By Goscinny and Tabary
Publisher: Cinebook
ISBN: 9781849181815
Iznogoud's back with another collection of surreal but funny short stories. Goscinny's punchy scripts hang each tale's premise around some magical quirk, event or person, making each an extended comedy sketch, but always with one outcome in mind – to make Iznogoud Caliph instead of the Caliph.
In fact, magical items are pretty much the hook in every one of these stories, with a cabbalistic hopscotch game, a magical (but cheap) souvenir, a fragrant charm that causes amnesia and a flute that turns people into dogs being at the centre of the first four adventures. The best one of all, though, is a magical catalogue (yes, that's right) that allows the user to purchase things that haven't been invented yet. We then get to witness Iznogoud skipping past hideous weapons of mass destruction to be taken in instead by the advertiser's blurb, the PR-man's drivel and the copywriter's misdirection as he reads rather too much into rather innocent product descriptions. It's the sort of gag that could have spawned year's worth of strips, but perhaps the fact that it didn't makes it all the richer.
Tabary's work is the perfect match for the madcap mayhem that befalls Iznogoud and Wa'at at every turn, and I particularly enjoyed his rendering of the first and final panels of the first story – beautifully done.
If you've ever enjoyed an Asterix book then your going to get along just fine with Iznogoud.
And if you liked that: Volume 11 is coming soon
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