They do so using a magic potion, brewed by their druid Getafix (Panoramix in the French version), which temporarily gives the recipient superhuman strength.

As of 20 April 2022, 385 million copies of Asterix books had been sold worldwide and translated in 111 languages making it the world's most widely translated comic book series,[5] with co-creators René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo being France's best-selling authors abroad.

[6][7] In April 2022, Albert and René's general director, Céleste Surugue, hosted a 45-minute talk entitled 'The Next Incarnation of a Heritage Franchise: Asterix' and spoke about the success of the Asterix franchise, of which he noted "The idea was to find a subject with a strong connection with French culture and, while looking at the country's history, they ended up choosing its first defeat, namely the Gaul's Roman colonisation".

But Goscinny had a different picture in his mind, visualizing Asterix as a shrewd, compact warrior who would possess intelligence and wit more than raw strength.

She said: ... the co-creator of Astérix, France's comic strip hero, has betrayed the Gaulish warrior to the modern-day Romans – the men of industry and finance.

[14][15]However, René Goscinny's daughter, Anne, also gave her agreement to the continuation of the series and sold her rights at the same time.

[12] In 2011, Uderzo announced that a new Asterix album was due out in 2013, with Jean-Yves Ferri writing the story and Frédéric Mébarki drawing it.

[17] A year later, in 2012, the publisher Albert-René announced that Frédéric Mébarki had withdrawn from drawing the new album, due to the pressure he felt in following in the steps of Uderzo.

Comic artist Didier Conrad was officially announced to take over drawing duties from Mébarki, with the due date of the new album in 2013 unchanged.

A picture-book version of the same story was published in English translation as The Twelve Tasks of Asterix by Hodder & Stoughton in 1978.

The main setting for the series is an unnamed coastal village, rumoured to be inspired by Erquy[66] in Armorica (present-day Brittany), a province of Gaul (modern France), in the year 50 BC.

The humour encountered in the Asterix comics often centers around puns, caricatures, and tongue-in-cheek stereotypes of contemporary European nations and French regions.

[67] Altough the series uses the expression "our Gallic ancestors", the creators aren't French: René Goscinny was a Jew with Polish parents and grew up in Argentina and Albert Uderzo was born to Italian immigrants.

[citation needed] All the fictional characters in Asterix have names which are puns on their roles or personalities, and which follow certain patterns specific to nationality.

Other nationalities are treated to pidgin translations from their language, like Huevos y Bacon, a Spanish chieftain (whose name, meaning eggs and bacon, is often guidebook Spanish for tourists), or literary and other popular media references, like Dubbelosix (a sly reference to James Bond's codename "007").

[69] Even so, occasionally the wordplay has been preserved: Obelix's dog, known in the original French as Idéfix (from idée fixe, a "fixed idea" or obsession), is called Dogmatix in English, which not only renders the original meaning strikingly closely ("dogmatic") but in fact adds another layer of wordplay with the syllable "Dog-" at the beginning of the name.

Two exceptions include Icelandic, in which he is known as Ástríkur ("Rich of love"), and Sinhala, where he is known as සූර පප්පා (Soora Pappa), which can be interpreted as "Hero".

Besides the original French language, most albums are available in Arabic, Basque, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, Galician, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Icelandic, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latin, Latvian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovene, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, and Ukrainian.

[71][72] Some books have also been translated into languages including Esperanto, Scottish Gaelic, Irish, Scots, Indonesian, Hindi, Persian, Bengali, Afrikaans, Arabic, Frisian, Romansch, Thai, Vietnamese, Welsh, Sinhala, Ancient Greek, and Luxembourgish.

[71] In Europe, several volumes were translated into a variety of regional languages and dialects, such as Alsatian, Breton, Chtimi (Picard), and Corsican in France; Bavarian, Swabian, and Low German in Germany; and Savo, Karelia, Rauma, and Helsinki slang dialects in Finland.

In the Netherlands, several volumes were translated into West Frisian, a Germanic language spoken in the province of Friesland; into Limburgish, a regional language spoken not only in Dutch Limburg but also in Belgian Limburg and North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany; and into Tweants, a dialect in the region of Twente in the eastern province of Overijssel.

Before Asterix became famous in the English-speaking world, translations of some strips were published in British comics including Valiant, Ranger, and Look & Learn, under names Little Fred and Big Ed[75] and Beric the Bold, set in Roman-occupied Britain.

[76][77] In 1970, William Morrow and Company published English translations in hardback of three Asterix albums for the American market.

Lawrence Hughes in a letter to The New York Times stated, "Sales were modest, with the third title selling half the number of the first.

"[78] The first 33 Asterix albums were translated into English by Anthea Bell and Derek Hockridge (including the three volumes reprinted by William Morrow),[79] who were widely praised for maintaining the spirit and humour of the original French versions.

On 17 November 2018, a 52 eleven-minute episode animated series featuring Dogmatix (Idéfix in the French version) was announced to be in production by Studio 58 and Futurikon for broadcast on France Télévisions in 2020.

[86] On 21 December 2020, it was confirmed that Dogmatix and the Indomitables had been pushed back to fall 2021, with o2o Studio producing the animation.

[89] The series premiered on the Okoo streaming service on 2 July before beginning its linear broadcast on France 4 on 28 August 2021.

[90] On 3 March 2021, it was announced that Asterix the Gaul is to star in a new Netflix animated series directed by Alain Chabat.

The series will be adapted from one of the classic volumes, Asterix and the Big Fight, where the Romans, after being constantly embarrassed by Asterix and his village cohorts, organize a brawl between rival Gaulish chiefs and try to fix the result by kidnapping a druid along with his much-needed magic potion.