Between November and December, comic book auctions multiplied with record figures. But alongside the big names in the news and in the headlines, it’s sometimes useful to take a look at vacancies off the beaten track. Among other lots, this FauveParis sale features two plates by Uderzo, including one of Asterix, and a few cartoons by rare artists such as Chaval and Henry Morez.
This week’s Asterix plate is a piece of royalty: a page from Asterix’s Odyssey, an album created by Uderzo himself as a tribute to his accomplice René Goscinny: our two heroes are sent to the Middle East to bring back rock oil (petroleum) that Epidemaïs had neglected to bring back from the Orient, and which we discover is one of the ingredients in the famous magic potion.
It’s one of the album’s key scenes: Obelix corrects the Roman spy Zerozerosix, a caricature of Sean “007” Connery, but unfortunately the precious liquid is spilled during the fight. So much for the magic potion! And then, in a magnificent half-page spread, we discover one of those Homeric battles for which our indomitable Gauls have the secret! How did they do it? The suspense is at its height!
This plate was a gift from Uderzo to publisher Bernard de Fallois, who advised the artist in the creation of the Albert-René publishing house. All the qualities of the Asterix artist are on display: impeccable, unrepentant execution, breathtakingly complex composition and an irresistible sense of comic detail. A unique piece.
The Belloy plate predates the Asterix plate by more than twenty years, even though it features pirates who bear a striking resemblance to Asterix’s Redbeard. Here, the script is by Jean-Michel Charlier, the “Alexandre Dumas” of comics, who worked with Uderzo and Goscinny at World Press. It dates from the early 1950s, but the color indications were made for the later publication in Pilote in 1962.
Another jewel in the crown: drawings by Chaval, one of France’s most elegant cartoonists, a cerebral artist and absolute master of black humor, following in the footsteps of the New Yorker cartoonists, and above all the facetious Henry Morez, a pupil of Montparnasse painter Emmanuel Mané-Katz, survivor of the Holocaust and close friend of René Goscinny and Sempé. In addition to some of his humorous drawings, here are some of the sensitive, surrealist and contemplative paintings he produced towards the end of his life.
To read the article on the ActuaBD website, click here!