Asterix to conquer the world with a 36th album – The Express

It’s gone by Toutatis! The 36th Asterix album, the biggest draw of the French edition, was released worldwide on Thursday. In Paris, Barcelona, ​​Berlin, Lisbon, Montreal, London and even in Cape Town, The papyrus Caesar will be on all shelves at the opening of bookstores.

In the French capital, a library of Boulevard Saint-Germain in the heart of Paris, remained open until midnight in the night of Wednesday to Thursday to allow fans to walk away with their precious album, signed by the authors.

As with the previous album, Asterix and the Picts , published two years ago, Jean-Yves Ferri wrote the screenplay and Didier Conrad took over Uderzo to draw the indomitable Gaul.

A few hours before the release of the album Jean-Yves Ferri confided to Albert Uderzo and Anne Goscinny October 12, 2015 in Paris have the impression of being “caught in a whirlwind.” The heroes of the last irreducible Gallic village confront this time to social networks.

One and a half to complete this album

“This is a more ambitious theme as the previous album,” says Jean-Yves Ferri who now dedicated exclusively to the little hero imagined 56 years ago by René Goscinny (died in 1977) and Albert Uderzo. This 88 years old today put his pencils since 2011.

It took him one and a half to complete this new album. Still, he said, “we do not feel the master of the work”. He would like in the future confront Asterix at very modern themes such as globalization or energy issues.

Didier Conrad thinks “do not have absorbed all the style of Albert Uderzo.” Maybe it will be good “at the end of the third album,” he laughs. The 36th volume of Asterix is ​​”more complex” than the last. “We can not read diagonally. This is an album for adults but without sex,” he smiled.

Both authors worked under the watchful eye of Uderzo and Anne Goscinny, daughter of René Goscinny. They worked mainly by exchanging mails. Jean-Yves Ferri live in the South of France, David Conrad resides in Austin, Texas.

A random 4 million copies

Asterix remains a unique publishing phenomenon. The Albert-René Publishing, a subsidiary of the Hachette group, have scheduled a total circulation of 4 million copies in 20 languages ​​(including 2 million for the French-speaking world). No book in France can not compete with these figures.

When the story begins the new Asterix, Caesar is about to publish The Gallic Wars . One of the chapters devoted to setbacks “facing the irreducible Gauls Armorique” grieves his publisher and agent Promoplus Bonus, a new character physically resembling the French advertising Jacques Séguéla but inspired “shadow advisors” around today the heads of state.

By agreeing to remove the “stain on his resume,” Caesar also took the risk of compromising the resurgence papyrus. Obviously, there will be a leak. A scribe called Bigdatha gives the precious document “peddler without borders” Gallic Doublepolémix, a character based activist Julian Assange.

Doublepolémix wants to give this document compromising for Caesar Asterix. Will he succeed? You will know it by paying 9,90 euros.