Asterix Co-Creator And Illustrator Albert Uderzo Has Died At 92

Mar 24, 2020 by apost team

The famed French comic-book illustrator Albert Uderzo — the co-creator of the iconic Asterix comic — died at his home in Neuilly, France at the age of 92 after suffering a heart attack this Tuesday.

Uderzo, who collaborated with the late French writer René Goscinny, was responsible for thinking up one of the comic-book world’s most beloved characters, Asterix the Gaul, which spawned an international following along with 11 films and a theme park, according to The Guardian. Asterix was in fact so popular that after selling millions of copies worldwide, it became a fixture of French popular culture.

The popular comic book series chronicled the lighthearted adventures of Asterix, a warrior from Roman-occupied Gaul, who is immediately recognizable by his yellow mustache and winged helmet, his portly friend Obelix, who is imbued with super strength and their canine companion dog Dogmatix.The comics would follow the group of friends as they embarked on adventures throughout Egypt, Britain and occupied Gaul, outsmarting and evading the Roman invaders.

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In an interview with The Guardian, Cressida Cowell, the author and illustrator of the How to Train Your Dragon books said that beyond the artistic achievement, Asterix has helped teach generations of children to love reading.

“Creating a huge cast of individually recognisable characters, and the minute detail of all those group battles and the action scenes is an achievement in itself, but his real skill was combining fast-paced adventure with such humour and warmth. Children come to reading in a lot of different ways, with comics and graphic novels being hugely important for a lot of kids,” she told The Guardian.

The genesis of the successful series, which has been translated widely, traces back to the 1950s when the late Uderzo met Goscinny for the first time, according to The Guardian. The two creatives quickly got to work together, creating the magazine Pilote in 1959, which eventually inspired the incredibly succesfull first issue of Asterix, The Adventures of Asterix the Gaul. When Goscinny eventually passed away in 1977 during a medical check up, Uderzo continued the series up until 2009 when the illustrator announced his retirement, selling Asterix and its rights to the large publisher Hachette.

After selling more than 370 million issues, Asterix has garnered a worldwide following along with the admiration of other comic-book artists, celebrities and public figures.

“Waaagh! Albert Uderzo has died,” wrote the English comedian Chris Addison on Twitter. “Oh, man. I think very few people's work will ever give me the amount of pleasure his has ever since I was very young. One of my greatest culinary regrets is that I'll never get to eat wild boar the way he drew them for Asterix. Chapeau, monsieur.”

According to The Guardian, Uderzo’s son-in-law Bernard de Choisy told the French press that after being “very tired for several weeks,” his father died in his sleep on Tuesday due to a heart attack unrelated to the current coronavirus outbreak.

In memory of the legendary illustrator, the Asterix website posted a heartfelt thank you honoring the “maestro,” writing in French that Asterix will continue to be part of a literary and artistic heritage for a long time to come.

How did Asterix creator Albert Uderzo's work touch your life? Let us know how, and pass this news on to all the Asterix fans you know.