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Asterix

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File:Asterix.gif
Asterix the Gaul
This article is about the comic book character. For other uses, see Asterix (disambiguation).

Asterix (French: Astérix) is a fictional character, created in 1959 as the hero of a series of French comic books (with the same title) by René Goscinny (stories) and Albert Uderzo (illustrations). Uderzo has continued the series since the death of Goscinny in 1977.

The 33 main books (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, the Scandinavian languages (Danish, Norwegian and Swedish), Finnish, languages of Spain (Castilian, Catalan, Galician and Basque), Portuguese (and Brazilian Portuguese), Italian, Polish, modern Greek, Turkish, Serbo-Croatian and Indonesian. Beyond modern Europe, some albums have also been translated into languages as diverse as Esperanto,Mandarin, Korean, Arabic, Hindi, Hebrew, Latin and Ancient Greek.

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 and Asia, particularly Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Singapore, India and Indonesia. Asterix is less well known in the United States and Japan.

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 has also been a number of games.

Main character and background

Asterix is a small but fearless and cunning warrior, ever eager for any new adventure. He lives around 50 BC in a fictional village in northwest Armorica (a region of ancient Gaul mostly identical to modern Brittany). This village is celebrated as the only part of Gaul not yet conquered by Julius Caesar and his Roman legions. The inhabitants of the village gain superhuman strength by drinking a magic potion prepared by the druid Getafix (French: Panoramix). The village is surrounded by the ocean on one side, and four unlucky Roman garrisons on the other, intended to keep a watchful eye and ensure that the Gauls do not get up to mischief.

Asterix is a bachelor, and one of the smartest (and sanest) members of the village (sometimes referred to as a 'village of madmen') and because of this, he is usually chosen for any dangerous, important or exotic mission. Unlike most of the other villagers, he does not start or join brawls for the fun of it, although he does enjoy a good fight when there's cause. He rarely resorts to weapons, preferring to rely on his wits, and when necessary, his (magic potion enhanced) fists — he is only an average swordsman.

Asterix' parents are former villagers who now live in the city of Condatum (Rennes), and he has cousins in Britannia [Britain]. He shares his birthday with his clumsy, oversized, but extremely strong and good-hearted best friend, Obelix. An occasional running gag is that his age is 'indeterminate'.

One of his most visually engaging features is his helmet, the wings of which mirror his expressions.

History of the Series

Goscinny and Uderzo had had success with their series Oumpah-pah, which was published in the Tintin Magazine. Asterix was originally serialised in the magazine Pilote in the very first issue in 1959. In 1961 the first book was put together entitled Asterix the Gaul. From then on, books were released generally on a yearly basis. When Goscinny died, Uderzo continued the series alone, though on a less frequent basis.

Humour

The humour encountered in the Asterix comics is typically French, often centring on puns, caricatures, and tongue-in-cheek stereotypes of contemporary European nations and French regions. Much of the humour in the initial Asterix books was French-specific, which delayed the translation of the book into other languages for fear of losing the joke and the spirit of the story. Some translations have actually added local humour: in the Italian translation, the Roman legionnaires are made to speak in 20th century Roman slang. The newer albums share a more universal humour, both written and visual.

In spite of (or perhaps because of) this stereotyping and notwithstanding some alleged streaks of French chauvinism, it has been very well received by European and Francophone cultures around the world. Allegations of French chauvinism are in fact ironic considering that Uderzo is of Italian descent, and Goscinny was of Ukrainian-Polish Jewish descent.

Stereotypes and allusions

Everywhere they visit, Asterix and 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 has been brought to what would become England by Asterix); 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. All the tribes represented are treated humorously as prototypes for their modern counterparts, and many aspects of them are satirised. 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. (But in later books, such as Asterix the Legionary and Asterix and Obelix All at Sea, the Goths were depicted much more friendly; 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 Superman, 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; 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' Spartacus. In Asterix and the Cauldron, the head of the theatre is Laurensolivius, based on the actor Laurence Olivier.

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, menhirs are now believed to have been erected long before the Gauls.

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, later 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.

Puns in names

File:Asterix-Main Gaul characters.jpeg
From left to right: Geriatrix, Unhygienix, Obelix, Dogmatix, Asterix, Vitalstatistix, Getafix, Fulliautomatix and Cacofonix (the porters are unnamed)

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 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, incidentally, never actually named. Roman characters' names end with -us as in Noxious Vapus and Crismus Bonus. Normans use -af (Bathyscaf, Toocleverbyhaf, Timandahaf), Vikings use "-ssen" (Herendthelessen, Haroldwilssen), Egyptians use -is (Edifis, Artifis), Britons use -ax (Hiphiphurrax, Dipsomaniax, Valueaddedtax), Goths use -ic (Rhetoric, Choleric) 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, and the wife of village fishmonger Unhygenix is Bacteria.

Many names stand as solitary puns on their characters, like Getafix 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, long to reign over us, God save the Queen".

Representing languages

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). Certain languages cannot be understood automatically by the Gauls 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

Running gags

A number of running gags recur in various albums. One of these is that the bard Cacofonix is inspired to song 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 Normans, where his help proved vital in stopping the Normans, 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" everytime 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.

Obelix is also seen numerous times attempting to drink from the cauldron of magic potion, but 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).

Another running gag is a group of pirates that tend to get caught in the middle of conflict and have their ship sunk, resembling the painting The Raft of the Medusa by Théodore Géricault, most notably in Asterix the Legionary. In this particular image the captain even makes the pun: "We've been framed, by Jericho!". The ship is often sunk for a variety of reasons, such as a stray thrown menhir, though usually through Asterix and Obelix boarding them. In one episode, 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 another, 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. Sometimes 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". Those 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.

Revisionist explanations

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 souvenir-shops nearby 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 an 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.)
  • 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.
  • In Asterix in Belgium, the chieftain of Asterix's Belgian hosts gains inspiration for patates frites (chips) 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 Caesar's Gift, Cacofonix composes the protest anthem "We Shall Overcome", which became the US civil rights movement song.
  • A recurring joke are 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 Brutus's fidelity to Caesar. In Asterix and the Roman Agent, Caesar tells Brutus to stop handling his knife or he'll injure himself; 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 chunnel.
  • 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.
  • In Asterix and the Great Crossing, Asterix signals to a Viking ship, on a small island off the coast of North America, atop a pile of stones, with a folded map under his arm. This represents the Statue of Liberty, a gift from the French to the Americans.

English translations

All Asterix stories by Goscinny and Uderzo which have been officially translated into British English have been translated by Anthea Bell and Derek Hockridge. Their first volume was published in 1969. However there have been some additional translations, one in English prior to the Bell/Hockridge version and two in attempts to enter the U.S. market.

Ranger magazine

"Ranger" was a British magazine for boys published in 1965 and 1966. It included a version of Asterix transferred to Britain. The strip was called "Britons Never Never Never Shall Be Slaves" with Asterix renamed Beric and Obelix being the son of Boadicea. Their foes remained Romans. Ranger was merged into Look and Learn magazine and the series continued there for a time.

American newspaper syndication

From November 1977 until early 1979 five albums were serialized in syndicated form in a number of North American newspapers. Since these were printed as part of the standard daily comics, and were broken into separately licenced but concurrent daily and Sunday strips, the art needed considerable reworking. This required editing a lot of the dialog. In addition, a number of names, jokes, and pieces of art were further changed to be more politically correct or idiomatic for the newspapers' family-oriented audience. The results were very different from the original translations. The stories printed appeared in essentially random order as well, and the experiment came to an end quickly.

The stories which appeared were

The Sunday color comic between stories contained the end of one story and the start of the next, each as a half page.

American albums

Five volumes were also translated into American English by Robert Steven Caron. These are Asterix and the Great Crossing in 1984, Asterix the Legionary and Asterix at the Olympic Games in 1992, and Asterix in Britain and Asterix and Cleopatra in 1995.

For copyright purposes most characters names were changed. With Asterix never achieving great popularity in the United States this series of retranslations was halted after these albums, leading to some confusion among the few American fans of the series (the other volumes were issued with the British translation in the same market).

Translating names

In Asterix stories many of the original names are humorous due to their absurdity. For example, the bard is Assurancetourix (assurance tous risques or "comprehensive insurance") the translation of which is pointless since the bard has no connection to insurance of any kind — it's the silliness that makes it humorous. To maintain the spirit and flow of the story the translators change the joke in the name to a comment on the character. This happens in the original as well, as with Geriatrix (French: Agecanonix — canonical age — a french expression meaning very old or ancient.), but it is not common, while absurd names in English, such as Dubius Status, are reserved for minor or one-story characters. Fictional place names however tend to be equally silly in all translations, for example the four camps (castra) which surround Asterix's village: Compendium, Aquarium, Laudanum and Totorum (Tot o' rum, colloquial English for shot of rum) — in French this camp is called "Babaorum", a pun on baba au rhum or rum baba, a popular French pastry.

Lost in translation

Anthea Bell and Derek Hockridge have been widely praised for their rendition of the English language edition for maintaining the spirit and humour of the original even when actual translation is impossible — as it often is when translating puns between languages which are not closely related.

File:Man about to wear a melon.jpg
Man about to wear a "melon"

A good example occurs in Asterix and the Chieftain's Shield — when Obelix redistributes the water in the spa pools by diving in, the other guests complain and the druid in charge arrives asking Vitalstatistix, "Where are your Gauls?" In the original French he responds Mes Gaulois sont dans la pleine ("My Gauls are in the full one") which is a play on a famous (in French) quote Les Gaulois sont dans la plaine ("The Gauls are on the plain") which of course sounds almost exactly the same, though not in English. Instead the translated reply is "Pooling your resources" (the water), a clever double entendre on a common phrase even though the original pun is lost. Avoir la pleine also is a common French phrase for "to have one's fill"; maybe a reference to the druid's potion.

Sometimes nothing of the original joke is salvageable. In Asterix in Britain, there is a scene in Londinium where a produce vendor argues with a buyer — in the next panel Obelix says (in French), "Why is that man wearing a melon?" This relies on the fact that the French word for melon is also the name for the iconic British bowler hat; with no way to convey this in the English translation, in the British edition Obelix says, "I say, Asterix, I think this bridge is falling down" referring to the children's rhyme "London bridge is falling down", leaving the original joke incomplete. In the panel shown, the reply of the British man on the right was "Rather, old fruit!", in some publications of the book; a good pun and typical of the way the British address each other in Asterix in Britain.

Occasionally, a joke is left untranslated for fear of causing offence to readers. In Asterix in Britain, Asterix brings a barrel of magic potion to help the British resist the Roman invasion, but it is confiscated by Roman legionaries and possibly left at a tavern. Asterix, his British cousin and Obelix then go searching for it by sampling each tavern's wine. One publican has this reaction to their eccentricity: "One cup of wine between three of you, you must be Caledonians, what?" A footnote in the French original explains Calédoniens as the ancient word for Ecossais (Scottish), but the footnote is untranslated in the British version. (Scottish people are often stereotyped as being miserly, particularly when buying drinks.) It's also possible the footnote was omitted as most British people would have been aware of the stereotype, and hence got the joke.

Comparison of names of major characters

Main article: Recurring characters in Asterix
Original name
(French)		 Meaning Description British Name American name
(Newspaper)		 American name
(Album)
Astérix asterisk (because he is the star), also the medical term asterixis refers to a periodic loss of muscle tone, the opposite of what Astérix displays when he drinks the magic potion Gaulish warrior Asterix Asterix Asterix
Obélix obelisk (An obelisk is similar to a menhir; and the obelisk symbol † often follows the asterisk.) Menhir
delivery man		 Obelix Obelix Obelix
Idéfix idée fixe (theme or obsession) Obelix’s dog Dogmatix Dogmatix Dogmatix
Panoramix wide view Druid Getafix Readymix Magigimmix
Abraracourcix arms coiled, ready to punch Village Chief Vitalstatistix Vitalstatistix Macroeconomix
Bonemine healthy look Chief's Wife Impedimenta n/a Belladonna
Agecanonix canonical age Village elder Geriatrix Geriatrix Arthritix
Assurancetourix comprehensive insurance Bard Cacofonix Cacofonix Malacoustix
Cétautomatix it's automatic Blacksmith Fulliautomatix
Ordralfabétix alphabetical order Fishmonger Unhygienix Fishtix Epidemix
Iélosubmarine yellow submarine Wife of Fishmonger Bacteria
Asterix ham and cheese-flavored potato chips

Influences

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Asterix.
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