Coronavirus? Don’t fret, Asterix already has that beaten...
ASTERIX the Gaul is taking on his most formidable enemy ever... Coronavirus.
As the cartoon character’s creator Albert Uderzo died yesterday aged 92, fans circulated pictures from a recent adventure, 2017’s Asterix And The Chariot Race.
One name seems prophetic – masked charioteer Coronavirus, who has the crowd egging him on. Pint-sized French hero Asterix and his best pal Obelix are in a race across Italy, and Caesar wants Coronavirus to win.
The thought that a children’s book could have predicted the plague currently ravaging the globe is creepy. In fact, there were coronaviruses long before Covid-19. It’s a general name for a family of viruses which include the common cold, so named because under a microscope the bug appears to have a corona or spiky crown. Still, the idea of a packed stadium chanting ‘Coronavirus’ seems heavily ironic today. Uderzo died from a heart attack in his sleep at his home in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France. His family said his death was not brought on by coronavirus. Uderzo was born in northern France to Italian parents in 1927. He and his writing partner, Rene Goscinny, insisted their stories were never topical or satirical. But the truth is that the books about Asterix, who drinks a magic potion to give him super-strength, and his pals who defied the Roman invaders 2,000 years ago were packed with in-jokes about modern life. The cartoon was so popular that an original drawing sold at auction in 2017 for €1.4million. After Goscinny died in 1977, Uderzo did nearly 20 more books with his daughter up to 2011, before handing over to artist Didier Conrad and writer Jean Yves-Fers, who drew the Coronavirus story.