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Asterix vs Coronavirus

FollowingHim

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Asterix and the Chariot Race was released in 2017. This book is jaw-dropping to read this year. Spoiler alert: I'm discussing the plot of the entire book in this post.

In this book, Asterix and Obelix are a team of charioteers, and are racing alongside many other teams from all over the known world, down the length of Italy. The race is however organised by the Roman Empire (of course), and the Roman champion is, I kid you not, named "Coronavirus". His sidekick is "Bacillus".

That alone would be a funny coincidence, but this is a whole lot deeper than that.

Coronavirus is a man in a mask. Coronavirus is his "stage name". There is no real man called Coronavirus.

Coronavirus is also unassailable, he is much faster than anybody else. Because Bacillus and a couple of other agents embedded in the race are cheating on his behalf, by secretly giving Coronavirus fresh horses every night to make his chariot fastest, and by sabotaging all other competitors. Coronavirus himself has nothing to do with this though, he is actually a relative weakling who is surprised by his own success... The point of all this cheating has nothing to do with Coronavirus himself. The entire point of him winning is to establish the superiority of Rome.

The crowds cheer him on loudly, but that is because the Roman legionaries are planted through the crowds and instructed to cheer him on loudly. Which is explained by this discussion:
Senator in charge of the race: "Our champion is holding the lead! All through the provinces, jubilant crowds cry his name!"
Caesar: "Perfect! When they chant his name, they're actually chanting Rome! And when they chant Rome, they're actually chanting CAESAR!"


By the end of the race even the person under the mask is changed, and Coronavirus becomes Caesar himself.

Symbolically, this is so powerfully accurate that I am flabbergasted. I really don't know what else to say, it speaks for itself. You should find this in your local library. If you can't find it that way it is possible to read all such books online for free, illegally, but I won't share a link for that. This one is worth buying in my opinion!

Asterix_Coronavirus.png

The Asterix comics are a long-running deep political commentary, not just fun kids books. For the background of what they mean to the French, check this article. Basically, the Romans are a symbol for all forms of government oppression, and Asterix is standing for personal liberty, with a French flavour, symbolising the concept that the people can never be completely repressed.
 
#infreakingcredible
 
Wow. Just... WOW!

@FollowingHim, May I repost this elsewhere? And, I guess I need to buy for posterity's sake...

Edit: Found and ordered. Amazon.com. $17 shipped.
 
@FollowingHim, is it written in French?
English. It's originally French, but each book is officially translated into English as there's a wider English market, and some say the English versions are better than the French. Everything I have described above is from the English version, I do not know whether the French presents this the same (or even if the character in question is called "coronavirus" in French - as the names are all designed to be amusing to the target audience, in their language, many names are changed between languages). The humour relies on a lot of wordplay so must be crafted differently for each language.
 
@Keith Martin and others - sorry, I just realised that Asterix is not well known in the USA, hence your question about what language it is in. That really surprised me as in the rest of the world, this would be possibly the most well known and widely read comic series in existence, translated into many different languages. Alongside Tintin (also French originally). In most of the world kids grow up reading this, it's in every library and wildly popular. For good reason. So I didn't think of giving much background other than just mentioning the name.

It's in English, and if you haven't read any of these comics before you had a sad childhood. :)

The characters names convey a lot of humour - read them aloud. The slightly overweight village chief is "Vitalstatistix". The druid, who is constantly making potions, is "Getafix". The bard, who is a terrible musician, is "Cacofonix". The elderly man in the village is "Geriatrix". And so forth. All the Gaul's names end in "ix", and the Romans end in "us" - hence "Coronavirus" and "Bacillus" being given as Roman names.
 
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I must say I love reading the Asterix comics, but only became familiar with them in recent years when we were given some in a box of books by our German neighbor.

I haven't read that one though.
 
I ordered a hardcopy, but found this o.line and thoroughly enjoyed the first half.. will finish tomorrow.
 
These are quite famous in the Netherlands as well. I think all children and even adults like to read them.
I remember we even had those comics discussed during history lessons in high school as our teacher found them to be very accurate. So he used to show us the pictures while telling the stories around them. Very entertaining but also a good way to remember what has happened and why.
 
I had no clue these existed. I may just check this out. Thanks for this.

Did y'all have Archie comics down under? Was that a Yank thing only?
 
Did y'all have Archie comics down under? Was that a Yank thing only?
It's a Yank thing. I recognised the name but couldn't recall what they were about. Looked at one online - I'm pretty sure I've never read them before. Never had them in our libraries. Also, growing up I was never really familiar with the Marvel / DC superhero comics, we'd know of the characters since they're put in movies, but I never read an actual comic book of batman, spiderman etc. Just saw the movie version.

Honestly, Archie seems more about teenage issues, ie inward looking like a TV soap, while Asterix and Tintin etc are expanding the mind to consider different cultures and history, so are a completely different genre. I wouldn't compare it to Archie.

We do have lots of American newspaper-style comic strips here. Garfield, Peanuts, that sort of thing. Also our own ones though, Footrot Flats is worth looking up!
 
Did y'all have Archie comics down under? Was that a Yank thing only?
Got a picture in my head of a guy with two girls and a milkshake? Never read one. There's a NZ guy that plays Archie in the TV show that I have also never seen.
That's the extent of my knowledge.
 
Honestly, Archie seems more about teenage issues, ie inward looking like a TV soap, while Asterix and Tintin etc are expanding the mind to consider different cultures and history, so are a completely different genre. I wouldn't compare it to Archie.

I wasn't trying to equate content, the trying to gauge if there were popular items here that never crossed the oceans, just like Asterix never seemed to cross over to here. Archie is pretty bland. No social commentary whatsoever!
 
Thinking about American comics I may have read, Ducktales comics were good, I used to read those as a child! But only because friends of ours had a collection, never found them in libraries.
 
Those give you an idea, but they're random ones that don't link together. Usually there was a story to be told over a bunch of strips, but this doesn't show that.
Samuel just informed me that if you go back to the start then you see that they are all in order, I was just reading them backwards lol.
 
Asterix and the Chariot Race was released in 2017. This book is jaw-dropping to read this year. Spoiler alert: I'm discussing the plot of the entire book in this post.

In this book, Asterix and Obelix are a team of charioteers, and are racing alongside many other teams from all over the known world, down the length of Italy. The race is however organised by the Roman Empire (of course), and the Roman champion is, I kid you not, named "Coronavirus". His sidekick is "Bacillus".

This must be deliberate, if prescient. The term "coronavirus" was coined in 2002.
 
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