Asterix v40: “Asterix and the White Iris”

Asterix takes on a self-help expert to save the Village and the Chief’s marriage. And it might just be the best post-Uderzo book of the series.

Note: This review will cover the British translation of the book. I like the bigger page size and the style of translation, which we’ll get into in a little bit.

You’re Good Enough, You’re Smart Enough, and Doggone It, People Like Credits

The Agent of Anarchy

Isivertuus is the Chief Medical Officer under Julius Caesar. He’s been studying the power of positive thinking and self-healing. If you think positively, you will act positively and the world will be your oyster. That kind of thing.

He also has an encouraging quote for every occasion. He’d have killed it on Instagram. I can see his account there now, loaded with stock photography of the beach and the mountains, barn planks and chalkboards, with words superimposed to explain how you can have a better life if you just believe in yourself.

He also thinks he has the solution to Caesar’s latest problem: The local Roman troops have been unable to capture Asterix’s Village for a very long time; they’ve completely lost their nerve to even try. They have no hope against that magic potion!

Isivertuus convinces Caesar that he can spread his good word to help them believe in themselves once more, restrengthening their resolve to finish The Gallic Wars once and for all.

He also thinks he can visit the Village, himself, to spread his good word and soften them up along the way. Imagine a village of happy and complacent people who don’t even want to fight anymore!

Classic Asterix Story Structure

It’s a classic Asterix story structure: A single person walks into the Village and chaos ensues. It’s made for some of my favorite stories.

In “Asterix and the Soothsayer” (volume 19), a man who proclaims he can predict the future captures the entire Village’s imagination, except for Asterix and Obelix.

In “Asterix and the Roman Agent” (volume 15), Caesar sends a lone man into the Village who is skilled at sowing dissent by creating jealousy. Everyone but Asterix and Obelix see through him, but it takes Asterix a fair bit of work to break his “spell.” (Remember the full-page explanation of “The Battle of the Village”?)

Through an unintended series of events, “Asterix and Caesar’s Gift” (volume 21) causes chaos when a Roman and his family move into the Village based on a plot of land therein that Caesar granted an unloved soldier who sold it on to the family.

And, of course, the original “Asterix the Gaul” book is about the Romans sending one of their spies directly into the Village under false pretenses to learn more about the Magic Potion.

There’s not a clunker in that lot.

With “Asterix and the White Iris,” new writer Fabcaro joins regular artist Didier Conrad to find a new angle on the story. It is the flip side of “Asterix and the Roman Agent” — instead of jealousy, the interloper causes high self-worth and the personal discovery that comes with it. It’s fascinating to see how a person with opposite intentions can cause the same result, though.

It’s also, if you choose to read it this way, a brutal takedown of so much of the self-help industry that we have in modern times. There are countless authors out there hawking books that promise their readers a terrific voyage of self-discovery, usually focusing on a single analogy or idea that makes for a pithy quote for the book jacket cover. It promises to rearrange the way you think about yourself to make you a better and more well-realized person in this “season” of your life, but it’s mostly (I say cynically) about enriching the bank account of the author.

Sometimes, those characters are perfect parodies of themselves. As I read this book, Saturday Night Live’s Stuart Smalley (Al Franken) kept repeating his mantra in my head. He’s as much a parody of this movement as Isivertuus.

The Asterix series doesn’t go for social or political commentary in every book, but when Goscinny went for it, he often struck gold. Think “Obelix and Company” or “The Mansions of the Gods” for more examples, with commentaries on capitalism. More recently, “Asterix and the Missing Scroll” has clear parallels to events of its time.)

Fabcaro’s script isn’t taking on a specific person in recent memory, but is more inspired by the never-ending parade of self-help experts who parade through bookstores over a longer time. He blends that in naturally with Asterix’s world. It doesn’t feel bolted on to make a political statement; it’s just good storytelling.

Back to the Village!

The Village is an easy mark for Isivertuus’ charms. We’ve seen it in all of the previous stories. Perhaps being shut off from the rest of the world for so long has made them susceptible to these persuaders. Or maybe it’s just the way they don’t always get along in the first place, causing fan favorite Village-wide dust-ups. They’re just waiting for something to come along and be a new fad.

The ultimate test in this book for the power of Isivertuus’s charm is when Asterix calls the Village together for a meeting and surprises them with a Cacophonix concert! Asterix knows all is lost when the villagers speak to the power of his music and how they might not like it, but they can respect others’ opinions as well.

Seriously, that scene is like reading a parody of an online discussion thread where everyone is forced to get along or be banned. Everyone bends over backward to be more inclusive and agreeable.

It’s the opposite of that classic Real World opener, “find out what happens when people stop being polite and start getting real.” (We can talk about who in the Village is most like Puck another time, thanks…)

Needless to say, this infuriates Asterix who winds up punching out Unhygienix, who is best buds now with his neighbor, Fulliautomatix. Yes, things get that crazy.

Also, Fulliautomatix has retained his “weaponized” name so far. I’m somewhat surprised by that. I’m reading the British edition, though. Did they change it to something else in the Papercutz translation?

As with “Asterix and the Soothsayer,” Impedimenta is an early target and victim of the agent’s ruse. This book takes that angle and goes much further with it. Isivertuus uses her as his perfect backup plan. She’s using her newly found insight to leave her husband (Chief Vitalstatistix) and visit Lutetia (Paris). She’s hoping to find herself. Isivertuus is planning to use her to force the Village’s hand to surrender to Caesar.

A Village Story, Plus Paris

Usually a “Village Story” takes place only in the Village and its surrounding areas: the forest or the Roman encampments. This one swerves into Paris for the back half. I’m sure there might have been a way to plot it differently to keep it all local, but I don’t hate the change in venue. It allows for a strong ending and some funny hijinx along the way to getting there.

I’m guessing lots of people complain about the train system and the traffic on the roads in and out of Paris. There’s a lot of that in this book, translated into the vehicles of the day. It works because I have to think public transport and roadways are a common complaint all over the world.

Once in the city, it’s fun to watch Obelix at work, most notably when he attempts to ride a rental scooter. Honestly, this might be the most dated part of the book. All the attempts to aggressively fill cities with rental scooters failed a couple years back already. I’m guessing they were still a thing when Fabcaro started writing his script. (Coincidentally, the Bird scooter company filed for bankruptcy a week after I published this review.)

Reading that page, it also dawned on me that if they had made an Asterix movie in America in the early 1990s, Chris Farley would have been the perfect Obelix, physically. He might have been slightly too manic in the quieter scenes, but would shine in fights with Romans. (“In a chariot, down by the river…”)

The Power of Conrad’s Pen

Once again, Didier Conrad sticks close to Albert Uderzo’s style guide for the series. He’s not doing a perfect style imitation, but it’s close enough to not lose the average reader with something wildly unexpected.

It’s like watching a trained animator jumping from one project to the next and changing their style to match the new one, without losing all the skills learned along the way.

Conrad tells the story well, with the right mix of medium shots and close-ups, plenty of backgrounds, and characters who know how to act to sell the story.

The one thing that impressed me the most in this book is the way he handles two-tier panels. Some call them “half-page splashes”, though that’s a modern term made up by original art collectors to get higher prices for their non-splash pages.

There are a few of them in this book and each is impressive. My favorite panel in the whole book is on page 18, with a simple establishing shot of the Village. It’s not super wide, but it shows the corner of the Village where all the action happens in this book. You have the small vendor stands and all the residents happily prancing about, buying goods from their neighbors and walking away.

It’s the most bucolic panel in Asterix history, but that’s on purpose. Conrad is establishing here that Isivertuus’ motivation is influencing everyone. They’re getting along for once at an almost supernatural level. Of course Asterix and Vitalstatistix are concerned!

But, also, it’s a nice very three-dimensional bird’s eye view, almost isometric. Picture the bird about 15 feet high and with a wide-angle lens. It all works. I took a moment while reading the book to stop and soak this one in. The anvils are neatly lined up. The fish are displayed in a pleasing configuration. Everyone is smiling. There’s a bit of tree sticking out from one corner to help sell some extra dimensionality to the reader.

All of those details shown at that angle give the drawing a very three-dimensional perspective. It’s a panel that welcomes you into a scene and clearly shows how everything is related.

It’s also an isolated panel. It’s meant to show how well the Village is getting along. It’s not establishing the scene that’s starting. It’s a scene unto itself. The actual scene follows in the next panels at another location entirely inside Chief Vitalstatistix’s house.

It’s a panel that works. It’s not flashy. There’s not a large brawl going on or a million soldiers lined up for some insanely detailed architecture happening. It tells the story and it works. I love it.

Side story: I was shopping for some older issues of “Spirou Journal” recently. I found Conrad’s credits in an issue from 1980 when he was working on the original “Innommables.” He’s had a lot of practice with this comic book thing, hasn’t he?

Style of Humor

I probably need to read the American translation of this book for comparison’s sake.

It dawned on me while reading this one that the humor feels very British, and I love British comedy. I fell in love with “Blackadder” at far too young an age, for example. There’s something wonderful about that dry sense of humor and the stiff upper lip in the face of surrounding craziness that appeals to me.

I have to ask myself now: How much of the humor of the first three dozen books comes about because of the British translation team behind it? Asterix feels so very British to me, as much as he’s French. It’s a part of the reason why an American translation will likely never work for me.

There’s an amazing sense of comedic timing throughout the book. Comedy is not just writing. It’s all in the storytelling and, most importantly, the timing. Give Fabcaro credit for the situation, Conrad credit for staging it properly and showing us exactly what we need to see, and then Adriana Hunter for her translation that pulls it all together.

The gimmick of this book that ties it all together is the use of all the self-help phrases that people on all sides use in different ways. There’s a half-page splash of Asterix and Obelix punching up a Roman fort that’s particularly strong. Not only does Conrad create a composition where everything is readable and attractive, but the reactions from the Romans and the Gauls through the lens of those quotes is superb. The contrast between the cartoon violence sending a Roman soldier into the air and out of his sandals while smiling and offering a positive quote is hilarious.

Also, there’s a lot of wordplay in this book. It starts off on the first half page with Roman soldiers making as many puns on batteries and electricity as you can imagine. It carries on throughout the book, with little one-off panels of wordplay when you least suspect them.

The high point of the book is — well, a major spoiler, I suppose. If you’ve read it, I’ll point you to it: There’s a triple wordplay on Caesar’s name at the bottom of page 45 that’s almost worth the price of admission alone. It’s smart writing, and I loved it.

Best Name of the Book

We don’t get too many new names until the action moves to Lutetia.

There, we start with the names of a few artists. I’ve linked their names to the sites of the artists they’re referencing, half of which I wasn’t familiar with.

• Banksix
• Boltanskix
• Warholdiptix
• Malevix

Banksix is the one that worked best immediately for me. Banksy’s name is so easily Asterixed.

Warholdiptix is particularly strong, though, for the way it incorporates “diptix” into his name so seamlessly while using it in front of a diptych of Caesar.

However, my final pick came down to three non-artistic names.

Second runner up is the theater star by the name of Boxoffix.

The first runner-up is the Athenian philospher who is name checked early on, Duazuplees. It works grammatically, even if it’s spelled more phonetically than literally. It’s easy to read on your first attempt. It’s just a great name, particularly in context.

My favorite name in the entire book, though, is Impedimenta’s brother’s new servant’s name. Worxatalos is easy to read and understand, and it fits in perfectly with his role. I laughed out loud at it, at least.

The biggest disappointment of the book is the main villain, Isivertuus. It’s a long way to get to that name. It took me a moment to sound it out properly to understand “Is I Vertuous.” The fact that it’s also grammatically incorrect hurts readability, too. If his name had been “Amivertuus”/ “Am I Virtuous”, I’d probably have liked it more.

Random Bits

• On page 15, the Chief is singing “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life,” a song from Monty Python’s Spamalot, which just re-opened on Broadway in the last month. That’s good timing! We’re also playing back to my love of British comedy there, so that helps.

• In his concert, Cacophonix sings the B-52’s “Roam If You Want To,” but it’s spelled “Rome,” of course. At first, I thought it strange to hear so contemporary a song being sung in Asterix. Then I realized that song is almost 35 years old and I had to sit down and catch my breath.

• On the other hand, maybe they should have shot for the moon and found a Taylor Swift song for this book? (“Look What Caesar Made Me Do…”?)

• We don’t need more jokes from Caesar about Brutus, or how anything is “all Greek” to a Roman. I’m pretty sure we’ve done those jokes before, perhaps even more than once.

Recommended?

Yes, very much so. There’s a lot in here for the long-time Asterix fan, but I could even see enough in here for a new Asterix fan to enjoy. Sure, they’d be better off starting with the first volumes, but we all know how these things work. Sometimes, you have to start people with the most recent edition. They’ll miss some minor references, but they’ll pick them up on future re-readings after they’ve gone back and absorbed the rest of the series.

Is this the best post-Uderzo book in the series? While I could still make an argument for “Asterix and the Missing Scroll,” I have to think this one might even top it. I’m not sure yet. I’m worried that recency bias might cloud my judgment there.

Where does this one rank for you? If you made it this for, the comments are coming up fast! Use them for the greater good of discussing Asterix!