#general

@Feder373, and you are funny... Uderzo chose no one, he was faced with the fact that "we have new people"

even though he didn't have as much influence and rené was gone anyway i think it could've ended on a better note

Death cannot end on a positive note. @SmashingDROP

it can

and I'd still say it wasnt that bad of an ending, it's not like his life was horrible

he'd pretty much done what he wanted to do

The only thing we can do is praise him for the fact that the man lived for 92 years and died of old age.

> For that, after the death of Gosinny continued the work of both, before he was replaced. @Ἀρχάγγελος Μιχαήλ

am i misunderstanding something here

?

And what is incomprehensible here?

what exactly did the death of gosciny cause? are you going for "discontinued" or what is it?

@SmashingDROP , I don’t understand what is incomprehensible here.

A few thoughts: It has been quite moving to watch the struggle these past 12 years or so. Uderzo was never clear about how to handle his and Goscinny's legacy. I remember the dispute at the end of the 2000s: Albert Uderzo, his daughter Sylvie and Goscinny's daughter Anne each owned a third of Les Editions Albert Réné (which is the publishing house that owns the rights to Asterix). Somewhere around that time Hachette Livre started making offers for L.E.A.R. Sylvie Uderzo, who was the manager of the company at the time (It was under her reign that the XXL games were made) was adament that L.E.A.R. should not be sold to the corporation and should remain in family hands instead. She was also of the opinion that Asterix should not be continued after her father's death. This had been Albert's stance up till then. Anne Goscinny on the other hand wanted to talk Albert into selling his share of the company (and thus, the rights to Asterix) to Hachette, as she wanted to keep the series going. She felt she owed it to her father Réné. I remember the news articles at the time when it was officially announced that Albert had changed his mind and sold his share of L.E.A.R. to Hachette, together with Anne's. Only Sylvie held on to her share, which did not matter since Hachette now owned two thirds. What's more, Sylvie quit her position and was estranged by her father shortly after. Her side of the story was that his father was "tricked" into selling his share by unscrupulous men in suits trying to suck off the Asterix legacy. Around the same time, _Asterix and the Falling Sky_, which was really just an old artist's comment on a pop culture world that he didn't understand anymore, was slammed by fans and the press alike. That album was deeply seeded with fear and uncertainty about the future of Asterix. The Gaulish village caught up in a giant battle between Manga style aliens and American superhero action. Uderzo admitted this repeatedly.

. Then Conrad and Ferri took over and at first it sounded like they would be continuing the series for good. A few years ago though, I think around 2017, Sylvie and Albert reunited and made up. There was a huge interview in one of France's big newspapers where Albert was suddenly back to proclaiming that Asterix should die with him and that even Ferri and Conrad would not continue the series past his death. It has to be noted that before Didier Conrad came in, work on the 35th Asterix album had already begun, but with drawings by Frédéric Mébarki, who had been Uderzo's assistant since album #30. He also provided all the oil paintings in #34. The official story was that he had quit his job halfway through because he wasn't skilled enough to illustrate an Asterix album by himself. Coinciding with the reunion of Albert Uderzo and his daughter, a lot of things came into movement again. We saw the greenlighting of the Dogmatix tv series, a revival of the XXL franchise, a new live action movie project, a big expansion in the Asterix theme park, and even a second computer animated movie, which, strangely enough, was about a little girl learning the secret of the magic potion to carry the future of the Gaulish village after the wise, old druid had "fallen" (from a tree, but still). I personally think that _Secret of the Magic Potion_ contains a lot of metaphoric material about the situation of the Asterix franchise.

Pavé Cesar

Who knows though what's going to happen now. Sylvie still owns only a third of the rights to Asterix. Hachette can still continue the series if they want to. They certainly don't have to adhere to Uderzo's wishes. Didier and Conrad though have already hinted that they might not want to do this for the rest of their lives. And I would really rather not want to see Asterix turn into the kind of author-hopping series that Lucky Luke has become for example. I would really, really prefer it if Didier and Conrad, however long they decide to do this, would be the final era of Asterix comics. Else I fear it would simply become trivialised over time... Sorry for the wall of text, I guess this is just my way of processing the news. Asterix has always been really close to my heart, I would say it's my favourite comic book series of all time. I taught myself how to read when I was three years old by looking at Asterix comics in fact. This is all hitting me more than it probably should. I guess we'll see what happens. 😅

@Ἀρχάγγελος Μιχαήλ Uderzo chose Ferri and Conrad among some other people in 2012, they told it themselves in an interview. Uderzo chose them because they were the ones who provided the best story idea (which was Asterix and the Picts) and the drawing style most close to his style, expecting the change would be as less noticeable as possible and show an image of continuity

@Herr Epsilon I have some good ideas for Astérix albums, it's sad that I have no way of telling them to the authors, and it would be a shame that no more albums were released because of lack of good ideas when there are still many more. If they stop releasing things, this will sadly become the same as the Tintin franchise, mostly unknown by young people, and in the end it will die out due to generalized ignorance of its existence and/or being regarded as "a thing from other old times"