The discovery of the unfinished draft of a cartoon album on the most famous of all Gauls, sketched by cartoonist René Goscinny, was announced by his daughter, Anne, in an interview published this weekend in the German weekly, Der Spiegel.
“I think of it often; it’s 20 pages – half an album,” said Anne Goscinny, who manages the works of her late father.
The draft written by her father, who died in 1977, bears the title "Astérix au cirque" (Asterix at the Circus) and was supposed to have been published after "Astérix chez les Belges" (Asterix among the Belgians). According to the Spiegel, it was found in the family archives.
Anne Goscinny feels finishing off the album posthumously would be a “very complicated” venture. “Many people would need to sit around the table, study the story and find his voice,” she said, referring to her father. “It’s like a Goya painting that has a hole; but we’ll try it one day. It would be an extraordinary adventure.”
René Goscinny is the joint creator of Astérix, along with Albert Uderzo, who died last year. The adventures of Astérix have been sold worldwide in the hundreds of millions copies.
Goscinny played a key role in the creation of the profession of cartoon scriptwriter, which had not existed before him.
