Asterix: The Pilote Publication Guide
The “Pilote” Asterix Album Index
I’ve been picking up some issues of “Pilote” magazine off of eBay recently, in an effort to better educate myself on how the Franco-Belgian comics worked in the past.
Being such an Asterix fan, I’ve tried to pick up issues that featured pages from my favorite books in the series, when available.
Asterix books were initially serialized in weekly installments of the magazine from 1959 through 1973, from “Asterix the Gaul” through “Asterix in Corsica.” After that, the series went straight-to-album format.
As I’ve been shopping around, I created a list of which Pilote issues carried which Asterix stories in them.
Most available issues of “Pilote” that I can find on-line are from the back half of the 60s and into the early 70s. I’ve so far picked up issues featuring pages from “Asterix and the Olympic Games“, “Asterix in Switzerland,” “Asterix and the Cauldron,” and “Asterix and the Soothsayer” in them.
In the interests of sharing, I thought it might be a good idea to post the list that I scratched together of which Asterix books were serialized in which issues of “Pilote”.
The table below will indicate the first and last issue of “Pilote” that each given Asterix book was serialized in.
The final two columns indicate which hardcover “Pilote” compilations the same issues can be found in. Belgian and French compilations had a different number of issues in each book starting in 1962 with volume 11, so the volume numbers differ. Belgian books continued with 13 issues per book, while the French editions moved to 10 issues. In 1969, the Belgian books started doing 10 issues per book, also, but the damage was done and the numbers would never line up again.
Asterix in Pilote
| Title | Starts At | Ends At | French HCs | Belgian HCs | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  | "Asterix the Gaul" | 1 | 38 | 1-3 | 1-3 |
| 2 |  | "Asterix and the Golden Sickle" | 42 | 74 | 4-6 | 4-6 |
| 3 |  | "Asterix and the Goths" | 82 | 122 | 7-10 | 7-10 |
| 4 |  | "Asterix the Gladiator" | 126 | 168 | 10-14 | 10-13 |
| 5 |  | "Asterix and the Banquet" | 172 | 213 | 14-18 | 15-17 |
| 6 |  | "Asterix and Cleopatra" | 215 | 257 | 18-22 | 17-20 |
| 7 |  | "Asterix and the Big Fight" | 261 | 302 | 22-26 | 20-24 |
| 8 |  | "Asterix in Britain" | 307 | 334 | 27-30 | 24-26 |
| 9 |  | "Asterix and the Normans" | 340 | 361 | 30-32 | 26-28 |
| 10 |  | "Asterix the Legionary" | 368 | 389 | 33-35 | 29-30 |
| 11 |  | "Asterix and the Chieftain's Shield" | 399 | 421 | 36-38 | 31-33 |
| 12 |  | "Asterix at the Olympic Games" | 434 | 455 | 40-42 | 34-35 |
| 13 |  | "Asterix and the Cauldron" | 469 | 491 | 43-45 | 36-38 |
| 14 |  | "Asterix in Spain" | 498 | 519 | 46-48 | 39-40 |
| 15 |  | "Asterix and the Roman Agent" | 531 | 552 | 49-51 | 41-43 |
| 16 |  | "Asterix in Switzerland" | 557 | 578 | 52-54 | 44-46 |
| 17 |  | "Asterix and the Mansions of the Gods" | 591 | 612 | 55-57 | 47-49 |
| 18 |  | "Asterix and the Laurel Wreath" | 621 | 642 | 58-60 | 50-52 |
| 19 |  | "Asterix and the Soothsayer" | 652 | 673 | 61-63 | 53-56 |
| 20 |  | "Asterix in Corsica" | 687 | 708 | 64-67 | 57-59 |
An Interesting Data Point
Looking at that table, I’m struck by how short and how long the breaks between books lasted.
For the first nine books, there would be anywhere from 2 weeks to 8 weeks between stories. That would give Goscinny and Uderzo enough time to come up with a new story and put a few pages in the bank as the weekly deadlines started to hit.
But after the ninth book, the gaps began to get longer and longer: 10, 13, 14 issues. There are a couple of moments where it went back to 2 or 4 weeks when, I suspect, they were on a roll. But it seems like the breaks got longer after that, in general, stretching out to as much as 14 weeks (between “Soothsayer” and “Corsica”).
The other thing I wondered about was how Dargaud reacted to such down time. Asterix became the big hit series in “Pilote”, so much so that they added Asterix and Obelix to the title on the cover of the magazine.
It was “Pilote: The Magazine of Asterix and Obelix.”
Did sales drop between storylines?
We know Dargaud and Uderzo had a bad relationship that only worsened with Goscinny’s death, but I wonder how much pressure they were getting in the 1960s to keep going and to keep those breaks as short as possible, for the sake of the magazine?
For Further Information
I’d be remiss if I didn’t take this moment to recommend the amazing website, BDOubliees.com. They have an index to all the Franco-Belgian comics magazines that’s second to none.
They even have a table breaking down every Asterix and Obelix appearance in “Pilote”, as well.
It’s more detailed than I needed while exploring eBay, so I created this table as a simpler, book-driven version. I cross-checked the data between that site and Wikipedia, which has “Pilote” issue numbers on each book’s page.
Click through to visit the BDOubliees page, though, because they have images of a lot of “Pilote” covers with Asterix on them that I’ve never seen anywhere else. They’re pretty cool.
