What makes a classic a classic? Recently I took to rereading my trusty old BDs, the ones I’ve inherited from my parents and which tend to be left on the shelf for years on end because their authority needs no periodic confirmation. I would say that, among comics if not more, displaying a library of Goscinny’s works is akin to the completed works of Shakespeare; they transcend time and culture. Above is a 1963 sample, from Astérix et les Goths, with a comedy nugget that had passed me by before.

What goes on here is that our heroes are searching for a criminal band of Goths, as are the Roman patrols. Because all barbarians look the same to the Romans, they are led to believe that the two Gauls are the wanted men, and ignore the real Goths entirely. To get around without more trouble than they’re after, Astérix and Obélix disguise themselves – more or less convincingly – as Roman soldiers. . .

. . . and the Romans buy it. The obvious comedy in the last panel

- Did you see the hair and moustache on those two?
- Yes, it’s against the rules. They’ll get put on charge.

is one of absurdity because real Roman soldiers would never have made such a silly mistake; this is where Astérix works for children because they can laugh at stupidity, but it would be a crime to leave it at that. As many will have noticed, these books only gain in appeal as their readers grow older. Much of the humour in the Astérix books is derived from the vastness of bureaucracy in the Roman Empire, from the line “ask at the Information Office where the Information Office is” in Astérix legionnaire to the most memorable sequence in the animated feature Les douze travaux d’Astérix – “the house that drives one mad” where our intrepid, invincible heroes finally encounter an obstacle that might put an end to their mission: having to procure a form.

The real comedy in the scene shown above is not the simple-mindedness of Roman soldiers; it is that their indoctrination into the workings of Roman red tape reached a point where they are unable to employ “real world logic”: the Gauls’ unruly and facial hair isn’t indicative of their foreignness, it is only tested against the rules of the soldiers’ own world. And yet this layering of context in accordance with the readers’ varying ages and knowledge, the impeccable pacing without a panel out of place, and the famous multilingual wordplay which you just love or hate but cannot deny its effectiveness, are only some of the strengths of Goscinny’s writing.

I often feel that striving to create “something for everyone” is a recipe for disaster, but few things match the delight of rewarding rereads such as these; a cynic would say that classics are recognised for the amount of dust they collect on their shelves, but they’re made through their ability to offer something new every time they are visited.