He was raised primarily in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he attended French schools, and he lived in the United States for a short period of time.

[2] His parents were Stanisław Simkha Gościnny, a chemical engineer from Warsaw, and Anna (Hanna) Bereśniak-Gościnna from Chodorków (modern-day Khodorkiv [uk]), a small village near Kyiv in Ukraine.

[3][full citation needed] Goscinny's maternal grandfather, Abraham Lazare Berezniak, founded a printing company.

In December 1943, the year after Goscinny graduated from lycée or high school, his father died of a cerebral hemorrhage (stroke).

[5] Goscinny, along with his mother, emigrated from Argentina and immigrated to New York, United States in 1945 to join her brother, Boris.

To avoid service in the United States Armed Forces[citation needed] he travelled to France to join the French Army in 1946.

By 1948, though, he had begun working in a small studio, where he became friends with future MAD Magazine contributors Will Elder, Jack Davis, and Harvey Kurtzman.

Around this time he met two Belgian comic artists, Joseph Gillain, better known as Jijé, and Maurice de Bevere, also known as Morris.

He wrote some short stories for Jo Angenot and Albert Weinberg, and worked on Signor Spaghetti with Dino Attanasio, Monsieur Tric with Bob de Moor, Prudence Petitpas with Maurice Maréchal, Globul le Martien and Alphonse with Tibet, Strapontin with Berck and Modeste et Pompon with André Franquin.

[8] In addition, Goscinny appeared in the magazines Paris-Flirt (Lili Manequin with Will) and Vaillant (Boniface et Anatole with Jordom, Pipsi with Godard).

With Tabary, he launched Calife Haroun El Poussah in Record, a series that was later continued in Pilote as Iznogoud.

[10] Goscinny died at 51, in Paris of a heart attack on 5 November 1977, during a routine stress test at his doctor's office.

There is a further tribute at the end of the book: near the lower left corner of the final panel, Uderzo drew a rabbit sadly looking over its shoulders towards Goscinny's signature.

As a further tribute to Goscinny, Uderzo gave his late colleague's likeness to the Jewish character Saul ben Ephishul (a play on "it's all beneficial"; Saul Nizahle in the German edition; ) in the 1981 album L'Odyssée d'Astérix ("Asterix and the Black Gold"), which is dedicated to Goscinny's memory.

Prior to Idéfix, the works of the founders were animated and adapted to films by Belvision Studios, based at Brussels in Belgium.

[citation needed] René Goscinny called Henri Gruel to constitute the technical and artistic teams of the Idéfix studios.

Gruel gets Goscinny to share the artistic direction of the studios with Pierre Watrin, whom he considers to be an excellent designer, one of Paul Grimault's best former animators.

However, the search for Pierre Watrin and Henri Gruel ultimately proved difficult, most of the former employees of the Les Gémeaux studios having converted to illustration and advertising.

Talent was lacking and, at Goscinny's request, Henri Gruel sent his friend Serge Caillet, production director on live-action films, to the Paris Chamber of Commerce and Industry to demand the opening of a animated cinema section to supply the studios with young artists, who thus offer employment to students as soon as they leave school.

Eventually, they managed to produce their first feature film, The Twelve Tasks of Asterix, with Halas and Batchelor and Dargaud.

[citation needed] Studio Idéfix produced only two feature films, namely, The Twelve Tasks of Asterix (1976) The Ballad of the Daltons (1978)