Asterix : Search and Destroy

DESTROY! ALL! POXY! POORLY-ANIMATED! FEATURES! Damn I hate them.

However, I'm cheering myself up by thinking about the fancy flats in Mansions of the Gods. Real-estate shenanigins satire!

Corsica is also great - maybe the best one that falls outside the basic life-in-the-village-and-forest remit.

(Classic, obviously. Can't think what to search. My favourites used to be In Britain and And Cleopatra, I think. Anyone else think their holidays abroad are not complete unless they bring back a foreign Asterix or Lucky Luke?)

New ones: yes, a few, but not nearly as good as the older ones so it's probably not worth bothering. Try http://www.asterix.tm.fr/english/quest-reponse/uder_11.htm for a list. I haven't read any since Magic Carpet.

what has always mystfied me is whether Asterix is funnier in English or in French? it must be quite different surely - there were a lot of jokes in the books i read perhaps more suited to British readers in the translation...how were the characters names different? e.g. what was Vitalstatistix name in the original French books? just the French variant of this? does that make as much sense?

DAN PERRY TO THREAD! It sounds like a slang term for a Joe Namath netted slingshot brief. In America they named him 'Ptightnet'...and I do love the sequence how everyone complains about the army food except for the British guy, who loves it. ;-)

See, my presence on this thread isn't necessary.

The only Asterix comics I have are in German. I should dig them up because they were hella funny.

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.

*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

a little surprised how much i enjoyed it -- asterix wasn't especially high on my list as a kid, and the big fight seemed like a lesser episode even at the time* -- but the animated five-part 3D animated mini-series that just dropped on netflix,astérix et obélix : le combat des chefs, is terrific: the animation is excellent (actually genuinely lovely sometimes, colourwise and in the less er figurative stretches), the story is beefed up to include caesar as a character and related lore (including cleopatra scene & gag), the tweaks are all improvements (village more fully peopled, with figures familiar from later eps who aren't really in the book; better rounded women characters) and it's well written: the A/O relationship (heart-buddies who sometimes get tetchily fed up with each other) is especially nicely managed -- this element not really in this book but i guess ported in from later in the franchise at large? plus while they mostly keep to respective character names in voiceover (french) vs subs (english), viz idéfix vs dogmatic, they call getafix (always a bad name that riled me) panoramix in both. also in this version what befalls him doesnt feel quite so undignified…

*or perhaps just for smaller kids than me? the original is of course very slapstick in focus**
**in conclusion yes it's for kids but you will like it too

Oh thanks for the heads up. Big Fight was the first Asterix I ever read, part of a promotional giveaway of Asterix books from a petrol station chain in the 1970s! Agree that it's probably a 'younger' read than something like Asterix and the Roman Agent but I remember all the 'Gallic-Roman' stuff flying well over my head even so...

Thanks for that! Will definitely watch, I never really got on with Big Fight as a kid, I think I just didn't like seeing Getafix losing his marbles to such an extent.

minor warning: it does a small amount of backstory upfront (A&O as kids, the potion-as-a-baby incident) but while this can be a plague it's fine here, over p quickly & establishes circumstances that wd otherwise demand distracting exposition

Great analysis, I came into this with trepidation but came out pleased. I found the getafix erasure in the subs a little jarring but got on with it.

Want to know who Cassius was satirizing in the young asteroid and obelix bit - some rugby player?

Anyway it captures the spirit really well and I hope they do more.

Netflix have added a new Asterix animation (The Big Fight) and it's really good. Lots of old jokes and some new ones to keep it fresh, plus some really great original sequences (the Getafix kids show, It's A Gaul World). Feels comforting and nostalgic but modern too.

― Overtoun House windows (aldo), Thursday, 1 May 2025

need to post it on the right thread aldo :)

I always liked Big Fight. it has a strong premise, tons of jokes, fancy psychedelics for kids, a good villain - the worst kind of villain - a collaborator! (boo!), the previously untouchable getafix gets the closest to experiencing (mild) peril of any Asterix character, and I love any story that puts vitalstatistix and/or impedimenta at the centre (vitalstatistix is the best non-obelix character - I will not discuss this)

ooh i’m going to check this out :D

i reread tBF when i went to bed last night after watching the film and my judgment (as an old dried up bitter man) is that it in fact has TOO MANY jokes lol -- tho some of the times i was rolling my eyes i could also recall enjoying the exactly same jokes as a littlie so there you go

(impedimenta is present in the book but in my edition at least not yet named: there's much more of her in the film 👍🏽)

Psychedelic potion swapping sequence in Big Fight reminded me of Thomson and Thompson changing in Explorers on the Moon, read around the same age and a BAD INFLUENCE.

https://cdn001.tintin.com/public/tintin/img/static/thomson-and-thompson/15_en.jpg

asterix & tintin both drugs-rich texts when you think abt it: the potion, the "poison qui rends fou" -- the romance of heightened ordinariness (the clean belgian line, the "one true gaulish village") entangled with a crisp but strong psychedelia. in this post i will etc

this was very fun and kept many of the best jokes in the book, thanks for the recommendations y'all. the name gags always make me chuckle, Mileycirus was a good one

this is the first Asterix adaptation I've seen, despite loving the books - have there been any others this good?

There’s an old cartoon of big fight that mashes it up with soothsayer iirc. It’s called operation getafix. I don’t remember much except bill oddie is Asterix and the whole film has so few characters it makes Roman Gaul seem like some deserted post apocalyptic village

We haven't quite finished this but my kids (6 & 9) are enjoying it, though not quite as much as k-pop demon hunters. It's pretty good, I've lolled a few times, the getafix (as he is called in the English dub) tripping balls kids show was pretty wild, my kids liked that and the "beardix" bit a lot.

The English dubbing is really awful - it’s miles better in French with English subs

not if you're 6

i watched first ep & found it very fun. yay! the colors in the animation even remind me of the comic a bit

and i went w dubbed bc watching a cartoon w subtitles feels a bit too musty-grownup for me

this is the first Asterix adaptation I've seen, despite loving the books - have there been any others this good?

Les 12 Travaux d'Asterix is a classic, but I've only watched the original one in French.

update OK FINE YES the french language voices are better. i too am a musty-grownup. English dub started bugging me bc Asteriz sounded like a 16 yr old

*ix

Cheers Dinsdale, I'll check it out. I used to have the non-comic book version of that movie

I was perfectly happy with the English dub of The Big Fight, though I'm not surprised the French may be better