Please note that this review is based on the UK release by Sphere. A North American edition is also available from Papercutz.
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With a press run of five million copies (three million of those in French) and translated into almost 20 languages simultaneously, the 40th Asterix album, "The White Iris," was released at the end of October 2023. It is the sixth album of the series to be illustrated by Didier Conrad, and the first to be scripted by the “star” of French humor, Fabrice Caro (Fabcaro)—a comics scriptwriter, prose novelist and musician—following a rigorous selection process conducted by French publisher Hachette. This change came about, according to Le Monde, because the previous writer, Jean-Yves Ferri, decided to take a break from the franchise to complete some unrelated projects. In my opinion, this change was for the best.
Being called upon to bring a timeless, almost legendary series to life in new adventures is no easy task. The weight of responsibility is enormous; created by Albert Uderzo & René Goscinny in 1959, Asterix has sold over 400 million books and is considered a national treasure of French popular culture, nurtured across successive generations. Readers, even if just subconsciously, tend to expect certain things from an Αsterix album, because once they are above a certain age they invariably recall the feelings they had when reading it as children. Such expectations are managed brilliantly by the Conrad-Fabcaro duo.
The plot is this. Julius Caesar, fed up with the ever-increasing desertions and mutinies of his soldiers, is persuaded by Isivertuus, the chief physician of his troops, to employ the “White Iris” method: a program of of psychological persuasion, positive thinking, self-indulgence and cerebral(?) homeopathy to raise the legions' morale and mental health. Half-inclined to feed the doctor to the lions, Caesar challenges Isivertuus to prove the effectiveness of his method by using it to subdue the village of those ever-disobedient Gauls. Isivertuus accepts the task and lures the Gauls into a new mindset with highfaluting advice and psychological trickery. Soon the Gauls are addicted to a dull life of refinement and 'positivity,' which saps their will to defend themselves. Asterix and friends are very concerned about the influence of the stranger on their fellow villagers - particularly Impedimenta, the wife of the village’s chief, whom Isivertuus persuades into a shopping and entertainment trip to Lutetia (modern Paris) with the ultimate goal of offering her as a prize to Caesar.
Fabcaro's script is perhaps the best we have seen since Goscinny’s death in 1977. More grounded than the fanciful and unlikely script ideas of Uderzo, who took up the writing role himself after Goscinny, and diametrically opposed to the dull work of Ferri, the now 50-year old Fabcaro manages to craft a story that has everything Asterix needs: contemporary political and social commentary, wordplay, symbols, hyperbole, irony, analogy, and lots and lots of puns and jokes. So many, in fact, that one initially fears the new writer will sacrifice plot development on the altar of gags, but Fabcaro's comedy is so successful that the reader never tires.
Often the adventures of the Gauls are divided into those that take place in the village and those that take place on a journey. With White Iris we see a combination of both. Through the "invasion" of Isivertuus in the Gallic village and the imposition of his method, Fabcaro critiques the trendy theories of life-coaching, wellness marketing and "magical thinking" that have invaded the western world. Of course, longtime readers may detect similarities between this plot and those of previous albums such as Asterix and the Roman Agent (1970) or Asterix and the Soothsayer (1972), in which ill-intentioned characters also invade the village and cause a disturbance; this hint of familiarity may be the new album's chief weakness. Yet Fabcaro perfectly dresses this old idea in a modern phenomenon, giving us joke after joke from the very beginning of the comic. "What? You're going to that village of mad Gauls?!" a Roman general shouts on page 3. Isivertuus briskly corrects him: "Lesson I: Always use positive terms instead of disparaging remarks! You probably meant: 'You're going to the village of people who differ from us with their unpredictable behavior?!'"
The satire also extends to aspects of life in France. For the trip to Lutetia, the "High Speed Chariot" lampoons the Train à Grande Vitesse (TGV); hipsters on scooters appear in the megalopolis. When rotund Obelix visits a restaurant in Lutetia, he is served "new plant-based cuisine," its ridiculously tiny portion going by the name of "smooth melody of boar gamboling in a radiant springtime forest" despite its vegan makeup. "So the gambolling hasn't paid off," Obelix muses before asking for "the old meat sort if you've got any left." The restaurateur replies in exasperation that important people from all over Gaul visit this restaurant, leaving Obelix to ask, "And where do they go to eat afterwards?" The script is so packed with gags that I could mention many, many more, and it's remarkable how Fabcaro has managed to pull away from his horrifically successful and recognizable idiosyncratic dry humor to accommodate Asterix, to follow in the footsteps of Goscinny.
For his part, Conrad has been a skilled artist since day one, having used his decade with Asterix to develop his aptitude for facial expressions; his figure drawing is as distinctly cartoonish as possible while still following the designs of Uderzo, and his backgrounds tend to be very full, save for when a facial expression needs to be emphasized. The only thing I wish Conrad would add is parodies of well-known paintings, as Maestro Uderzo did in some of his best moments, appropriating works by Rembrandt and Géricault.
In all, with White Iris Fabcaro further establishes his place among the best current writers of French comics, while Conrad treats the characters as if they were his own. It is a relief to have a really good and functional story for this most popular of European comics. Let's hope the current duo continues with narratives as well-crafted as this.
