de César [Caesar’s Gift] Asterix duels with a Roman soldier and he does it in the character of Cyrano de Bergerac, it’s wonderful, it goes on for almost a page. I sat looking at that and thought “the most famous swordfight in English literature is probably Hamlet and Laertes,” and the whole thing was done with quotations from Hamlet in the end.

I remember my secondary school French teacher (native French speaker) saying she thought the English translation of Asterix had better jokes than the original.