Asterix and Obelix’s Birthday: The Golden Book (2009)
Asterix and Obelix’s Birthday: The Golden Book Review
Asterix and Obelix’s Birthday: The Golden Book is the 34th volume of the Asterix comic strip series that was written and illustrated by Albert Uderzo. It was published in 2009 and it was a flawed experiment.
This book isn’t really a full Asterix story. In fact, it’s more of a compilation of previously unpublished stories with some new stuff added in for good measure, all of this done to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Asterix back in 2009. The idea was a sound one and the series really deserved this kind of celebration, but the execution was frustratingly middling.
The first story set in the future had some great potential, but unfortunately this was quickly squashed as the story was discarded and they quickly moved away from it. It’s a shame as the older Asterix and Obelix angle could have been a lot of fun. The part about Obelix learning how to read was actually quite sweet and so much fun. Getafix was terrific in this section.
The main storyline of this volume worked to a degree. The two sharing the same birthday still feels odd, but at least the inclusion of Caesar and Cleopatra was a wonderful one and he was particularly amusing here. There is one sequence at the end where Getafix tricks the Romans by poisoning them and that was by far the funniest moment in this story.
But other than that great scene, I did not find it necessary to have this overarching story to tie things up as it failed to do that and it just felt forced to somehow make what is a compilation volume a coherent story. There is also an effort here to bring back all the side characters in previous books, but most of them failed to make a bigger impact. Just seeing them wasn’t enough for me personally.
These characters made some proposals for the future. Most of these sections were overlong with too many panels proposing the same thing in too much detail. The amusement park and the museum parts were the most interesting ones, but overall these parts significantly slowed down the momentum of the story. The illustrations here were also a mixed bag with the paintings being creepy and disconnected from the more cartoony style of the series. There is some clever dialogue throughout, but not enough to make this story worth reading.
