Asterix and the Secret Weapon: Album #29 (Asterix Adventure)

Love Asterix. Period.

This is a great series of comic books, like the names they come up with even the kids can enjoy.

As usual, Asterix books are funny and entertaining. Although I am 66 years old, I am still an avid reader of Asterix books. I read them along with my grand kids.

Cacofonix, village bard, has sung too badly and the women of the village hire another bard to come and teach the children properly. But the new bard isn't just any bard--it's a woman from the big city of Lutetia (present-day Paris). She has some revolutionary ideas and gets the women of the village wearing pants and taking charge. As the men are slowly driven out of the village, Julius Caesar sends a secret weapon to conquer the last remaining unconquered Gaulish village. Who will win out in the end?In addition to the usual puns and word play, the story has a fun "battle of the sexes" vibe that's executed appropriately for a kids' comic. It's another fun and comic adventure with Asterix.Recommended.

This adventure of Asterix, Obelix, Dogmatix and othersThey are always lovely and live adventures for the reader's​ pleasure.

It is 50BC and Asterix adventure number 29 and Julius Caesar and his legionnaires still have not been able to invade the tiny corner of Gaul that is our hero's village. Could the Roman Emperor devise a new plan when everything else has not worked?Enter the women of Rome! As luck for the Romans would have it the village's women have had enough of their bard - whose quality of music, er, education is not up to par - and replace him with a 'bardess' or just 'bard.' The new bard is from Lutetia (modern day Paris) and not only imports new education and music standards upon arrival, but also introduces the latest fashions to the womenfolk as well. The problem is she is no fan of "male chauvinist" pigs and masculine tyranny so on and so forth and as a result has the village divided between men and women with the former huffing and puffing their way out in protest. With the village now in strife and almost defenseless the Romans have a bigger advantage.This adventure of Asterix, Obelix, Dogmatix and others is not quite up to the standards of the earlier comic books of the series. It is still a hoot and the illustrations and story are fun and the puns omnipresent, but some sense of adventure is somewhat lost. Observers note that it is entirely the work of writer and illustrator Albert Uderzo remembering that main writer René Goscinny had died in 1977 or fourteen years prior.It is easy to criticize the attitude and stereotypes assigned to the women by the book, but one could argue that firstly the stereotypes are based on fact and moreover the entire series is in fact a series of cliches, be it Romans, Gauls, Swiss, Germans, Egyptians or many others.Two more revelations courtesy of the Asterix And The Secret Weapons should be pointed out. First is that it was the Gaul bard Cacofonix who had come up with Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and done so 2,000 years before a certain British group! The second is that the existence of a dragon in the forests around the village and the Roman camps was no fable. It was there!!

(Spoiler warning here.)Produced in 1991, one of Asterix's adventures involved feminism, which is obviously not well-received in Albert Uderzo's book by most fans. But it HAS to be read carefully to appreciate the author's well-meaning message behind this outwardly unsettling story, however.After the village's bard was kicked out of school by the local women (out of fear he would teach bad music to kids), a female bard named Bravura is invited to become the new village teacher - MUCH to the hostile disapproval of most men, of course. (Ironically, if Vitalstatistix and Getafix haven't mentioned that they're just FINE with equality between men and women, it would probably be considered an OUTRIGHT sexist statement.)Naturally, the menfolk see the young female newcomer as a threat because she has decided to "liberate" the women of village from their traditional gender roles (ok, cleaning, looking after kids, cooking up huge roast boars for their barbarian husbands to messily devour, etc.) Not only that; Bravura also treated Asterix - the legendary hero of the village - in a very condescending way. So Asterix did a very surprising thing - by giving her a black eye!Needless to say, this causes a great rift between the women and their menfolk, who angrily stormed out of their homes and the village altogether. But, the hidden message of the whole story is that men and women of that tiny, lone unconquered Gaulish village still LOVE each other very much and that the men also follow a very special code that they would NEVER hurt a woman, ever. Especially since these men are a band of ancient barbaric warriors who are VERY easily prone to extreme violence as shown in many of the Asterix books.(Spoilers ahead.)That is how Julius Caesar, the so-called "villain" of the great Asterix saga, decided to take advantage of the Gaulish "chivalry" - by sending an army of youthful, leggy girls built like Barbie dolls dressed as Roman soldiers to conquer that one last village in ancient Gaul. Ironically, the young feminist wanted PEACE, not war, so - she helped send the girls home without a single broken fingernail (personally, I would have liked to see the Gaulish women beat the stuffing out of all those pretty young things!)Naturally, though the female soldiers initially showed potential in their fighting prowess, they still acted like stereotypical cartoon caricatures (like being afraid of bugs and loving to shop til you drop, for instance.) After all, the whole Asterix series were never politically correct to begin with (just look at these HUGE red mouths on the poor black characters, for instance!), though there are still indeed a few very prominent female characters, like the famous Queen Cleopatra, who commands immediate attention at the single snap of her fingers.Oh, and it's also beautifully drawn as usual.

Cacofonix, the poor guy, has been kicked out of the village because he doesn't teach anything well, and the ladies of the village get a lady bard to teach their kids at the school. But things do not go well for the men. The ladies start kicking them out of the village and then the town is a ladies-only town. Meanwhile, the Romans have started making their troops a little ..... different. to find out what happens next! Read more

Un modo divertente per ripassare l'inglese.

My daughter's favourite asterix comic

This book has 2 swastikas!!This is extremely offensive and inappropriate!!Page 18 and 43.I've logged an official complaint!!

ce commentaire est commun aux versions anglophones reliée rigide et brochée souple grand format de l'éditeur Orion (2001/1991) traduction de la rose et le glaive; cette vingt-neuvième aventure de nos héros gaulois met en scène nos deux célibataires aux prises avec une barde féministe très entreprenante; l'intrigue est originale et même si elle n'arrive pas au niveau des ouvrages de la grande époque, elle est néanmoins intéressante et traite cette fois-ci du féminisme (comme à l'accoutumée, une question moderne est transposée avec un humour inégalé à la période gallo-romaine; le fond historique n'est cette fois-ci pas au devant de la scène, l'histoire aurait pu se dérouler à n'importe quelle époque; les dialogues et les gags sont moins réussis que certains autres épisodes mais certains sont très amusants (qui ne se souvient pas de l'escadron de soldates romaines interrompant l'attaque pour faire les soldes?); bref, si l'on est pas en présence de la meilleure des histoires de la série, celle-ci est bien ficelée et on passe néanmoins un bon moment; l'anglais est abordable et l'on est bien aidé par la fantastique dessin d'Uderzo; cette édition Orion grand format est confortable, les textes lisibles le papier est épais et solide et si dans certaines versions, l'absence de couverture rigide n'est pas préjudiciable, sauf pour les vrais collectionneurs de BD (on trouve de nombreuses occasions à bas prix dans ce format); idéale pour parfaire son anglais tout en s'amusant même si un bon dictionnaire s'avérera indispensable pour comprendre certains jeux de mots

ce commentaire est commun aux versions anglophones reliée rigide et brochée souple grand format de l'éditeur Orion (2001/1991) traduction de la rose et le glaive; cette vingt-neuvième aventure de nos héros gaulois met en scène nos deux célibataires aux prises avec une barde féministe très entreprenante; l'intrigue est originale et même si elle n'arrive pas au niveau des ouvrages de la grande époque, elle est néanmoins intéressante et traite cette fois-ci du féminisme (comme à l'accoutumée, une question moderne est transposée avec un humour inégalé à la période gallo-romaine; le fond historique n'est cette fois-ci pas au devant de la scène, l'histoire aurait pu se dérouler à n'importe quelle époque; les dialogues et les gags sont moins réussis que certains autres épisodes mais certains sont très amusants (qui ne se souvient pas de l'escadron de soldates romaines interrompant l'attaque pour faire les soldes?); bref, si l'on est pas en présence de la meilleure des histoires de la série, celle-ci est bien ficelée et on passe néanmoins un bon moment; l'anglais est abordable et l'on est bien aidé par la fantastique dessin d'Uderzo; cette édition Orion grand format est confortable, les textes lisibles le papier est épais et solide et si dans certaines versions, l'absence de couverture rigide n'est pas préjudiciable, sauf pour les vrais collectionneurs de BD (on trouve de nombreuses occasions à bas prix dans ce format); idéale pour parfaire son anglais tout en s'amusant même si un bon dictionnaire s'avérera indispensable pour comprendre certains jeux de mots