This is a column that focuses on something or some things from the comic book sphere of influence that may not get the credit and recognition it deserves. Whether that’s a list of comic book movies, ongoing comics, or a set of stories featuring a certain character. The columns may take the form of a bullet pointed list, or a slightly longer thinkpiece – there’s really no formula for this other than whether the things being covered are Underrated in some way. This week: Asterix Omnibus #1: Collects Asterix the Gaul, Asterix and the Golden Sickle, and Asterix and the Goths.

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It was the 90’s. A time before the world had seen Tobey Maguire in red and blue spandex, a place where baggy jeans were still the height of fashion, and I had yet to find my first comic shop. But I knew I loved sequential art all the same, because I was a dedicated reader of Asterix. The plucky Gaul and his village the lone holdouts against the indomitable Roman Empire because their druid had created a magical potion. I loved Asterix, Obelix, and the rest of the ix’s in the village as a child, and so when a man closer to forty summers than he’d like to think about saw a pair of omnibuses in a comic shop when on vacation… well it was aa no brainer. I had to get them.

Now, I hadn’t read an Asterix book in three decades until I found this one. That may be an exaggeration by omission, because I might have been ten years old the last time I read a volume of Asterix, or I may have been slightly older, but that is still nearly thirty years ago so three decades is still true enough. The question as to whether I had wasted money on the two omnibuses (omnibi?) containing the first six volumes of the French comic was swiftly put to rest.

Asterix holds up. Hell, I’d even go so far as to say it’s better now as an adult than it was as a kid.

Asterix is celebrating 60 sensational years as an international comics superstar, and in the first collected edition from Papercutz, the stories are newly translated into American English for a new generation of fans! The story of Asterix starts here. These are the first three adventures of Asterix as he defends his tiny village from the overwhelming forces of the Roman Empire. Join the short, spunky, and super-powerful warrior from Gaul and his faithful friends–including the boar-eating delivery man Obelix and the ecologically-minded canine, Dogmatix–as they battle to protect their village against impossible odds. Asterix Omnibus volume one collects “Asterix the Gaul,” “Asterix and the Golden Sickle,” and “Asterix and the Goths.” Three classic adventures in one great volume.

– the blurb on the back.

This book is 152 pages of pure joy for me, with three standalone stories told by Rene Goscinny and Albert Uderzo that don’t rely on you having read the previous volumes (while that’s kind of a moot point given this collection has the first three volumes, there isn’t much chance for you to have read any book released previously as there weren’t any), but instead tells a complete tale that is packed with comedic encounters, of both the dry subtle kind and the more intentional physical pun. I fucking love Asterix, I won’t lie.

This book, or any of the omnibuses released by Papercutz featuring the Gaul, are perfect for new readers to comic books. There’s not a lot of complexity to the story, but there’s a lot going on all the same; it’s the closest to the comic version of a Pixar movie that you can get, and it’s glorious (this isn’t rose tinted glasses or nostalgia pulling at my heart strings either – of the four collected editions of Asterix I have, I’ve enjoyed each one far more than I expected.

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Join us next week where there will doubtless be another movie, series, comic or comic related thing discussed that is, for whatever reason, Underrated.