Asterix illustrator created characters whose books outsold Flaubert and Hugo

Albert Uderzo, who has died aged 92, was a French illustrator who cocreated Asterix the Gaul, the diminutive, blond-haired warrior who became one of the world’s most recognisable and beloved cartoon characters.

Uderzo, who was born colour-blind and with six fingers on each hand, became one of the world’s most acclaimed cartoonists, known for drawing characters that ranged from the sword-wielding Asterix to his rolypoly sidekick Obelix, a stonemason who joins Asterix in defending their village from Roman legionaries.

Created in 1959 by Uderzo and writer Rene Goscinny,

Asterix served as a Gallic alternative to

American cartoon characters such as Superman and Batman, mixing sly wordplay with sight gags, Latin jokes and caricatures of French politicians such as Jacques Chirac, who made his way into the comic series disguised as a Roman economist.

After debuting in the satirical magazine Pilote, Asterix became a mainstay of French culture for more than six decades, spawning dozens of books as well as animated movies, radio and television shows, live-action films starring Gerard Depardieu, and a theme park not far from Disneyland Paris – a coup for Uderzo, who modelled his cartooning style in part on the early works of Walt Disney.

The series became so popular in France that the country’s first satellite was named Asterix. And when Goscinny died, in 1977, one French obituary likened his passing to the collapse of the Eiffel Tower. Uderzo, who continued the series on his own, went on to outsell Voltaire, Flaubert, Hugo and every other French author before him, with more than 380 million Asterix books sold in more than 100 languages worldwide, according to his publisher. In terms of raw sales figures, his hero was more popular than Tintin.

It was an outsize legacy for a character that Uderzo said was ‘‘as imperceptible as a punctuation mark’’. (According to Le Monde, he much preferred Obelix, a character he created on his own.)

As the series took off, critics and scholars took turns tracing its appeal. Many explanations were offered, but Goscinny’s was more straightforward. He once declared that Asterix made people laugh ‘‘because he does funny things, and that’s all’’. In 1996, one French woman told The New York Times that the comics’ Gauls were ‘‘like us, exasperating but endearing. Asterix is our ego’’.

‘‘It’s a puzzle to me why Asterix happened the way it did,’’ Uderzo told the paper. ‘‘Rene and I had previously created other characters with as much passion and enthusiasm, but only Asterix was a hit. I think it’s perhaps because everyone recognises himself in the characters. The idea of the weak who defeat the strong appeals. After all, we all have someone stronger lording it over us: the government, the police, the tax collector.’’

‘‘It’s David against Goliath,’’ he told Time magazine. ‘‘Everyone can identify with the image of retribution against things that are bigger than us.’’

Alberto Aleandro Uderzo was born in Fismes, northeast France, to parents who had migrated from Italy. He had surgery as a child to remove the extra digit on each hand.

By age 14, Albert – he dropped the o – was publishing his first illustrations. A decade later he began working with Goscinny at a publishing house in Paris, helping to launch the magazine Pilote, where Asterix made his debut.

‘‘They wanted a comic strip with ‘French’ themes, and we toyed with ideas from different periods of history,’’ Uderzo told the Toronto Globe and Mail. Getting the right look for Asterix took time. In an interview with Britain’s Independent newspaper, Uderzo explained, ‘‘I drew him bigger and more handsome. It was Goscinny who suggested changes until we got him just right.’’

The duo published two dozen Asterix books, beginning with Asterix le Gaulois (1961), before Goscinny died at 51 after a heart attack. Uderzo said he considered killing off Asterix, before deciding to carry on alone, and spent about three months crafting each book’s story and twice as long on the drawings.

While Asterix volumes continued to sell well in almost every country but the United States, some critics said the later books lacked the wit of those written by Goscinny. Uderzo handed the reins to writer Jean-yves Ferri and illustrator Didier Conrad, beginning with the 2013 book Asterix and the Picts.

By then, he had sold a majority stake of his publishing company, Les Editions Albertrene, to the French conglomerate Hachette Livre, kicking off a bitter dispute with his daughter, Sylvie, a former executive at Albertrene. In a 2009 letter published in Le Monde, she accused him of turning his comics over to ‘‘perhaps the worst enemies of Asterix, the men of finance and industry’’.

A long legal battle ensued, with Uderzo suing his daughter and son-in-law for ‘‘psychological violence’’ before the family publicly reconciled in 2014.

The episode marked a rare moment in the spotlight for Uderzo, who generally remained behind the scenes. ‘‘I’m the puppeteer who hides behind the puppet,’’ he said. ‘‘I don’t sell myself. I’m not the star. Nobody knows my face. I could hold up a bank and no-one would recognise me.’’ – Washington Post