How to advertise Asterix

By MICHAEL CAINES

As mentioned before on this blog, the business of selling books encourages some curious habits – relying time and again on the same old cover designs, or, when reissuing a forgotten "modern classic", finding an unforgotten name to offer a line or two of endorsement. It's striking how small a part words themselves play in this aspect of publishing. 

See above and below for a contrasting example of the art of the book advertisement, for the Asterix books of René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo. They appear on opposing pages of the TLS of October 16, 1969 (a time when the paper still reviewed children's books). Aren't they – busy? And cheeky, too: "We have paid for them!".

But perhaps in the end this proved to be no way to persuade people that the "strip cartoon can be a genuine art form". It's a while since anybody took out an advertisement in the TLS that looked like this . . . .

Comments

[Andrew McCulloch]

The advertisements fail to mention a fourth - very good - reason for reading Asterix - its value as satire. Obelix et Compagnie (1976) for example is a neat parable about market forces. Tired of the stubborn resistance of Asterix and his villagers, a particularly wily Roman attempts to turn them from indomitable, battle-hungry patriots into greedy businessmen by creating an artificial market in menhirs. Greed soon does its work and everyone leaves their honest occupation - and thoughts of war - to pursue this lucrative new trade. But things go badly wrong when Caesar attempts to sell off all his unwanted stock - the cost of peace - only to find the market flooded by cheap imports. Rome faces financial ruin and, with the sudden collapse of the menhir industry, Asterix and company return to the pre-capitalist tranquillity of tribal warfare. At the precarious height of the boom, adverts even start to appear: the slogan accompanying a picture of a wealthy Roman in his garden smiling proprietorially at his cherished menhir reads 'VOVS AVEZ VNE VILLA, VN CHAR, MAIS . . . AVEZ-VOVS VN MENHIR?' Of course it's art!

[Al Schlaf]

About 25 years or so ago, the Des Moines Register, my city's main newspaper, suddenly started carrying the Asterix strip. I was overjoyed.

It lasted about two or three months and was then dumped.

Dammitsomuch.