No. 67 - Asterix the Gaul

A big hello from me! I hope you're all doing well and are getting through in the best way you can during this time of uncertainty. It's a funny old world, and frankly it all feels a bit like a dream, but as with all dreams we'll wake up to a bright new morning at the end of all this. This week in the UK we learnt that we all had to stay indoors for the time being, and so it's time to fall back on our own resources. For all the parents having to home school your children, I hope you have fun together and learn from each other. The National Literacy Trust has a wonderful resource called Family Zone to help you with lots of useful links and activities to make home schooling a lot easier. Why not check it out! If I discover anything else I'll post it on here. I might also do some more posts with activities and book recommendations etc too, so watch this space!

It's a perfect time to explore new books series, and other types of literature too. I think this post about the Asterix comics has come just at the right time! 

Aside from reading the Beano each week as a child, I've never really been a comics or graphic novels kind of a girl. The first book on this list was The Adventures of Tin Tin, which I thoroughly enjoyed, and you can read my review here. So, I was really glad another comic popped up on the list, and I had a feeling it would be just as enjoyable. As with Tin Tin, I had never seen any adaptations of the stories so I was in the dark as to how the format worked, and what the characters were like. I found a PDF of Asterix the Gaul, the first Asterix comic online, along with all the others, why not take a look! I downloaded it onto my tablet and got reading. I'm not used to reading things on a screen, as I tend to favour a print copy, but a trip to the library was out of the question at the moment! I loved the creasy, battered scan of this comic, it was nostalgic, and reminded me of some kind of archived document. It was almost as good as paper! 

The first adventure of Asterix sees him and his Druid friend Getafix foiling the nasty Romans with a magic potion that makes their hair grow uncontrollably, which as you can imagine is rather funny! Asterix's village remains unconquered by the Romans, at a time when Julius Caesar was rampaging around invading anywhere he could! The Gauls' success is due to another of Getafix's magic potions, one that makes them superhumanly strong! Perfect for fighting Romans! There's classic slapstick, misdirection, and fights punctuated with 'BANG!' and 'BIFF!'; all the wonderful tropes you expect from a comic. The characters are appealing, and the drawing's themselves tell the story as much as the words do. It's great!

Originally of course, this comic was written in French, but it was translated into English in 1969. This meant that a lot of the jokes and names that had been used in the French comics didn't make sense in English, and it was up to translation duo Anthea Bell and Derek Hockridge to act not only as translators but comedy geniuses as well! The English Asterix books were praised for keeping the same comedic feel, despite having to be tweaked for English consumption. The character names are the most obvious difference between the French and English editions of this comic. For example, the druid is Panaoramix in the French version, but Bell and Hockridge changed the name to Getafix in the English one, in a reference to drugs and the magic potions he was always concocting! Just from this name change you can see that Asterix doesn't always seem to be aimed at a child audience. In fact, I think they are more for adults than children! The puns are at times so unrelated to childhood that I wonder whether Bell and Hocking, and indeed Goscinny and Udurzo (the original creators) were just trying to make themselves laugh! The Roman centurion named Marcus Ginantonicus is a favourite of mine, for example! There is also a lot of Latin in the English translation. Having not read the French version I can't say if it was in the original, but I do wonder what child today would understand the punchline of a joke if it were in Latin? Is this a symptom of the time it was written? I'm not sure. Latin was certainly being phased out of schools in the 1960s, so I wonder why it was chosen to play such a pivotal role in the text? 

"Vanity of vanities; all is vanity.", "The fact...", "How are you?" "Very well, thank you!" 

Yes, I had to use Google Translate!

In my last post I spoke about nostalgia, about the way child readers these days couldn't necessarily relate to child characters from the past in an immediate way, but there was always the thread of the collective childhood experience that kept them together. However, with the Asterix's books there is no collective childhood, it relies purely on story telling, adventure and an understanding of European history. This, I think, would make these comics a struggle for children these days.

If the whole story was reliant on the text, I think the adventures of Asterix would have been lost long ago. But luckily, the visual storytelling keeps these books afloat. There is a lot to be said about comics, and I'm going to use the phrase reluctant reader again! Combining words and images helps children find a passion for reading, beyond the picture book, but with the same familiarity. I'm not sure this is entirely true of the Asterix comics, because of all the layers to the narrative, but even if you ignore the text I think you can get something from the story. You can see the conflict between the Romans and the Gauls and get a gist of the action unfolding, as well as the physical humour. I love the simple palette of colours and the way the types of characters have their own distinct looks. As a icon of visual culture, Asterix is right up there! 

Overall, these comics have many downfalls when it comes to appealing to modern children. However, as an adult coming to them for the first time I enjoyed the humour, and using Google Translate for the Latin was quite fun! I'm not sure I'd recommend these comics for the child reader, for parents yes, but if you want a classic comic that will entertain today's young people, I'd stick to Tin Tin instead!

Thanks for reading, L x

Next up, it's J.M Barrie's magical Peter Pan.