Asterix

Asterix (originally Astérix) is the fictional hero of a series of comic books created by René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo in France. The books have been translated into many languages (including Latin and ancient Greek) and are available in most countries. It's probably the most popular French comic in the world.

One key element in the success of the series is that it contains comic elements for several publics: young children like the fist-fights and other visual gags, while adults would see allusions to classical education and contemporary figures.

Asterix lives around 50 BC in a fictional village in northwest Gaul (Armorica), the only part of that country not yet conquered by Julius Caesar. The inhabitants of the village gain superhuman strength from drinking a magic potion prepared by the druid Getafix.

Many books in the Asterix series have as their main plot the attempt by the Roman army of occupation to prevent the druid from making the potion, or the attempt to get some of it for their own use. Such attempts are inevitably foiled by Asterix and his friend Obelix.

The humour encountered in the Asterix comics often centres on anachronistic caricatures and tongue-in-cheek stereotypes of contemporary European nations and French regions. In Asterix and the Goths, for instance, the Goths are represented as militaristic and regimented, reminiscent of late nineteenth and early twentieth century Germans. The helmets worn by these Goths even resemble the German pickelhaube helmets worn up to World War I and one of their leaders bears an uncanny resemblance to Otto von Bismarck.

The British are shown as polite, drinking warm beer or hot water (before the first tea has been brought to England by Asterix) and boiling all their food. Spain is the cheap country down south where people from the North vacation (and demand to eat the same food as they are used to at home). Some caricatures of the traits of certain French regions are also used (the people from Normandy cannot give a straight answer; the people from Marseille play boules and exaggerate matters, Corsicans are easily angered and have long-standing family feuds that they settle violently.

In spite of this stereotyping and the streaks of French chauvinism, it has been very well received by cultures around the world -- the USA, where it never caught on, being a notable exception.

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