Plateau de Vanves, 4th floor of the Hachette Livre building, Aparté room, 9:15 a.m. Here it is, the 40th Asterix album: The white Iris. We have three quarters of an hour, watch in hand, to read it. The instructions are strict, no photos and no articles before October 26, the date of the worldwide release of The white Iris, which benefits from an exceptional circulation (2 million copies in France, 2 million in Germany and another million for the rest of the world). At the helm of the new adventures of Asterix and Obelix, series created by friends Albert Uderzo and René Goscinny in 1959 in the newspaper Pilot, the designer Didier Conrad and the screenwriter Fabcaro – the successful author of Zai zai zai zai and, under the name of Fabrice Caro, of the delicious novel Scenario diary –, the latter replacing Jean-Yves Ferri, busy creating his “de Gaulle”.
The boards follow one another, we swallow the bubbles. The album opens with the concerns of Julius Caesar, his troops mutiny and desert. How to re-motivate them? Vicevertus, chief physician of the armies, a handsome man with black hair and a long white lock, offers his method of positive thinking and healthy living. Caesar accepts the test. Vicevertus also attempts to inoculate the invincible Gauls with his method, in order to weaken them. Here he is in the village, spreading his precepts: fresh fish, berries and vegetables instead of wild boar, sweet words… A few fall into the trap, including Bonemine, the (unsatisfied) wife of the slightly macho chef Abraracourcix … As you can imagine, Fabcaro has a blast, joyfully expounding on the contemporary doxa of well-being and personal development. We smile, without having time to linger on this or that drawing or to gauge the humorous quality of this or that dialogue. This is because, at 10 a.m., the authors are waiting for us for a thirty-minute interview. Before continuing with the next journalist… Such is life within Albert René editions.
L’Express: In the press kit, we talk, about the Goscinny-Uderzo couple, about humor, humility, genius, friendship, will, talent and frank camaraderie. The bar is very high. Do you feel up to it?
Didier Conrad: Yes, except that we’ve only known each other for three days, our “camaraderie” stage is less intense… Still, on a current level, things go well between us. I live in Austin, Texas, and the last time I came to France was four years ago, I don’t want to overwhelm with my presence. [Rires.] In fact, I left for the United States in 1996, and Fab did not yet exist on the market, I skipped 90% of everything that has been produced since then, comics have changed a lot in fact, we now publish anything. [Rires.]
Fabcaro: Indeed, we have only known each other since Sunday, we have worked remotely until then, by video or by email.
Didier, this is your sixth Asterix, and you, Fabrice, your first. Is there a birthright?
D. VS. : Seniority certainly counts, I have a lot more experience, and Fab had no idea what it meant to work on an album like this. It’s very special, it doesn’t look like anything we know.
F.: In addition, generally speaking, I have no experience of team work, I work like a bear, all alone. Didier immediately warned me: “You were in alternative cinema, now you’re arriving in Hollywood.” And that’s a bit like that, we arrive in Hollywood, there are opinions from all sides, multiple back and forths, it’s a real collective job. But I like this idea, and then I have the chance to make my own albums at the same time, so there is zero frustration.
“You shouldn’t do anything with Asterix, it’s a fairly codified universe”
Who decides the plot?
DC: We decide on everything that is creative, but we don’t have the final cut. This is the big difference with normal work: throughout the process, things can be questioned by someone else. We ask the opinions of many people, publishers, rights holders, Hachette employees, everyone who participates in the editorial chain. If they have any reaction, it will be communicated, and we will eventually take it into account.
F.: And this gradually. I make small deliveries of 4-5 storyboard pages and, at each of these stages, there is discussion. We are constantly adjusting as we go along, and that’s normal, we shouldn’t do anything with Asterix, it’s a fairly codified universe.
DC: Psychologically, you have to have a certain flexibility. You are working on something that belongs to everyone. So everyone’s reaction matters.
The white Iris deals with positive thinking, personal development, relationship crisis… very popular themes. While Jean-Yves Ferri, the previous screenwriter, was against contemporary doxa. Is this a paradigm shift?
DC: Ferri had a much more general, family-friendly comic book perspective. You, Fab, are more contemporary.
F.: It is true that it is perhaps a more adult comic book than those designed by Jean-Yves. But my way of considering this album is also in the tradition of Uderzo and Goscinny, who dealt with timeless subjects while distilling themes of their time. There, it’s the same, well-being, the desire to live well, has always existed and will always exist. It is in this universe that I have sowed very fashionable elements.
Very fashionable and very universal elements, from Europe to the United States to Japan, right?
DC: In Europe, yes, but Asterix does not work in the United States or Japan. In the United States, people read comics for entertainment and fun, that’s all, they are not intellectually curious. Their comics are very different, with more illustrative images and without fusion of text and image as there is in Franco-Belgian comics. They made this type of comic in the 1940s and then abandoned it – as a general rule, Americans tend to wipe the slate clean of the past, without any nostalgia. As for the Japanese, they are very protectionist, they absorb nothing from the outside.
For the character of Vicevertus, this friend who only wants you well, you say you were inspired by Dominique de Villepin and Bernard-Henri Lévy. Really ?
F.: These are essentially graphic references. I thought of them for reasons of physical presence, seduction and charisma, but, from the point of view of character, they have nothing to do with Vicevertus, who is a guru, which Villepin and BHL.
Isn’t it also to make teasing and give fodder to the press?
DC: No, no, you have very bad intentions! [Rires.] Imagine the process: you look for a real starting point, which allows you to find your bearings, and thus you arrive at a type of character.
Was it you, Fabrice, who found the surname of Vicévertus?
F.: Yes, initially I had thought of Bibliobus, but it was too nice, it didn’t correspond to the dual, manipulative and rather malicious character that is this man in Caesar’s service.
“My philosophy on coverage is clear: it’s the marketing people who decide”
Everyone’s reaction matters, you say, but we are not going back to the major themes decided at the start…
F.: No, we’re talking about details. On the inside, we discuss a lot, in particular with our editor, Céleste Surugue, whose ideas I found very relevant. We had very enriching and constructive discussions. On the cover, it’s special, we don’t fight.
DC: Yes, it’s something else, the cover is the packaging. We finished it, it was approved and, at that moment, someone said: “I don’t like it.” So we do it again. My philosophy regarding the cover is clear: it’s the marketing people who decide, because it’s the only creative part they can influence and they must be happy with the result to position the album well. It’s so big, Asterix, it belongs so much to everyone, that you can’t do everything your way and send the others off to pasture.
Were there any interventions that upset you?
F.: Nothing very serious. I was also having a little fun trying to put my touch in, I tried to place things that were a little too absurd, knowing that it would never work. People told me: “It’s funny, but it’s not very Asterix.” Conversely, there are things that happened to my great astonishment. For example, when Abraracourcix refuses to drink the potion saying: “I don’t want it: you drooled down the neck!”
DC: When I read it, I said to myself: “That’s weird, it’s not going to make it to the end”, but I found it funny. And it happened. We do not have ayatollahs in front of us.
Has this immense commercial and financial operation paralyzed or galvanized you?
DC: This doesn’t really come into play when working. We’re here to draw big noses and find our gags, we can’t say to ourselves: “Do you realize? This box at the end is going to bring in so much”… It’s not possible, we have to ignore the stake.
F.: And even in relation to the number of readers: if, with each bubble, I said to myself: “This bubble is going to be read by 5 million people”, I would tremble, paralyzed, and no longer be able to write.
We are in rather troubled times, read Asterix is it an opportunity to smile?
F.: This can have two effects. Either we don’t want to read at all, we lock ourselves away; either, and I hope this will go in this direction, we want to lighten up.
Would you be ready to start again?
F.: Yes of course. It’s not news, because Jean-Yves Ferri is supposed to resume, but, in principle, yes, with pleasure, I had so much fun.
DC: I’m always up for it, of course. It’s very heavy, and exhilarating.
The white Iris, by René Goscinny, Albert Uderzo, Fabcaro and Didier Conrad. Hachette Astérix, 48 p., €10.50. And €200 per edition artbook (12 pages presenting the plates penciled and inked by Didier Conrad and research work. Included 5 bookplates including 2 signed. Numbered edition and limited to 900).
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