A sheet of Asterix in Hispania sold for 167,000 euros at auction

A board by Albert Uderzo for the album Asterix in Hispania was sold at auction for 167,000 euros including fees, the Daniel Maghen house announced on Thursday. This black and white plate, in Indian ink, estimated between 130,000 and 150,000 euros, is number 7 of this 1969 album. It illustrates the meeting of Asterix and Obelix with the young Pépé, a child Iberian kidnapped by the Romans and taken to Armorica, near the irreducible Gallic village. Asterix in Hispania is the fourteenth album in the saga.

"This plate, a perfect skit, with its grotesque Romans victims of the slaps of our Gauls, is characteristic of the talent of Albert Uderzo, capable of adding gags to the gags of René Goscinny, like this Roman who, stopping suddenly, knocks the one behind him, or the decurion's scarf that ends in a bandana. The genius is in the details”, presents the auction house on its site.

The record for a drawing by Uderzo is the cover illustration of the album Le Tour de Gaule, in gouache and colored inks, sold for 1.449 million euros including fees in 2017. Asterix remains the comic book hero the most popular in bookstores, with each album selling millions of copies. The 40th, L'Iris blanc, with Fabcaro on the screenplay and Didier Conrad on the drawing, will be released on October 26.

Other comic book pioneers contributed to the success of this sale. Among the lots on offer are a page from the magnificent album LeSursis by Jean-Pierre Gibrat sold for 60,300 euros, one from the delicate Le Cahier bleu by André Juillard sold for 20,800 euros or a page from Blueberry drawn by the illustrious and virtuoso Jean Giraud, part for 36,180 euros. Without forgetting the Japanese pioneer Go Nagai, to whom we owe the first great success of Japanese cartoons in France, Grendizer. A drawing of the famous robot was sold for 46,800 euros.