“Once upon a time in a galaxy far, far away…” might have been the starting point of an obsession for a whole generation. Before that there was “The Year is 50BC. Gaul is entirely occupied by the Romans. Well, not entirely . . . One small village of indomitable Gauls still holds out against the invaders.” Not as pithy, perhaps, but just as evocative.
In childhood, you are obliged to pick a favourite. Early friendships depend on whether you choose The Phantom or Tarzan, Batman or Superman, Tintin or Asterix. No fence-sitting is allowed.
Most chose Asterix first and then ‘graduated’ to the better-plotted and somewhat more complex Tintin. There was an engaging simplicity about Asterix, full of fights and violence, comeuppance and redemption. But take away Asterix himself (and the magic potion) and it would be difficult to distinguish between the Romans and the Gauls, the good guys and the bad. Many who began as Asterixites then became Tintinians.
I travelled in the opposite direction. Briefly a Tintin fan, full of admiration for Captain Haddock and his fluent, alliterative curses, I quickly switched loyalties, fascinated by the word play and the characters in Asterix, from Cacophonix to Squareonthehypotenuse. Perhaps too, this is how some of us evolve in our appreciation of the visual medium – from the initial calm of the precise lines to the later energy of the lively and vigorous. The Belgian creator of Tintin, Herge saw his style – ligne claire – become an art form.
Years later, I read an interview with the novelist Tom McCarthy who wrote Tintin and the Secret of Literature where he said the books featuring the young journalist with the quiffed hair created “a huge social tableau ... managed with all the subtlety normally attributed to Jane Austen and Henry James, and a huge symbolic register worthy of a Bronte or a Faulkner.”
McCarthy also said, “Asterix is charming and funny, but Tintin has massive complexity of plot, symbolic register and theme. It deals with technology, history and politics. It has deep Freudian dimensions.”
If you want to be a writer, said McCarthy, study The Castafiore Emerald , “it holds all of literature’s formal keys, its trade secrets.”
I haven’t read anything written with nearly as much passion about the Asterix series, but in a debate at the Lakes international comic art festival recently, Asterix emerged as the character “most deserving to be on the bookshelf”, leaving Tintin behind by one vote. The expert arguing for Tintin was Benoît Peeters, Lancaster University’s visiting professor in graphic fiction and comic art while his chief opponent was Peter Kessler, the Bafta award-winning producer and author of The Complete Guide to Asterix. Clearly, comics aren’t child’s play.
Most analyses of humour suck the fun out of it; it would have been interesting to see if the argument between experts did that. Or, was it a variation on the “My Asterix is cleverer than your Tintin” theme favoured in childhood?
Still, Asterix’s narrow win might vindicate many a childhood choice. By Toutatis!
Suresh Menon is Contributing Editor, The Hindu
