Didier Conrad, Albert Uderzo’s successor since 2012.
(Photo: Bertrand Guay / AFP)
These days the question is often asked what makes permanent working at a distance with people so. So it’s not bad to look to Austin, Texas, where the French-born illustrator Didier Conrad recently completed his fifth “Asterix” volume in his home office. At least 8,000 kilometers away from his colleague, the scenarioist Jean-Yves Ferri, who is constantly providing him with drafts by email from a Pyrenees village. The two were selected in 2012 by the Hachette Livre publishing company as the successor duo of Asterix creators Albert Uderzo and René Goscinny. In reality, however, they only see each other every two years if they (have to) attend a few press appointments in Europe before the new volume is published.
Is that even possible? Two older men, always in front of the computer? Goscinny and Uderzo even went on vacation together! In the recently published volume “Asterix and the Greif” you can see: It works. Like Ferri, Conrad was born in 1959, the same year as Asterix. And just like his colleague, Conrad appreciates: quiet, red wine and good films – maybe he’s just a bit more organized in his private life than Ferri, you can already see that in his office. There, in the green hills above Austin, the draftsman lives with his childhood sweetheart Sophie. Sophie Commenge is known in the scene under the pseudonym “Wilbur”, she has already come up with a few comics and children’s books, sometimes together with Didier. His drawings were from the magazine Spirou already published when he was 14 years old.
The two moved to the USA from southern France in the mid-1990s. Didier, who has Swiss roots and whose father was in the medical business, had received an offer from Steven Spielberg’s production company Dreamworks to work on the cartoon “The Way to El Dorado”. But just as he was sitting at the drawing table in California, Pixar’s competition heralded a new visual era with the computer-animated cartoon “Toy Story”. And swapping the pencil with a PC mouse, Conrad didn’t want that. But he stayed in the States, later moved to Texas and earned his living with series such as “Les Innommables” or “Bob Marone” (which were successful in the Franco-Belgian region).
Five million copies, in 17 languages
Until he got the news in 2012 that he could apply to succeed Albert Uderzo, who was then 85 years old (and who died in March 2020). Not everyone is allowed to do that. And so Conrad came to “Asterix” – and Jean-Yves Ferri via another competition to succeed the lyricist René Goscinny, who died in 1977. A challenge: with the current initial print run of five million copies in 17 languages, the series is one of the most successful fiction formats in the world.
And unlike many other comics, Conrad’s “Asterix” albums are still handcrafted to this day. Created with the greatest perfection: He doesn’t even change the brush (Winsor and Newton, Series 7, Number 0) in the crucial ink phase. A computer is only used for the coloring. When it comes to the wealth of details, he is constantly setting new standards. “Asterix and the Griffin” is set in the steppes of Eastern Europe – snowy landscapes are a complicated thing to draw. There are also countless reminiscences: Sometimes Conrad pays tribute to the singer Charles Aznavour, then (as Centurion Brudercus) the Rambo villain Brian Dennehy, then he alludes to the battle of Napoleon against the Russians at Borodino or to the wall in “Game of Thrones”.
Incidentally, this year the draftsman did not even meet his scriptwriter at one of those sad press meetings. He had to cancel because of the flu. Will the two home office Gauls maybe go on vacation together again after all? “Oh, I don’t know,” says Didier Conrad.