Asterix The Gaul – Rene Goscinny & Albert Uderzo, 1961 ★★★

A Star is Born

How does a comedy legend take flight? Well, if you are a certain wing-headed warrior of ancient Gaul, you do it by establishing a simple formula, developing a steady flow of bad puns and easy laughs, and saving the big guy for the sequel.

That’s the approach writer René Goscinny and illustrator Albert Uderzo took in 1959 when they launched their international cartoon superstar Asterix, first in the pages of French comic magazine Pilote and then in a series of books two years on, beginning with this.

Asterix books have sold over 325 million copies around the world by one count, making them maybe the most successful commercial product this side of a Big Mac. What’s the secret of their outsized success?

It begins with the basic concept. To quote from the introduction of every Asterix volume I know of:

The year is 50 BC. Gaul is entirely occupied by the Romans. Well, not entirely… One small village of indomitable Gauls still holds out against the invaders. And life is not easy for the Roman legionnaires who garrison the fortified camps of Totorum, Aquarium, Laudanum, and Compendium…

It’s a classic underdog story, except in this case “underdog” might be an overstatement. You see, Asterix and his fellow villagers have a trump card, a potion brewed by their druid Getafix which renders them unbelievably strong, perhaps even invincible. Much of the comedy centers around foiling Julius Caesar, who seeks to finalize his Gallic conquest.

Beyond this basic idea lies the genius of its creators. A natural satirist with a wry, light touch, René Goscinny could spin a thin concept, say going to the Olympic Games or visiting Spain, into a delirious, phantasmagoric farce anchored for the most part by his protagonist duo, Asterix and Obelix. That he did this for almost 20 years until his death in 1977, simultaneously scripting stories for other well-regarded comic books, is testament to his brilliance.

Goscinny and Uderzo, in foreground with pen to paper, pose with their famous creation. Image from https://www.pinterest.com/pin/565412928190928629/.

But never mind that. When I spotted my first Asterix book, I was in no position to appreciate Goscinny’s whip-smart text, as it was all in Norwegian. What grabbed my interest, and held it, was the art.

Albert Uderzo drew fat-lined, gorgeous landscapes crammed with detail and seen from vertiginous perspectives. Colors popped off the page like Disney, but with a sense of joy and mirth wholly its own. Unlike American comic books, every panel had a different center, a different purpose. Characters were bright, cheery, and cute as heck. I knew they were saying something funny; if only I could work out what.

No luck. My neighbor with the book spoke Norwegian fine but shrugged off translating duty. “Too complicated,” he demurred. It took a couple of years before I would find my own copy of Asterix The Gaul.

“Welcome, Brother! Make yourself at home!”

“I will now sing a song of welcome…”

“Just go and look up an oak tree to see if I’m there!”

Something that needs to be said up front: The English translation, by Anthea Bell and Derek Hockridge, is widely celebrated in its own right. As partners, Bell and Hockridge stuck with the series longer than Goscinny and Uderzo, translating Asterix The Gaul in 1969 and employing their own humor to overcome differences in nomenclature.

For example, Asterix’s opponent here is one Crismis Bonus, leader of the Roman camp of Compendium. His deputy is Marcus Ginantonicus. Together they hatch a scheme to disguise a legionnaire as a Gaul and send him into Asterix’s village to dope out the secret of their strength. To select a volunteer, they have a game of musical chairs. Eventually, one Caligula Minus gets the job. He’s not happy:

“By all the gods, I should have stayed at home! I never ought to have joined Caesar’s legions in search of fame and fortune. My skin’s not worth a sestertius and I’ll never eat tapioca like mother made again!”

The plot is rudimentary by comparison with Asterix volumes to come. Caesar’s no active participant here. Nor does Obelix, normally Asterix’s right arm, figure much in Asterix The Gaul. He allows Asterix to leave the village alone on a couple of occasions, content at the moment with his day job delivering menhirs.

That’s one of many oddities seasoned Asterix fans might notice in the inaugural volume. Asterix’s canine companion Dogmatix is completely AWOL, as are the entire female complement of Asterix’s never-named village. Cacofonix the village bard even sings for an appreciative audience. Later in the series, his off-tune warbling, and the hostile reaction it induced from his community, became running gags.

Asterix The Gaul has fans. Paris newspaper Le Monde placed it 23rd on their list of the 100 greatest books of the 20th century, above Ulysses, The Sound And The Fury, and “The Lord Of The Rings” trilogy. Druid beats sorcerer, apparently.

I first noticed this list when reviewing another Franco-Belgian comic, The Blue Lotus featuring Tintin. That’s also on the Le Monde list, a little higher in fact. I don’t rate Blue Lotus among my favorite Tintins, but get why it might have been chosen as it is a thematically ambitious work. I can’t say the same for Asterix The Gaul, though I enjoy it more.

Crismus Bonus calls out the troops to take out Asterix and Getafix at the conclusion of Asterix The Gaul. Spoiler: It's not going to end well for the Roman. Image from http://www.linguetic.co.uk/res7graphnov2.html.

“These Romans are crazy,” a recurring line in the Asterix series, doesn’t show up in Asterix The Gaul, but the concept is locked down. It is their plotting, and mindless capering, that produces the story of Asterix The Gaul as it would with many installments to come. Really, if it wasn’t for the Romans, you wouldn’t have a series, at least not a very funny one.

In later Asterix books, the Roman Empire would be built out for maximum satirical/comic effect. Results include my favorite volume, Mansions Of The Gods, where Caesar employs an Levittown-style urban-renewal strategy to subjugate the Gauls.

Blogger and cartoonist Alexander Matthews has written extensively about the series; he selects such Rome-centered books as Asterix The Legionary and Asterix The Gladiator as among the best. You get the feeling Goscinny and Uderzo enjoyed them, too. They took such pleasure early on in setting up various Roman centurions (like Crismus Bonus here) as comic foils that they become, at least for a single book, more central than anyone in the village except Asterix (and later on, Obelix.)

Matthews gives Asterix The Gaul a high grade, too, higher than mine. Crismus Bonus is enjoyably inept, and his scheming makes for some of the book’s funniest moments. But when the story moves away from Crismus & Co., especially in the first half, it becomes bland and utilitarian. Goscinny explains the rules about the village’s magic potion and introduces the villagers themselves (the male ones, anyway) like he was taking attendance in a classroom. Caligula Minus’ infiltration has possibilities but gets resolved quickly and anticlimactically by a silly mustache-pulling dance.

It’s the second half of story where the sharpness of Goscinny’s writing and wit comes more into focus. After learning of the magic potion, Crismus Bonus decides he wants it for his own purposes. His legionnaires kidnap Getafix, requiring Asterix to sneak into their camp for a rescue. Being crafty as well as indomitable, Asterix has no fears: “We’ll have fun with them!”

Watching the next sequence unfold is the high point of the book, and a harbinger of things to come. At Crismus’ command, Getafix brews up a potion, not the strength inducer the Roman expects, but another that causes hair to grow and grow. This obviously sets up Uderzo for many great visual gags as the Roman soldiery is reduced to pilum-toting furballs and the camp is buried in beard clippings.

“I am at the mercy of these Gauls,” Crismus exclaims. [Warning: Bad Pun Alert!] “They’ve got us by the short hairs.”

Uderzo was the secret sauce of Asterix’s success, as I knew that first day at my neighbor’s house. Like Goscinny he was a seasoned pro by this time, but his style for the series was still a work in progress. You see it especially in the way the Gallic village is depicted, a loose collection of desultory huts that stretch aimlessly into a surrounding treeline. Later on, this village took on its own distinct shape and tone, every building associated with a specific character, something you could build a theme park around.

An Uderzo depiction of Asterix's village, featuring various characters from its expanded universe. Only a handful appear in Asterix The Gaul. Image from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asterix.

There are no big splash pages in Asterix The Gaul, no sprawling bosky vistas or birds-eye view of Roman encampments or coliseums. Later on, secondary characters took on more distinct identities; I think as a result of Uderzo spoofing real-life celebrities in French culture. Here, their faces are pleasant but indistinct. A few pages of my volume of Asterix The Gaul have sloppy coloring, apparently the result of a rush job in the original compositing which carried over to the first English print run.

What makes Asterix The Gaul so important, I think, has less to do with what’s on the page than what was to come. It’s a clever little story, its humor dependent for the first and only time not on the audience’s investment in its characters and premise but a general idea of a little guy taking on an evil empire and emerging victorious. The result is effective and enjoyable. Out of small acorns do mighty trees grow; from Asterix The Gaul you got a forest to span generations.