Beyoind the Big Two: Asterix invents bullfighting

[ensiform]

I grew up on Asterix. It's a French humorous historical comic about what might happen if the Gauls had a magic potion to resist Caesar. It's full of adventure and feasting and hitting, and no one gets killed or wounded like in real history. There are a lot of little parodies of modern life as well; for example, lampooning Paris traffic by having lots of chariots and carts jammed up, everyone complaining about what slow going it is. And the names, of course, are all bits of wordplay (Asterix is a play on asterisk, while the Roman names, which end in -us, are always similar wordplay, as in Brontosaurus, here).


Hopefully this works; it's my first time posting since this new account, and I'm not quite sure how well this image hosting works.

Comments

[medster_comics]

I read this one, actually I have a lot of Asterix books. :)

[icon_uk]

You can't go wrong with some Asterix, I INHALED these books from the Library when I was little, even if I didn't always get all the jokes until years later, Asterix and Obelix are amongst the most sublime comedy acts of all time, right up there with Laurel and Hardy, and that's not praise I give lightly!

[ensiform]

I agree!

[nomadicwriter]

For some weird reason, I never immediately associate Asterix and Tintin with "comics". I read tons of Asterix books when I was a kid, but if you ask me when I started reading comics I will automatically default to saying I never read them growing up, despite the fact I read these and and load of collections of newspaper comic strips like Garfield and Dilbert. The tendency to think of "comics" as being synonymous with US printed floppies about superheroes is pervasive. :/

I just came across my Asterix collection a few weeks back, actually. Shall have to dig them out and find some bits to scan someday.

[drexer]

Ah yes, Asterix in Spain. I quite like this book, not the least because of Pepe's repeated bites of Obelix's fingers. It is one of those books though that annoys me a bit because it frequently reduces the whole of the Iberian Peninsula to just one country, but oh well; it was well counteracted by a small bit on Asterix and (the one where Obelix turns young, don't know the English name).

I have to say that the thing that most surprises me when I see translations of Asterix is how most names are changed, I was lucky because the Portuguese versions mostly keep the names intact due to the vast similar roots between the two languages but seeing 'Dogmatix' for instance is something that makes my mind just go '!huh!'.

On the subject of languages I always loved how it was portrayed in Asterix in Britain how the English language works with the nouns and adjectives switched around when compared to Latin languages. That and it was the first time as a kid that I saw a reference to the Imperial measuring system, that was quite a shock honestly.

[full_metal_ox]

...but seeing 'Dogmatix' for instance is something that makes my mind just go '!huh!'.

From the standpoint of a native English speaker, the meaning of the term "fix" in doper slang lends "Getafix"-- the name Panoramix the Druid bears in English translations--a certain unintended hilarity. (Or was it a case of Sneaking Stuff Past The Radar? He is, after all, the go-to guy for performance-enhancing drugs...)

[ensiform]

Unintended? What in the books makes you think that? Of course "get a fix" was exactly what they meant. Not unintended, not slipping anything past anyone. That was the joke.

[lilacsigil]

Asterix! I loved these as a kid (and even saw a few of the movies, on TV) and they're absolutely brilliant. People who say puns aren't the highest form of humour need to read more of these books.

[eyz]

I justt noticed I'm only missing 4 albums... this is one of them!! XD

[kenwyn89]

By Toutatis! I need to dig out my old Asterix collection, too... or may the sky fall on my head! I had Asterix and Cleopatra on DVD. I think it had a major contribution on my studying the Romans later in life.