Asterix Readthrough Books 1 to 4

This is the start of a series of posts about me re-reading Asterix. In case people don't know, Asterix is a series of comics about a cunning Gaulish warrior in a little village that alone resists Caesar's army thanks to magic potion and Asterix. It's very funny and family friendly, with tons of European in-jokes and bad puns. Its just plain awesome. Enough explaining

1: Asterix The Gaul

Where it all began.

This book is very much an introduction to the series' conceit. We see Asterix beating up Roman soldiers, Asterix disturbing the druid Getafix to get some magic potion, talking to his best friend Obelix and so on. One series in-joke is introduced early with the bard Cacofonix, maybe the least musically talented bard in all of fiction. The sheer threat of him playing is enough to see everyone else scatter.

The main plot itself is fairly ordinary. The garrison centurion wants to beat the village, so he forces a legionary to go spy on the Gauls and when he discovers the existence of the magic potion, decides to kidnap Getafix. So it falls to Asterix to save the day.

There's a theory I'd like to advance that a lot of first books end up suffering for their dedicated fandoms because they show the characters at their least developed and the authors a little unsure about what they're doing. I think its absolutely true here. It's a good comic. But at someone who knows what's coming, it's a little unsatisfying. We get far more character and jokes elsewhere.

Best Name: Crismus Bonus raises a smile and is appropriate for an annoying middle manager who thinks he's greater than he is.

Best Pun Sequence: Asterix taking the piss out of Crismus Bonus' magically induced hairiness.

Best... look, I'm just moving on here.

2: Asterix and the Golden Sickle

The village is at peace until the sulphurous swearing of Getafix breaks the silence after he breaks his sickle. Only a sickle from the famed Metallurgix in Luetia will do. So Asterix and Obelix (who's a distant cousin of said sickle maker) volunteer to go through the outlaw infested forest to Luetia and get a sickle. Story! And it only took three pages to set up.

Obviously this goes wrong. There's kidnappings, sickle traffickers, fights in dodgy bars, dodgier bartenders, a spell in jail, and a good old manhunt for Asterix in order to find a new sickle for Getafix. Since I love mysteries, this gets a two thumbs up from me. It is well paced and fun, but the real meat is watching Asterix and Obelix hang out. 

I'm not going to lie, as a kid I kinda wanted to be Obelix. Have fun, be impossibly strong (from having fallen into a cauldron of magic potion as a baby), and want to do nothing more than eat and fight constantly. Surely that is living; to Obelix, the whole world is Valhalla. He and Asterix are great pals, but the occasional spats over Obelix's irresponsibility and Asterix add just enough disagreement to make it work.

The plot follows its inevitable course and after one last big fight and one last twist, Asterix and Obelix get their sickle, the bad guys are punished, and Cacofonix is told that if he tries playing a song in celebration things will go poorly for him. It's a really fun romp and the contrast between this and the first book are night and day, with the obvious one being that Asterix actually gets someone to bounce off for most of the story.

Best Name: Some fine contenders but it has to be Navishtrix

Best Action Scene: After the bar fight breaks out, Obelix goes to the cloak room to get his menhir. He's told that's two coppers so he very politely goes to Asterix to borrow two coppers, gets his menhirs, then starts smashing people around the face with a giant rock. There's no way those people survived, right? But they did.

Best Secondary Character: Surplus Dairiprodus is the Prefect of Luetia, a jaded hedonist whose attention to his duties goes as far as his minimal interest in life and he does so with some wonderful lines.

Best Exchange:

"You make me sick, going on about boars all the time."
"And you bore me going on about sickles."

3. Asterix and the Goths

A strong contender for one of my favourite Asterix books ever. Once again, Getafix is the catalyst for story when he departs for a Druid conference (leading to Cacofonix getting beaten up by an OAP) and gets kidnapped by a bunch of Goths (aka Ze Germans) who want some druidic powers for world domination. Once they realise what's happened, Asterix and Obelix cross the border to go get their Druid back.

There's a lot of fooling around getting over the border but once we get there, it is pure magic. The stereotype of Ze Germans is what you'd expect given how I'm spelling it - militaristic, sticklers for details, and obsessed with power - and it's perfect for the story. I love watching a drill sergeant screaming at the disguised Gauls for turning up on parade carrying brooms. The look on the interpreter's face when he finds out Getafix speaks Gothic and is happy to tell the chief that he's lying.

My very favourite part comes when Getafix decides to confuse the Goths and discourage them from invading by handing out magic potion for all in order to encourage a civil war. It's hilarious. Maybe not that PC, but this is very much a product of its time i.e. less than twenty years after Germany invaded France. For the record, the Goths are treated far more sympathetically in the rest of the series but for me, this is the French version of that Fawlty Towers episode. And page 45 is my favourite single page in the series. Period.

Best Name: I don't love the Goths' names so I'm going with Getafix's British Druid friend, Valuaddetax, and with a shout out for the minor character only ever known as Feeble Druid

Best Action Scene: The Gothic civil wars. All of it. But particularly the chieftain Metric's rampage. He has a system. Of course he does.

Best Running Gag: A tie between the poor border guard who keeps getting excited about invasions, and the poor jailer whose door keeps getting broken. Peak hilarity when Getafix breaks it just to say thank you for his help.

4. Asterix The Gladiator

Time to switch it up as this time, Cacofonix the Bard is the kidnap victim who needs rescuing. What's worse, he needs rescuing all the way from Rome itself, as a visiting dignitary has had him kidnapped as a gift for Caesar himself. Although it starts with him going for a walk in the woods, something Obelix protests against because it scares the boards away.

Cacofonix: Boors! The boars appreciate my music better than you!
Asterix: That's only natural. You sing like a pig!

Fantastic. Everyone else seems to agree, as the Romans capturing him have to put parsley in their ears to blocks out his singing and the galley slaves say its worse than the whip. Something that's very noticeable about this book is how much development they do on the characters and in-jokes. In addition to Cacofonix, Obelix starts collecting legionnaries' helments and saying "These Romans are crazy!". The unsteadiness of chief Vitalstatistix's shield bearers starts. And most happily, they run into the poor pirates, whose attempts to board and rob Asterix's transport goes really awry. This is a series really coming into its own.

Back to the plot. They reach Rome and to rescue Cacofonix, sign up to be Gladiators... after a lot of traipsing around. The title is misleading. There's very little of Asterix being a gladiator which is kind of a shame, but maybe inevitable when he's basically invisible. And speaking of inevitable, they rescue Cacofonix, bring him home to a feast, and don't let him sing. The villagers actually tie him up to prevent it happening. At his own homecoming feast. The dicks.

Best Name: There's a pair of Roman guards named Sendervictorius and Appianglorius which is good for a giggle, but my favourite is the Phoenician businessman Ekonomikrisis.

Best Modern Day Resonance: The screaming match between the residents of a Roman flat block. Its real.

Silver medal to the Roman exposed to Cacofonix's singing who exclaims "These Gaulish secret weapons ought to be banned by the Helvetia Convention!"

Best Paired Lines (in two separate speeches):

Vitalstatistix: And remember, we have nothing to fear but the sky falling on our heads!
Centurion: And remember, Romans, we have nothing to fear but the Gauls!