AGENCIES, Paris: Albert Uderzo, illustrator and co-creator of famous comic series Asterix And Obelix, died on Tuesday at his home in Neuilly (western Paris), aged 92.
Uderzo’s family announced the news and said that he had passed in his sleep. The illustrator wasn’t keeping well after suffering a heart attack that was not linked to the coronavirus. He had been extremely tired for the past several weeks,” his son-in-law Bernard de Choisy told Agence France Presse.
Uderzo and Goscinny are acknowledged as the “fathers” of the French comic series about a small village of Gauls who stand up to Roman occupiers. Asterix debuted in the French magazine Pilote in 1959.
Uderzo co-created the series with writer René Goscinny. Two years later, they launched the first standalone adventure of Asterix, Asterix the Gaul. They continued to collaborate on the series, seeing it translated into more than 100 languages until Goscinny’s death in 1977. After Goscinny’s death, Uderzo wrote and illustrated the series until he retired in 2009.
Asterix, the mustachioed hero, who has been entertaining readers with his magic-potion exploits alongside Obelix since 1959, has become a mainstay in the publishing industry, with more than 370 million albums sold worldwide.
