A comic strip created for the first number of Pilote (20 October 1959) by the writer René Goscinny and the artist Albert Uderzo. By the time Goscinny died in 1977, 24 albums had been published; Uderzo continued to produce the series on his own (e.g. Le Fils d'Astérix, 1983; Astérix chez Rahâzade, (1987). The first album, Astérix le Gaulois (1961), sets the pattern: successful Gallic resistance to the Roman occupation reverses history and allows revenge, and this resistance is led by unlikely anti-heroes in a burlesque epic which promotes, albeit ironically and self-parodically, chauvinistic and stereotyped attitudes. The text is rich in puns and learned allusion, as are the graphics. Astérix is an impudent answer to the immediately post-war influx of American supermen, the humble asterisk to their inflated stardom.
[Clive Scott]
