The man behind Asterix
How important was Uderzo’s work, and what is his legacy?
I would say he helped make comics what they are today. Comics nowadays have taken on the status of cinema, and that wouldn’t have been possible without Albert Uderzo.
To a certain extent, Asterix changed the comic-strip world because, when it first appeared in 1959, comics were for kids. As Asterix grew older, so did comics.
One of the interesting points is that, when Uderzo retired in 2011, Didier Conrad, who did the drawing for the later albums, wanted to imitate him.
He didn’t want to put his own mark on it at all. He wanted to make it as much like Uderzo as possible.
He has been loved by generations of readers. What is it that makes Asterix such an iconic character?
For many, Asterix symbolises France itself. When France had a space programme, they named the rocket after him. When they first won the football World Cup, the team was compared to Asterix. It was said that they were the little ones who beat the big ones.
You can also see the history of France through the Asterix albums from 1959 and all the external politics right through to things like the crash of the Berlin Wall.
Why do his adventures have such enduring popularity?
In a similar way to so much of culture, such as the likes of James Bond and Indiana Jones, Asterix has a formula that will always work.
It adapts to individual stories and to the time. It keeps certain pillars that will anchor people in, then it will give you something specific related to what’s going on.
In the swinging sixties, there were references to The Beatles, when it was the American bicentenary they went to what is now New York. In one of the recent albums, there were references to tweeting, and the last one had a female teenager taking up the needs of the planet.
It’s the mixture of the eternal and the specific, all of which is hidden behind anachronisms, the Roman setting and a lot of clever wordplay.
How does he compare to another comic hero, Tintin?
In some ways he’s the opposite of him. Tintin is the adventure hero and Asterix is more the intellectual hero. Tintin, created by Belgian cartoonist Herge, is derring-do, Asterix is comedy and slapstick more or less.
Asterix is French and Tintin is Belgian so the two of them form opposites which complement and contrast each other.
What are Asterix’s Scottish connections?
2013’s Asterix And The Picts saw him visit Scotland – or Caledonia as it’s called in the book. It was the first story that wasn’t by René Goscinny and
Uderzo, although Uderzo did oversee it. The new author was a big fan of Scotland, and the Asterix tradition had always been to have a home adventure and an away adventure, and so on. He felt Scotland was the one country which Asterix should have gone to but never had.
Education Scotland has since used Asterix And The Picts in the curriculum for excellence as a work to improve language skills and social knowledge of France.
The writer, Jean Yves-ferri, said at the time that the natural landscape of Scotland was a perfect setting, but how did the political landscape also shape the story?
Asterix And The Picts was partly about the 2014 independence referendum. Yves-ferri came to Glasgow for a conference and launched the book there, and he was very clear that it had a pro-independence leaning to it. That was certainly his view and there are one or two hints in the book.
The story is about various clans of Scotland coming together against a common enemy. You can read into that what you like!