![]() ![]() In my teenage years, I lucked into a giant stack of Asterix books in a local used bookstore, and bought them all. And the fact that I was in a long-distance relationship (with a comic book from France that was damn difficult to find on these shores) only made me all the more lovesick. The irreverent humor, the ancient Rome setting, the appealing artwork and clever layouts of Albert Uderzo, the rich comic plots and nonstop puns of René Goscinny…I was in love. I loved them both, but Asterix connected like a magic-potion-powered punch. I would visit the library and get a thrill whenever one of their books was on the shelves. The answer was Thomson and Thompson (or, in the original French, Dupont and Dupond), though one couple submitted their answer as that great comic team, “Charlie Chaplin and Charlie Chaplin.” When I was a child growing up in California, Tintin and Asterix were, tantalizingly, just barely accessible. I can’t help but think of the culturally ignorant contestants on last season’s The Amazing Race, who were asked to dress up as two characters from the Tintin books, and then try to determine who they were by asking random Belgians. It seems that everywhere else on the planet he’s as iconic as Mickey Mouse – he even has his own theme park in France – but in this stubborn New World, Asterix has long been as obscure as Tintin, for whom not even a Steven Spielberg movie could quite bring the (elsewhere famous) comic book character to household name status. It’s eternally odd to me that Asterix the Gaul is relegated to mere cult status here in America. ![]()
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