Saturday, April 28, 2007

Comic review - Asterix #8 - "Asterix in Britain" by Goscinny and Uderzo


The greatest Asterix adventure? It would certainly be up there, for this is a brilliantly entertaining romp where Asterix and Obelix go visit the village of the former's cousin in Britain, where they are the lone hold outs against the Romans. There is one irritating factor - if Getafix is willing to give one Pommy village a barrel of potion, why not to all of Gaul (we really just need one sentence along the lines of "if too many people have the potion it will cause never-ending war" or something) - I think secretly maybe Getafix thinks the Gauls are better off under Rome. Apart from that, the rest is enormous fun - the satire on the British is abundant but affectionate (they stop fighting for tea and weekends - partly why Caesar beat them apparently!, are protective of their gardens, love warm beer and awful food, are unemotional, etc - Brits love hearing this stuff about themselves no wonder they lapped it up), the "macguffin" of the barrel of magic potion works well, there are some hilarious sequences such as the tower of London and everyone getting drunk while searching for the potion, the Romans are worthy adversaries (note how their skilled aim gets the barrel) and the heroes have to rely on cunning instead of potion to get themselves out of trouble by the end.

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