Asterix who?

On the back of the Pastors good word I read an interesting article online today stating that the Asterix comic had its 50th Anniversary
Interestingly enough Asterix as a kid went miles over my head all that speak of magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo” – a great order of the ages is born was a little to European for these African eyes.


For those of you like me who don’t know the main setting for the series is an unnamed coastal village in Armorica, a province of Gaul (modern France), in the year 50 BC. Julius Caesar has conquered nearly all of Gaul for the Roman Empire, however the little Armorican village has held out because the villagers can gain temporary superhuman strength by drinking a magic potion brewed by the local village druid, Getafix.
The main protagonist, and hero of the village, is Asterix, who is usually entrusted with the most important affairs of the village, because of his shrewdness. He is aided in his adventures by his rather fat unintelligent friend Obelix, who has permanent superhuman strength, as he fell into the cauldron of the potion as a baby. Obelix is usually accompanied by Dogmatix, his little dog.

Reading the many articles documenting Asterixs 50th birthday celebration did give me that idea that I might have missed something and what’s more a lot of the wars and tyrants trying to destroy the village were symbols of modern day happenings. Don’t you just love that?

When you find a piece of fiction, which symbolises a piece of history. Tolken is another prime example of this or so I wish to believe. His trilogy got my mind boggling as to the symbols from modern life he was trying to represent.

Funny enough in an interview done over 20 years ago writer René Goscinny and the illustrator Albert Uderzo cautioned people reading to far into the underlying meanings of the comics. I think this was there way of not being beaten up by any half brain Italian patriot.

Asterix has some interesting statistics


• As of 2009 33 comic books of Asterix have been released
• Its been translated into 100 different languages
• It has had 11 feature films made about it
• It has sold over 325 million copies
• Obelix made an appearance as one of several imaginary characters in the South Park episode Imaginationland III.

It’s a phenomenon that will live on forever. The question I have is am I the only one who lives in his twenties and can admit not to reading a full Asterix?


Andrew “the Gaul” Levy