Comic
Brawl in the taiga: Asterix and Obelix protect the griffin
A man looks at the new Asterix volume “Asterix and the Griffin”. Photo: Annette Riedl / dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
The brave Gauls cross snow and ice, and fight with Amazons against Rome in the steppe. “Asterix and the Greif” is the best band since Albert Uderzo’s retirement.
Suddenly it flashes again, this wonderfully anarchic “Asterix” humor that has been missing for so long: Obelix wants to be gallant to his new flame Casanova.
But what do you give a gigantic Amazon? The Gaul reaches for the ideal gift – a kind of bouquet of beaten Romans. Since Jean-Yves Ferri took over one of the most important comic series in the western world as a copywriter almost ten years ago, he has wanted to create something new and not just vary the old. Many fans have resented him for years. The new volume “Asterix and the Greif” has what it takes to finally reconcile both sides. It will be in stores from Thursday.
What is it about? In their new adventure, vaguely speaking, the brave heroes travel to the territory of Russia for the first time. A shaman from the Sarmatian tribe appeared to old Miraculix in a dream and asked him to come. Because a prophecy announced to the Sarmatians: “Help comes from the Gauls, especially from the smallest of them.” The druid sets off with Asterix, Obelix and the dog Idefix into the vastness of the snow-covered steppe. Here it is important to defend the griffin – a being half eagle, half lion – from Caesar’s grip
«Sarmatians? Never heard of », some might say now. In fact, not much is known about the equestrian people, first mentioned by ancient writers in the sixth century BC. For Ferri a clear advantage: “Of course you first have to find a country where the two haven’t been to,” he says in an interview with dpa. «The land of the Sarmatians had not yet been explored. But above all, almost nothing is known about the Sarmatians. That allowed me to invent the people and the country a bit. I could design it freely. ” Ferri recently explained in Paris that the vast empire of the steppe nomads once extended across Ukraine and Russia, among others. He has now even added a corner of Mongolia.
Ferri and his colleague Didier Conrad work with great attention to detail. You design a matriarchy in which the men stand at the stove and only the women go to war. The matrons on horseback have such illustrious names as Matryoshkova and Kalashnikova. As they hold their own, the Romans are more neurotic than ever.
Albert Uderzo started the series in 1959 with the author René Goscinny. “With the new tape, I thought that we had strayed furthest from the style of Goscinny and Uderzo,” says Ferri in an interview with dpa. “But now the first reactions are coming from people who have already read the comic. And they tell me: “This is the band with which you have come closest to the old style so far.” So that’s a very subjective thing. ” Indeed: the running gags, what is happening on the edge of the picture, the stable arc of suspense – all of this ties in with good “Asterix” albums from the 1960s.
However, what continues to shape the new adventures: There are many large, but also fewer comic pictures on the 48 pages. Critics have been complaining since 2013 that this gives the series a somewhat exhausted dynamic.
“Asterix and the Greif” appears internationally with an initial circulation of five million copies. The comic is the 39th Asterix adventure and the fifth collaboration between Ferri and Conrad, and is also the first album since Uderzo’s death. The sketches and drafts had still been submitted to the old master. Uderzo died in 2020 at 92. Years earlier he had retired as “Asterix” father. Goscinny hasn’t been alive since 1977.