"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.