On 29 October 1959, the first adventure of the diminutive warrior Asterix appeared in the comic magazine Pilote. It was the work of the Italian-born artist Albert Uderzo, who, with his script-writer friend René Goscinny, had dreamed up the idea a few months previously on the terrace of his Bobigny flat.
Half a century later Asterix - and Uderzo - are still going strong. On 22 October, a new album comes out, the 34th in the series, entitled, "Asterix and Obelix's birthday - The Gold Book". And, over the following week a series of events will be held across Paris to mark the anniversary. They include a musical, a seminar at the Sorbonne and a costumed pageant on 29 October.
For the French, who take their Bandes Dessinées (BD, comic strip books) very seriously indeed, Asterix is part of the canon. Not only is he a prodigious (and rare) cultural export - 325 million books sold in 107 languages - he also exemplifies perfectly the national self-image.
If modern-day France tends to see itself as a beleaguered redoubt holding out against the imperial forces of global Americana, then who better to represent it than a cheeky Gaul with a habit of clobbering the cloddish forces of Rome.
Unlike most previous albums, The Gold Book comprises a series of short stories rather than a single tale. But the much-loved cast of characters is unchanged: Asterix, the canny hero, his corpulent sidekick Obelix, Dogmatix the dog, Panoramix the druid (known as Getafix in the English translations), Cacofonix the tone-deaf bard and so on.
'War-machine'
But while The Gold Book will doubtless sell as well as ever, the continuing commercial success of the Asterix series masks a painful reality that many fans prefer to ignore: For the past 30 years - ever since Goscinny's death in 1977 - the books have been frankly second-rate.
That at least is the view of serious lovers of the Asterix books. For them, the last album of true merit was Asterix in Belgium, which was also the last book that Goscinny worked on. The subsequent 10 albums were not just drawn, but also written, by Uderzo, and the decline in quality has been drastic.
The most recent book before the new one - the 2005 Asterix and the Falling Sky - even featured a group of extra-terrestrials in a heavy-handed attempt to parody American cultural imperialism. It was panned by the critics, though it once again sold millions.
"Since the death of Goscinny, it has been the slow descent into hell," says Hugues Dayez, Belgian film critic and comic-strip expert. (In Belgium they take BD even more seriously than in France.)
"Uderzo is a great artist, but he is no script-writer. He has no confidence in himself. He has one idea, then another, then another, and in the end the whole thing is a mess. More importantly, all the humour - the wonderful irony - is no longer there. The genius has gone.
"But the paradox is that despite all this, the Asterix albums have never sold as many as they do now. This is entirely a result of the commercialisation of the brand. In Mr Goscinny's day there was no merchandising, but now it is like a war-machine," he says.
What saddens admirers of the essential Asterix even more is that it now looks as if the character will be allowed to continue his existence indefinitely into the future.
Earlier this year - after a painful family rift with his daughter - Mr Uderzo sold rights to the series to the publishing conglomerate Hachette, and he has appointed three young artists to take over when he dies.
"Asterix must live on after me," Mr Uderzo, who is 82, told the Journal du Dimanche newspaper earlier his week.
His decision is part of a bitter debate in BD circles about what to do with successful characters when their creators stop creating.
On the one hand there is the Tintin option - a complete ban on new adventures, following the desires of the artist Herge.
But on the other hand, several other historic Franco-Belgian cartoons have been kept going with new artists. Examples are Lucky Luke, Spirou and Boule et Bill. Such prolongations may continue to sell, but they are little loved compared to the originals.
"Some fans want to see their favourite characters go on for ever. Personally I do not," says Anne-Claire Norot, BD critic at Les Inrocks culture magazine in Paris. "Asterix is a case in point. Goscinny's death was a turning point. After that, the language, the jokes, the subtlety - it was all gone. Before it was art, now it is just for children."
For Hugues Dayez - who admits cheerfully to being Albert Uderzo's bete noire - the inevitable success of the new Asterix album has everything to do with the forces of mass marketing, and nothing to do with true artistic merit.
"People will buy the book out of a Pavlovian reaction because it's become part of our national heritage," he says. "But the truth is there is a huge amount of money at stake. Publishers want to keep the brand alive because it is an awful lot easier than creating something new."
