Asterix and the Falling Sky

After every new Asterix episode, Albert Uderzo swears it's his last, he is tired of it, he can't think of new stories anymore, he's had enough trying to bring great art to an unappreciative world (he said once) — and a few years later you see a new book out, and sure enough it is nowhere near what he did with Goscinny's scripts. Still, I ask myself whether this is not the worst of the lot. Where his solo efforts (which, come to think of it, span more than half of Asterix' lifetime!) have previously been bland but rather nice (L'Odyssée d'Astérix) to bland and boring (Astérix et Latraviata), this is almost offensively bad. There's no trace of the humour and satire that made Le Devin and Obélix & Compagnie so delicious; instead we show more get a cute little alien inspired by (close to plagiarised from) Disney, a brigade of "superclones" that look like Superman with Zippy the Pinhead's cranium, a mean and ugly (and borderline racist caricature) manga-inspired alien who isn't smart enough to be truly evil, and his battle robots. Add stupid roman legionaries who don't get anything amusingly stupid to do, and two panels' worth of pirates (if they know that the Gauls live there, as they should know by now, why don't they make a huge detour around that part of the coast?).

Two conflicting aliens drop down on the Gaulish village in search of a super-weapon (the magic potion), they both try to gain it (the cute Witsledyan by negotiation, the Nagma by force rendered ineffective by his own ineptitude, and I will not award bonus points for figuring out what their names are anagrams of), and lots of hilarity should ensue but doesn't, despite Uderzo's frenetic attempts. I get the impression that Uderzo has no idea of where the story is taking him or what he's supposed to do when he gets there, and the only reason the plot holes are rather small is that there isn't much of a plot to start with. At least the artwork is slightly better than in Astérix et Latraviata.

As I didn't expect much from Le ciel lui tombe sur la tête, I am not as disappointed as I could have been. The only thing I am slightly angry about is that most Internet bookstores unfairly list René Goscinny as the author, which is almost an insult to a man who has been dead for over 30 years and can't defend himself. I only have these words of advice: Albert, the next time you say you're going to retire, please keep your word and stop wrecking the good reputation you once deserved. show less

Yeah, so Goscinny was always the ideas man and Uderzo's stories will never live up to that, but even with that in mind, this is dire.

It's not that Asterix facing aliens and comic book heroes couldn't work. There have certainly been weird crossovers in the franchise before. But Uderzo seems to have absolutely NO idea what to do with it. He plops a few aliens into the Gaul village and ... that's it. There's nothing else to it. No story, no good gags, no worthwhile character beats, not even any good drawings we haven't seen before. (Except possibly the slightly Franquin-like battle between the spaceships.) It's to the point where the punny names are (at least in the Swedish translation) explained by the characters in dialogue. Uderzo show more claims it's a tribute to Disney and superhero comics (and a pretty damn racist rant against manga), and comes across as never having seen or read any of the things he's nodding to.

The best thing about this is that it makes the old albums look even better by comparison. show less

Often Caesar hatches a nefarious plan to conquer the one small village of Indomitable Gauls that still holds out against the Roman invaders. More rarely our heroes get caught up in an external conflict for some reason - and that's what happens the day Chief Vitalstatistix' only fear comes to pass - and it's a conflict of a scale and type not even Getafix could anticipate!

This is pure, distilled Uderzo, whimsical, fantastical and of course, down right silly, perfectly fitting for his last Asterix album. So long, Uderzo - you, along with your great friend, Goscinny, have entertained (and even educated) me as long as I've been reading independently and will no doubt bring me much fun in the future, too, even though there will be no new show more stories from you. The existing ones still delight every time. I hope your successors can retain the spirit of the little village on the coast of Armorica back in 50 B.C. as they bring us new adventures of Asterix and Obelix. I'll find out soon enough. show less

Terminé, je n'achèterai plus les nouveaux Astérix qui paraîtront, ou pas, dans le futur. Celui-ci est une pitoyable diatribe contre les manga, juste pour le plaisir de critiquer quelque chose qu'à l'évidence (différence de génération?) l'auteur ne comprend pas, et n'essaie même pas de comprendre d'ailleurs.
Tant pis, il en reste des anciens que je n'ai pas encore lus, ça compensera!

This is the second newest Asterix comic to be released (published in 2005) and quite honestly it does not compare to the earlier Asterix comics.

In this comic Asterix's village is invade by two different alien species. Both are looking for the secret weapon (the Gaul's magic potion) that the Gauls use to defeat the Romans. The first alien, the Tadsilweny, works with the Gauls to try and obtain the secret weapon; while the second alien, the Nagmas, tries (unsuccessful) to steal it away. While the plot of the story can be followed, at times the story seems to be disjointed and the humour that one expects from an Asterix comic is not as abundant as usually. Also the ending seems to be rather drawn out; the battle is won against the Nagmas show more and the magic potion save but the comic continues for another ten pages as though the author had forget a part of the story and just decided to tack it on at the end. show less

This is by far the worst Asterix published. It is so bad, many comic book dealers explicitly do not recommend it. If you can choose, buy one of the early Asterix books. This one is only interesting for those geeks that want to collect everything.

ah. The weakest of the Asterix comics. They started earlier to integrate figures from different times (Atlantis, Herring) but this is even further away.