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Asterix and the Griffin: the recipes of a well-kept secret

2021-10-21T11:29:52.283Z


The 39th part of the adventures of the Gaul takes him to meet the Sarmatians, a people of Eastern Europe. The plot has been carefully kept secret by its authors and the publishing house.


"It is no longer simply and not quite comics."

The sentence of Céleste Surugue, general manager of Hachette editions, pronounced in

Le Parisien

, sums up in itself what has become of the Asterix franchise.

The 39th installment of the series, titled

Asterix and the Griffin, will be

released this Thursday, October 21.

Printed in five million copies and translated into seventeen languages, it is an announced success.

A gift that will certainly be under the tree for the little cousin.

A major event in the world of comics which pushes the publishing company to a cult of secrecy rarely seen in the sector.

Maximum confidentiality

Confidentiality clause and ban on using their mobile phone during reading, journalists invited to preview the boards must comply with a strict protocol.

As for booksellers, new albums are only delivered three to four days before publication, and there too, they are prohibited from revealing anything.

“We pay attention to our readers first.

We want to keep the pleasure of discovery for them.

(...) We must not disclose, as our Quebec friends say! ”

Pleads Céleste Surugue.

Read also Asterix is ​​back, and all does not go as planned

Even within Hachette, the comic book publishing house, the comic book production process is exceptionally compartmentalized.

“In the production phase, there are only two of us, in addition to the authors, to see the boards. Then, after printing, there are very few copies circulating in the house, perhaps ten ”,

relates the general manager in

Le Parisien

. A precaution that dates back to the time of Uderzo and Goscinny, the historical authors.

“We are in line with what the creators wanted. Albert Uderzo, in his time, did not authorize any reading by journalists before publication! ”

says Isabelle Magnac, director of Hachette, on a daily basis.

A premonitory dream, Eastern Europe and Michel Houellebecq

This new album sees Asterix and Obelix, convinced by a premonitory dream of the druid Panoramix, go to meet the Sarmatians, a nomadic people from Eastern Europe.

The two Gauls covet the Griffin, an animal halfway between the eagle and the lion.

They meet on their way a certain Terinconus, the geographer of César, whose features are largely inspired by Michel Houellebecq.

In an interview with

Sud Ouest

, the screenwriter Jean-Yves Ferri explains that he wanted to talk about

“beliefs.

Little by little, this led me to the representation of the gods, then the mythological monsters, and finally the Griffin ”.

As always, the adventures of the Gauls resonate with the news.

Among the Sarmatians, the roles are reversed and the society is matriarchal, the men in the village and the women in the war.

A Roman character, follower of

conspiracy

, is called

"Fakenius".

Carried by the pen of Jean-Yves Ferri and in the guise of Didier Conrad, these new adventures are the first since the disappearance of Albert Uderzo, original designer of the series who died in March 2020.

Source: lefigaro

All news articles on 2021-10-21

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