If you’ll allow me to get a little personal here, Asterix and Obelix were one of my favorite comics growing up and one of the reasons I fell in love with classical history. The amazing thing is that–even after growing up a bit and developing different tastes and worldviews–I still love these books. They are quite literally books for all ages–both personal and societal–and they are the kind of books I always try to recommend to parents who are looking for a fun comic they can read with their children.
Anyway, now that we’ve completed the obligatory personal anecdotal introduction, let’s get to the review.
Written by Rene GoscinnyArt by Albert Uderzo
Illustrated by Albert Uderzo
This week we see Asterix teach men from the North the true meaning of fear in “Asterix and the Normans” and see Asterix join the army in “Asterix the Legionary”.
At this point in Asterix’s publication history we’re still in the 1970’s, where the French industry is becoming more mature and adult oriented and where artists were beginning to adopt more of a real life artistic style that combined elements of hyper realism and incredible detail.
Fortunately for the sake of our beloved heroes Asterix and Obelix, everything is smooth sailing and hasn’t changed.
Asterix and the Normans
“Asterix and the Normans” is a weird story in the Asterix cannon. It starts off simple enough, a friendly chieftain of a different village is sending his son Justforkix to the village of our heroes in order to toughen him up and make a man out of him. Meanwhile, in the far and distant North of what we would call Scandinavia, the fierce and proud Northmen decide to travel to the South in an attempt to learn the meaning of fear, because they do not know what it is like to be afraid and they wish to know everything. It turns out that everyone in the village isn’t afraid of the Northmen at all. In fact, they’re eager to fight a new and exotic enemy that isn’t the Romans. The only one who seems to be worried is Justforkix, who doesn’t know about the magic potion and tries to flee from the oncoming hordes only to be captured by the Northmen, who seem to think he can teach them about fear and terror. Asterix and Obelix proceed to rescue Justforkix and give the Northmen what they want. Their solution? Cacofonix’s singing.
“Asterix and the Normans” is a weird story, the least historically accurate out of all of them, and honestly not very good.
There’s actually quite a bit of history here: the Northmen of this book were the Vikings that raided across Europe for two hundred years starting around 796 AD, a full 740 years after the time when the comic takes place. Also, the Vikings (the term might have just been a catch all term for “raiders” or “pirates” back then, but we’ll just call them that) actually landed in France and decided to settle Northern France and keep it as the spoils of war. The French kings at the time decided to allow it, partially to create a buffer between them and any more raiders, but mostly because they didn’t have a choice. Those settlers would become the French speaking Normans who would go on to conquer England in 1066.
So as you can see, there’s a lot of history in “Asterix and the Normans” but it’s history that is very much out of place, which only adds to the cognitive dissonance of the book and makes it a bit of a jumbled mess. All in all, not very good, and you could probably skip this one if you wanted to.
Asterix the legionary
“Asterix the Legionary” marks a dark day for our brave Gaulish heroes, for this is the day where they finally give in and properly become part of the Roman world.
What do they do? They join the army.
Why do they do it? Why…for a girl of course!
To be clear, the village hasn’t fallen or anything, nor have the Gaulish heroes had the sky fall on their heads. It’s just that one day Asterix and Obelix see a pretty girl named Panacea walking in the forest. Obelix is immediately love struck and does everything in his power to woo her, which sadly isn’t a whole lot since love makes an already dumb man even dumber. Sadly, they find out that she is engaged to a man named Tragicomix, who has been drafted into the legions. Being the gentlemen they are, both men bravely volunteer to travel the length and breadth of the Roman Empire and track down Panacea’s fiance and bring him back…no matter what the cost.
Continued below“Asterix the Legionary” might be the book with the most educational value, if that’s what you were looking for in your children’s comic. The operation of the Roman legions have always been a subject of fascination and study for a lot of people, and this book makes a tremendous effort to show some of the training, equipment, and logistics that went into running the ancient world’s greatest and most effective fighting force. The book even goes a long way towards showing just how diverse and multicultural the legions could be, with a large portion of the supporting cast in this book being from different parts of the Empire.
Of course, there are plenty of opportunities for humor in “Asterix the Legionary”, with lots of jokes about bloated and ineffectual bureaucracy making everything more difficult than it has to be and the fact that the life of a legionary is nothing to men who have the ability to literally life boulders above their heads like it’s nothing. It’s one of the best Asterix books ever written in my opinion and one of my personal favorites.
Next week, we get to learn more about the village chief Vitalstatistix in “Asterix and the Chieftain’s Shield” and Asterix gets to represent his village in the Olympic Games in “Asterix at the Olympic Games”
