You know it’s not all bad turning 43. For one thing, I’m in better shape than Elvis Presley was at this age. True, I haven’t changed the
face of rock and roll, nor have I made thirty-six bad movies. On the other hand, I haven’t been dead for a year.
Apart from being in better shape than The King was at this stage, I’m in the lucky position of having received Asterix Goes to Spain for my birthday, courtesy of my five year old son and a kind sister who helped him buy it. Asterix was a staple of my childhood. He’s a Gaul, who fights Romans. He’s a plucky little guy. He’s actually Belgian. He’s …..let’s begin at the beginning.
Asterix books have been coming out since the 60’s. As with Tintin, the books are huge in France, but the creators are Belgian. Each glossy book (the size that 2000 AD used to be) covers very similar territory. We meet the heroes, a small village of ‘indomitable’ Gauls who hold out against the Roman Empire. They hold out with the help of magic potion, brewed by their druid Getafix. Asterix, the hero is a little brave guy, although he doesn’t really need to be brave since he has a vial of magic potion to take and his friend Obelix, a fat yob who fell in the magic potion when he was a baby and who is always super strong as a result. Getafix is wise and old, but the rest of the village are pretty useless; there is a bard, Cacofonix, who always gets his lyre broken over his head before he can finish a song, Vitalstatistix, the pompous chief who gets carried everywhere on a shield, an old guy Geriatrix with a gorgeous young wife and a few others.
Usually the Asterix and Obelix meet up with people from one other European country on their travels. Apart from the Gauls, who are lovable peasants, the other countries live up to their stereotypes; the British are too formal and can’t cook, the Spanish are haughty, the Swiss are obsessed with money, time and cleanliness (and keep annoying the Romans by cleaning up during orgies) and the Germans are large thugs. The whole series reminds me of the old heaven and hell joke; you know, in Heaven the British are the police, the Germans are the engineers, the Italians are the lovers, the French are the cooks and the Swiss are the bankers. In Hell the Italians are the engineers, the British are the lovers, the French are the bankers…and the Germans are the police. The Italians and the French are pretty much interchangeable in this joke, being allegedly sexy people with great cooking, but everyone who hears the joke gets it right about the Germans.
The man who created the cartoon series Doraemon, said that anime characters are like the stripes on a barber’s pole, always seeming to move whilst staying in the same place. True for a lot of comic series, this is very true for Asterix and Obelix, who always finish with a big feast around a bonfire, eating wild boars whole while Cacofonix lies tied up next to a tree. Sometimes the feast varies in some small detail; after the Spanish adventure, Obelix is showing the other Gauls how to do Flamenco, but the basic structure is always pretty much the same. For quite some time now, the series has been kept alive by Goscinny due to Underzo’s having gone to join the great boar-feast in the sky. The stories are getting a bit thin, but the art is still gorgeous.
It helps if you know a little about European history and literature, but not much is needed (I think everyone will get the joke about Brutus always playing with his knife). Least likely guest appearance ever, goes to the time one of Asterix’s Roman legionaries made an appearance in the 2000 AD strip, Sinister Dexter (just a stubby sandal and foot showing in the foreground during a time-travel story).
I must have read at least ten of the Asterix books but there are more than twenty around. I’m not going to track them all down and read them, really I’m not. That would be unbecoming for someone who is one year older than Elvis managed, besides which I’m just going to track down some kid who has the lot and borrow them from him or her.
