A century after Goscinny’s birth, Asterix remains a witty guide to resisting authority

Today, Independence Day Eve, marks the birth centenary of Rene Goscinny, who, with illustrator Albert Uderzo, created one of the world's most enduring comic series, Asterix, in 1959. We still read Asterix not just as great comic literature but also for its remarkably perceptive stories about power, and 'ordinary' people who refuse to surrender to it.

Every Asterix adventure - from the very first book, Asterix the Gaul (1961), to the last, Asterix in Lusitania (2025), written by Fabcaro and illustrated by Didier Conrad - begins with the best-known opening frame in comic book history with the map of Gaul and a magnifying glass hovering on one corner: 'The year is 50 BC. Gaul is entirely occupied by the Romans. Well, not entirely....'

The story has already been told in that 'Well, not entirely....'


Empires dislike exceptions. They like neat maps coloured in a single shade, tidy histories and reassuring headlines. What unsettles Rome - every 'imperial Rome' - is one stubborn corner that refuses to fit the picture. That 'one small village of indomitable Gauls' matters, not because it can defeat Rome but because it refuses to live inside Rome's story.

Goscinny understood that long before anyone spoke of 'post-truth'. Born on August 14, 1926, in Paris to a Jewish family of Polish and Ukrainian origin, and spending his childhood in Buenos Aires in Argentina, he knew that official histories often smooth away inconvenient lives. Which may be why he understood humour having a way of smuggling truth past certainty.

In Asterix and the Missing Scroll (2015), written by Jean-Yves Ferri and illustrated by Conrad, Julius Caesar is preparing the official history of his conquest of Gaul, when an awkward detail appears: one stubborn village has never been conquered. It's the story of repeated Roman failures against one impudent little village. The answer is wonderfully simple. Don't rewrite history. Just delete the embarrassing chapter. No bonfires. No dramatic censorship. Just an editor's touch.

The joke still feels fresh, because every age has found polite ways of polishing inconvenient truths. Defeats become strategic adjustments. Failures become misunderstandings. Long before 'alternative facts' entered the political lexicon, Goscinny recognised that controlling the story can matter more than winning the battle.

But power has another instinct: dividing those who refuse to believe it. In Asterix and the Roman Agent (1970), Caesar sends no soldiers but rumours. A whisper here, a suspicion there, and neighbours begin to distrust each other. Nothing visible has changed. Yet, the village is no longer quite the same.

In Asterix and the Soothsayer (1972), the weapon is certainty. A smooth-talking prophet arrives with confident predictions, and almost no evidence. People believe him anyway. Goscinny understood something timeless: fear, like hope, usually travels faster than facts.

When force and fear fail, Rome tries prosperity. In Obelix and Co. (1976), Caesar sends a strange Roman to start buying menhirs off Asterix's BFF. Obelix begins mass-producing menhirs, wealth pours in, and neighbours slowly become competitors. Nobody invades the village - it starts invading itself. This episode remains one of Goscinny's sharpest insights: communities are not always destroyed by armies; they can also disappear because they slowly become something else.

In The Mansions of the Gods (1971), Caesar attempts something subtler still. If the village cannot be conquered, perhaps it can be absorbed - surrounded by comfort, commerce and Roman civilisation, until it quietly forgets what made it different.

Yet, the village survives. Not because it's perfect. Quite the opposite. The fishmonger (Unhygienix, in English translation) and blacksmith (Fulliautomatix) are forever quarrelling. Chief Vitalstatistix enjoys ceremony a little too much. Obelix still complains about being denied a sip of magic potion. Even the village bard, Cacofonix, whose singing threatens public peace, remains one of them.

The village feels real because people argue, lose their tempers, nurse old grievances - and still turn up for a banquet together in the final frame. Goscinny's real hero is the village, a place whose greatest resource is trust, and where people disagree, without forgetting that they belong to one another.

Published almost half-a-century after Goscinny's death in 1977, Asterix in Lusitania (2025) prompted readers to spot a Trump-like Roman governor, Upwardlimobilus. It merely hinted at what Goscinny may have known all along: every generation eventually recognises its own Caesar.

Perhaps that's also why every Asterix story ends in almost exactly the same way - not with Caesar, or Asterix, but with a communal supper. A long wooden table beneath the evening sky - friends arguing, laughing, and reaching for another helping of wild boar. Dogmatix wandering beneath their feet. Poor Cacofonix tied, as always, to a nearby tree, because everyone would like to enjoy dinner in (relative) peace. Somewhere in Rome, another triumphant bulletin is probably being written. But nobody at the table cares.

Caesar believes the villagers' secret lies in the magic potion. The potion helps them to fend off Roman soldiers. But it's friendship and sense of community that keeps the village unconquered.

A century after Rene Goscinny's birth, that 'Gaulish village' still feels like the answer to Caesars in their various forms. Ordinary people who refuse to give up their humour, friendships and habit of thinking for themselves. The power to tell authoritarian ambition, 'Well, not entirely....'