Asterix: How Obelix Fell Into The Magic Potion When He Was A Little Boy

Asterix: How Obelix Fell Into The Magic Potion When He Was A Little Boy by Goscinny & Uderzo
Publisher: Orion Books ISBN: 978-1-4440-0026-9
Review by Simon Chadwick

Asterix has always been my favourite. I still have fond memories of discovering a healthy selection of the titles at my local library back in the late 70s. It's also been a pleasure recently to begin sharing them with my daughter – helping to explain the joke names is a particular delight. Anyway, just about every Asterix book makes reference to how Obelix isn't allowed any magic potion because he fell into the magic potion cauldron when he was a baby, and now here's the story of how it happened.

This isn't a new book, although it is a reprinting of a long out-of-print one. I ordered mine via Amazon (in fact, pre-ordered, such was my excitement) and it arrived looking like the latest part of the Asterix family of books. And that's when the problem's started. Firstly, from a narrative point of view, Asterix and Obelix aren't babies in this, they're primary-schoolers. It makes for a better tale on a cute and cuddly level, but flies in the face of what we've been told in the books. Maybe a minor niggle, but a niggle all the same. Then, when you open the book, it ain't all that thick – in fact half the length of an average Asterix story but the same price. And then when you get to the actual story it's not told in traditional comic panels, but as a children's story book. Now I've written and illustrated a few kids' books so I'm not against this as a way of presenting a story, and I can think of a few examples where creators have done this and it's worked wonderfully, but that's not the issue. Nowhere in all the blurb for this book did it mention this is what you were getting. If I'd known I was paying £11 for a book I'd read in five minutes I think I'd have thought twice about it.

The illustrations, however, are beautiful, as you'd expect, and are in fact the books saving grace. When I'd calmed down enough I got the kids together, held the book open so they could appreciate the pictures, and I read it to them. They, incidentally, loved it.
And if you liked that: Try Bagel's Lucky Hat by Hector Mumbly (actually Dave Cooper), a cartoonists' children's book that's marketed as such.