List of Asterix characters

While his age is never stated, in the story of Asterix's birth (in which all but the oldest villagers are seen as small children), he appears unchanged.

The final cut is shown with all the male villagers and two females, Impedimenta and Bacteria included, with Getafix running to stop the fight, with a piece of fish flying towards him.

His most notable brawl is when, masquerading as a cook in The Great Divide, he makes and partakes of the magic potion (passing it off as soup) to free the enslaved men from the divided village, captured by the Romans — and doing a test run on the slaves who were present — and then starts distributing slaps with obvious enjoyment.

The full recipe of the magic potion itself has never been revealed, but known ingredients are mistletoe (which must be cut with a golden sickle [Asterix and the Golden Sickle]), a whole lobster (an optional ingredient that improves the flavour), fresh fish, salt, and petroleum (called rock oil in the book), which is later replaced by beetroot juice.

In Asterix and the Big Fight, he was shown as going literally crazy after sustaining a serious blow to the head, constantly laughing like a maniac and enjoying making explosive potions that turned the drinker various colours, only curing himself by sheer accident when he made a healing potion by chance while throwing ingredients together at random.

His major failings are his love of good food and drink (it is unlikely to be a coincidence that his wife is the best cook in the village) — which has led to health problems — and his pride.

This characteristic is based on a real historical account where Gallic chieftains were asked by Alexander the Great what they were most afraid of in all the world, and replied that their worst fear was that the sky might fall on their heads.

From Asterix and Caesar's Gift onwards, Vitalstatistix has had the same (unnamed) shield-bearers carry (and drop) him; prior to that, he had different bearers in each album.

In Asterix in Switzerland, he fires both his shield-bearers after he tells them that it is a lovely day, and they look up, tipping the shield back and dropping the chief in the process.

The introduction page varies between showing the bearers straining under Vitalstatistix' not inconsiderable bulk as he looks into the distance in some of the books, while in others he looks at them in good humour as they look up to him in respect.

She frequently says she wants to go back to Lutetia and live with her successful merchant brother, Homeopathix — the one member of the family her husband openly dislikes.

In emergencies, she's famous for remaining in control, as in Asterix and Son where during a Roman attack she fearlessly led the women and children out of the burning village.

In later albums his music is so spectacularly horrible that it actually starts thunderstorms (even indoors), because of an old French saying that bad singing causes rain.

For his part, Cacofonix considers himself a genius and a superb singer, and he is angrily offended when people criticize his singing, to the point of dismissing them as barbarians.

Most notably, Fulliautomatix, the village smith, strikes him on the head at the merest hint of breaking into a song, and has destroyed his lyre on a number of occasions, at one point being called the "ancestor of music critics".

In the animated Asterix and the Big Fight, Cacofonix is seen playing a rock song, trying to restore Getafix's memory, one occasion where Fulliautomatix and Unhygienix are not annoyed or angry with him.

He is rarely seen fighting the Romans or joining fist-fights, except when his personal honour is impugned, and he appears to be more pacifist than the rest of the villagers.

The fact that he is incredibly arrogant may also be partly to blame, as in at least one volume (Asterix and the Roman Agent) he is shown to have not even noticed the other villagers are fighting the Romans and is actually shown asking Getafix what's going on (however, he had been suffering from a lost voice earlier in this volume and may have simply been staying in his hut while waiting to recover).

In particular he often beats up the village blacksmith Fulliautomatix for refusing to fight back due to his age, and actually cries out to be attacked (in Asterix and the Roman Agent).

In prequels such as How Obelix Fell into the Magic Potion When he was a Little Boy, in which most of the characters are children and Vitalstatistix is a slim young man, Geriatrix, along with Getafix, is unchanged.

She does seem to be happily married, however, and the only serious conflict in her marriage is her occasional apparent interest in Obelix which makes her husband insanely jealous.

When this happens he will often take out his frustration on the nearest convenient bystander (Cacofonix for preference) on the grounds that he does not feel he can fight back against someone so old, which only helps to further incense the old man.

One of the shortest women in the village, and possessing of a steep and pointy nose, she takes no nonsense and dominates her much larger husband as well as getting into a brawl with the wife of Chief Vitalstatistix in Asterix and the Class Act.

On one occasion (in Asterix the Legionary) after the wreck the pirates were depicted in a scene similar to Théodore Géricault's Raft of the Medusa.

In the English version of this scene, the captain also refers to an ancient Gaulish artist called "Jericho", an alternative spelling of the name Géricault.

Such is the fear that the pirates have for the Gauls that, having unknowingly taken them aboard—Asterix and his companions boarded the ship in the night when it was too dark for either side to see the other properly, with the pirates only learning the truth when they sneaked into their guests' cabin to rob them—they fled their own ship in the middle of the night while the subjects of their fear were sound asleep (Asterix in Corsica).

At other times, it is Asterix and Obelix who have boarded the pirates' vessel and captured booty, thus reversing their roles of hunter and prey.

It happened again (in Asterix and the Magic Carpet) with Asterix leaving a single coin for payment after Obelix threw all of their recently recovered treasure overboard while searching for food; the Captain told his depressed crew that it was better than nothing and that at least they still had the ship, but then their lookout proudly announced that he had upheld their honour and scuttled the ship himself.

Curiously enough, at the end of the same adventure, he and his crew were having to work as rowers aboard the very galley taking the Gauls back home and he announced with unusual determination that he will hunt them down and get his revenge.

On another occasion, the pirates destroyed their ship simply at the sight of Asterix and all his fellow villagers in another vessel taking them to the Olympic Games.