Asterix v39, “Asterix and the Griffin”, Is Coming! October 2021!
11 October 2021 Update:
The Asterix folks released a big batch of news this morning. You can start here to learn more.
Turns out, my prediction was wrong. They’re not heading to China. They’re heading out to an area roughly around where the Ukraine is today.
29 March 2021 Update:
This morning, the Asterix folks announced the title of the forthcoming 39th album of the Asterix series:
“Asterix and the Griffin”
Ferri and Didier already covered the Loch Ness monster, so it’s time for a new creature!
A griffin is a mythical creature that’s half lion and half eagle.
Its name might have come from the Greeks, hundreds of years before Asterix’s time.
This might lead you to think the next adventure would be in Greece, but remember that Ferri has said that it’s a new place that they’re going. Greece was already the host for “Asterix at the Olympic Games.”
There is a story from a writer in Ancient Greece which claimed the griffin was a real animal in China. I only point that out because my initial guess as to where Asterix and Obelix would be heading in their next adventure was China. That’s where the next live action movie is set, as well. Synergy!
It might take a magic carpet ride to get to China and back in the span of one book, but crazier things have happened!
The official website for this book is available at Asterix39.com. (And, no, there’s nothing at Asterix40.com, but I’d bet they own that domain name already.)
05 January 2021: Original Announcement:
Let’s face it: 2020 was an awful year. We did not get a new Asterix book. That just sucked the life out of comics for everyone for the entire year.
(Yes, I know, they did a reprint of an old book everyone forgot, but it never made it to English.)
This weekend, though, the word officially came out that there is a new Asterix book on the schedule for 2021. This shouldn’t be a surprise. The Ferri/Conrad books have maintained an every other year schedule since they started.
Even better, we have the actual release date: October 21, 2021. I’m tempted to put a countdown on the front page of this site for the rest of the year now…
We know a few details: Asterix, Obelix, and Getafix are heading to a new country (for the series), and it’s one that doesn’t exist as such anymore. The preview page has a “Tintin in Tibet” reference in it, so is Tibet the country?
Also: The book will not touch on the pandemic. They already played their Coronavirus card, after all.
That’s really about it.
There’s a page from the book up at Asterix.com. Here’s the top half:
Details will surely leak out for the next 10 months. Can they keep the cover a secret until September again this time? Yeah, probably.
Rich Johnston brought back his bi-annual headline for these Asterix book announcements: “The New Asterix, in October, Will Be The Best Selling Comic of 2021.”
He’s right again, and nobody in North America will notice. Philistines!
He also has interesting quotes from Ferri:
Ferri states “In the 1960s, Albert Uderzo and René Goscinny could laugh at foreigners, caricature the English with their big teeth, the Greeks with their Greek profile. The atmosphere was good-natured. Today, you almost need a dictionary on your desk to know what you are allowed to joke about or not, ” he said.
“Playing with clichés is one of Asterix’s codes. But I don’t mind moving away from it a bit. I am lucky that my personal humour does not lead me to too frontal caricatures. In The Chieftain’s Daughter, I made up the way teenagers speak, for example.”
I’m having a very strong reaction to this which I’m keeping to myself for now. I try to stay out of politics. I try very hard, but I’m also hitting a breaking point about some attitudes…
For now, I’m accepting the fact that the first 25 Asterix volumes will be the funniest, and serve as time capsules at the same time. We’ll never see their likes again because the world has gone mad and lost its sense of humor entirely.
And I’ll leave it at that for now…
Let’s all cross our fingers and hope for the best in October! (Or, more likely, in December here in North America.)
Could be Getafix has an old friend he hasn’t seen in a while who is believed to be presume dead but turns out isn’t (like in “Tibet”).
Technically, they made a reprint of an old book that everyone vaguely interested in Asterix already had. Or that everyone who was a child the first time around received as a christmas or birthday present. So you’re right, reprinting it was not such a big event, especially after it appeared that they re-recorded the audio part with new voices… sacrilege!
Anyhoo…
Indeed this has been all over mainstream news here during the holiday season, some lighthearted distraction in an ocean of gloom ; some journalists trying to distance themselves (pun intended) from the virus medical info-dumps and governments propaganda, trying once again to be proper information-gatherers (or pretending to be) in order to get the tiniest of scoops from the authors or the publisher, that was kind of funny to watch…
That bit about viewing caricatures of country or regional traits differently now has been especially interesting to analyze, some viewing it as one more victory for SJW over those awful nationalists, others as one more sign that those BDs are obsolete, since that one aspect was an essential part of the appeal. Remember we just had that discussion recently with Jerome about Lucky Luke translations recently… Finally those thinking that globalized PC has finally won (i.e. American PC, sorry Augie, you’re part of the problem lol…), this is the final nail in the coffin for freedom of speech, for patriotism and all those sorts of things. Basically, everything gets political these days and can be used on social media to generate cheap & easy outrage, one way or another.
My point is, I’ll be curious to see if Ferri and Conrad can pull it off, make a decent Asterix book, a travel one at that, without that intrinsic part of what made it great in the first place. We’ll see.
They should have aimed on beating Tintin and the Sowjets in quality level and not Tibet.
Given their track record the hopes for a good album are getting lower and lower each time.
Maybe Asterix and Obelix go to Lusitania now modern day Portugal. Both Asterix and Obelix haven’t gone to Portugal before.
Or Druid Getafix’s friend must be Lusitanian and Asterix and Obelix go to Lusitania to find Getafix’s missing friend or something like that.
Maybe Volume 40 which will come out in 2023 or so, will be called “Asterix in Portugal”.
Where Asterix and Obelix go to Lusitania now modern day Portugal.
They say talking to yourself is the first sign of madness.
For me..the waiting…long wait is is the thrill part of it. Once we get the work- the joy is over within the next 45 minutes or so…and then its another wait for two years. I wonder why Asterix Secret de La Potion Magique and Le Menhir D’Or were not published in English. Exasperated I translated Secret of Magic Potion and am now working on Menhir D’Or. (of course solely for my reading pleasure).
Do you ever think Jean-Yves Ferri will ever write a Lucky Luke adventure with Achde at all?
If Ferri does write some Lucky Luke books with Achde, it would just be like how Rene Goscinny wrote both Asterix and Lucky Luke back in the day.
Looking forward to your review for this one Augie.
I just read it at my local library, I figured I’d give it a chance.
I can see that they are really trying, the art is competent, the writing reflective of current french BD. no multiple layers of subtlety, some of the humour slightly better than the current Lucky Luke production.
That’s a big MEH from me, similar to the previous four Ferri/Conrad volumes that I read in the same couple of hours.
Now back home to the second half of the second JLI omnibus, now that one is as funny as when I bought the original floppies. They just beat Despero and the Beefeater. Mich Wacky! Wally Tortolini! Kara’s yellow cat! G’nort! Lord Manga Khan! I want more 😉
Oh well, disappointing again, these new albums just haven’t been funny. They’re better than the later Uderzo books but that’s not saying much at all. Uderzo’s first five solo albums (though I strongly suspect Goscinny had a hand in several of those) were all equal to or better than any of the Ferri efforts. Thinking about it, I don’t really understand why Ferri was given this gig, he doesn’t seem to have been particularly qualified for it.
Speaking of Goscinny’s possible involvement in those early Uderzo Albums, I see Anne Goscinny has revealed the existence of a half completed story written by her father titled “Asterix at the Circus”. According to Ms Goscinny it was to have followed “Asterix in Belgium”. Surely though, with the title almost certainly referring to the Circus Maximus in Rome, Goscinny’s follow up to “Belgium” would have been a village tale and not another travel story.
I did see that article. Very interesting. I mean, I knew Goscinny had to have been thinking about the next book already, but I’m glad we finally know which direction he was looking. I thought about doing a news round-up to include this story, but haven’t done it yet. Don’t know if I ever will. But I bet it would have been an awesome book.