I went to Paris to buy the new Asterix book

The headline isn’t entirely clickbait. I was in Prague last week for other reasons and had a connecting flight back home at the Paris Airport — Charles De Gaulle International.

This trip was incredibly well-timed for two reasons:

• Europe sets its clocks back a week earlier than North America, so I’m Falling Back two weeks in a row this year.
• The new Asterix book, “Asterix In Lusitania” was released last week.

Unfortunately, the nearest comic book shop to where I was in Czechia was too far away to drag my family to.

However, I had a good feeling about what I might find during my layover in Paris. And, boy howdy, did it deliver. You couldn’t wipe the smile off my face. As someone in North America who follows this stuff and knows how omni-present comics are in France, it’s STILL a wild thing to see it in person. I’ve experienced but a small taste of it and it made me positively giddy.

This was what I saw at one of the small shops near my boarding gate:

There’s an Asterix display right at the counter where you check out with two books side by side. Behind the cashier, there’s another 3 shelves with copies of the books three across. You didn’t need to ask for them, though. They were only there because it’s a small store and that’s where they had room for them. Still, they were in plain sight to anyone checking out at the shop. That has to be a valuable piece of shelf space.

There’s a larger version of that same store back down the hallway at the terminal hub. That’s where I had my religious moment:

The first time I walked in, I missed the big Asterix display at the front door that had a stack of a couple dozen books in it. This is also where I missed what the price of the book was — less than 11 Euro!

This became an issue because I had a 20 Euro bill left to spend in Europe and this was my last chance. But the Asterix book doesn’t have a price on it anywhere. In my mind, I assumed it would be about 15 Euro.

As I walked into the store, I spotted the magazine racks and made a beeline for them. As I turned the corner by the checkout area, I found Asterix on the end cap.

Walking around that corner, this rack had “Fluide Glacial” and “Charlie Hebdo”, along with a book about Blake and Mortimer. It felt like one of those magalogs you find at the checkout line at CVS these days, packed with shorter articles explaining the series’ history or something.

They also had the “Le JD News” magazine that cover featured an article about the new Asterix book. It was only 2.20 Euro, so I snatched it up. (Sorry, Europeans, but I’m using the period there. I can’t bring myself to write numbers with commas as the decimal.)

Next to that were the kids magazines. (Did you see the floor sticker a couple pictures back pointing to the children’s magazines?) I didn’t get a picture of them, but it included the latest issues of “Spirou Journal”, “Picsou”, and a Mickey Mouse title. I had the Spirou magazine in my hands but I eventually put it away to make sure I wouldn’t go past my 20 Euro limit.

I would realize later that I didn’t need to do that. UGH!

Around the corner, they had a whole BD section of books. Asterix featured prominently, particularly with the new book and “The Big Fight,” no doubt to capitalize on the Netflix tie-in. They also had the book to accompany the last movie and “The Golden Menhir,” which is an adaptation of an audio book from 1967.

Under all that was the new Nicolas Keramidas-drawn Scrooge book about Bitcoin that made a few headlines recently.

Overall, it was a random collection of stuff including Tintin, Blake and Mortimer, Game Over, Smurfs, “Les Guerres de Lucas” 1 and 2, and more.

I could have dropped 100 Euro in there in a hurry. God forbid I ever make it into a proper comic book shop in Paris. I better start saving now…

I played it safe using the money I had and picked up the Asterix book and the magazine with the Asterix cover story.

Now I have 6 euro burning a hole in my pocket and nowhere to spend it!

Asterix Editions

Here’s the catch: It’s the French edition. I bought this as a memento of my trip. It’s a physical representation of that time I was kinda/sorta in France and found a ton of comics in the kind of place you wouldn’t back here in America.

I started reading it as a test of my french skills. I inched through a few panels, but it would be far too much work to read the whole book like that.

Not to worry, though — I have a copy of the British edition of the book on order. It’s being imported from the U.K., so it might take a month to get here.

It was a little harder to sort through all the listings on-line to get to the British edition this time around. PaperCutz has made great inroads in this market. Their version of the book shows up in the listings first now.

I want the full album-sized book to match the rest of my Asterix collection and to be nicer to read. I’m a big proponent of “bigger is better” when it comes to comics art.

There’s also the possibility that I’ll get impatient and buy the digital edition of the Papercutz edition so I can read it sooner. That goes on sale November 11th. It’s not like Anthea Bell is doing the British translations anymore, so the gap in translation quality between the American and British editions has closed significantly.

One way or another, I will be doing my usual style of review for the book. Look for that at some point between two weeks from now and the end of the year.