Asterix and Cleopatra

Asterix and Cleopatra is one of the classic Asterix comics. Perhaps the best known and best loved. I’ll always cherish it for the scene where tiny Dogmatix jumps into Obelix’s arms and he says “Dogmatix! You nearly knocked me over!” This is funny because Dogmatix is so small and Obelix so big, but ever since, with all the dogs I’ve had, whenever they’ve come up to me for a hug I’ve always told them that they nearly knocked me over. That’s how tightly some throwaway line read in childhood can weave itself into your life.

Anyway, Asterix and Obelix, joined this time by Panoramix the village druid and the newly named Dogmatix, are off to a Cecil B. DeMille version of Egypt, where Cleopatra is having a torrid affair with Caesar. In an opening argument the Queen of the Nile makes a bet with Caesar that she can build a palace in only three months. In order to make this a reality her clueless court architect Edifis has to travel to Gaul and enlist the help of you-know-who. So once again we have the formula of a journey out and back (the pirates are thumped again, or rather scuttle their own ship rather than have to take a beating), ending up with a celebratory banquet back home. Along the way there’s a lot of local colour, from the imperial architecture (which I loved as a kid) to the clever way the Egyptians speak in hieroglyphics. These speech bubbles rhyme and even cross over with the always creative grawlixes, which aren’t just typographical characters but take the form of storm clouds and skulls.

As a comic it’s also very smart. You have to be on your toes to catch the jokes that are happening even in the margins. And then there all the Latin tags and historical winks. As Asterix is leaving he says to Cleopatra “If, one day, you want to build something else in Egypt, a canal between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, for example . . . well, then call upon someone from our land, by Toutatis!” This is a nod to the fact that it was a French company that was in charge of building the Suez Canal in the 1850s. I think most readers, especially French readers (and we’re talking about children here), would have got that in 1965. Today I’d bet against that sort of general knowledge.

I don’t know if this is my favourite Asterix story, but it’s the one that first comes to mind whenever the subject of Asterix comes up. Not all of these comics have kept their glow over the years but this one has and it made me happy that I decided to revisit the whole series.

Graphicalex