A wonderful tonic to the shoddy quality of the recent Asterix books, this is a delightful compendium of fourteen "bits and pieces" related to the series going back to 1962 and is fascinating for the fan. It includes things like: a short story about Asterix helping Lutetia get an Olympics bid (made for Paris' 1992and a strong enough idea for a whole story); a slightly dodgy tale written about Gaulish women, i.e. Geriatrix's Lollobrigida-like wife, for "Elle" magazine(written to give the girls' an adventure - she doesn't go anywhere and is totally passive; the intro to this one argues that the series wasn't"anti-feminist" - yeah, right - it also adds that they showed women more than many comic strips do, which is true, and that men are made fun of as much if not more than women, which is true, too - but the tone is nastier about women); the story of the birth of Asterix and Obelix (where all the characters' parents act just like them, even doing the same jobs - which is funny but not very democractic); a story about the coming of spring; the saga of a fight between a cowardly rooster and an eagle told from the POV of the animals (where Obelix is shown to actually be able to chat with Dogmatix after all) Dogmatix getskidnapped. The two authors appear in a few tales themselves, all charmingly - in one they come across Obelix's descendant, in another they show how they come upwith ideas. Most brilliantly is one where Uderzo draws Asterix adventures indifferent styles: sci fi, psychedelic, action-orientated - this is brilliant and shows just how talented the lead duo were, notwithstanding the recent slide in quality.
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