Individual Entry

 
A most eventful excursion

This morning, I was at an interview for a job with the Scottish Qualifications Authority, the body in charge of designing and conferring all non-degree awards in Scotland. The post in question is an administrative one, and it’s a part-time (three days per week), temporary (three months) venture, but we’ve all got to start somewhere, as they say, and I’d like to be able to get some money coming in again (I’ve been putting all my unemployment benefit rakings into a PhD fund). Of course, being an interview, I had to wear a suit and tie, which, as you probably know, I absolutely loathe. (Can someone please explain to me the point of a tie? I can’t think of a more useless item of clothing.)

Anyway, while I was out, I took the opportunity to do two things. First, I went to Burger King and ate one of their burgers - something I haven’t done in many a year. Not much has changed: they’re still better than McDonalds’ burgers, but they sit like a lump of lead in your stomach and very quickly leave you feeling empty. Second, I went to Borders to spend a £25 book token I had lying around. I was rather foolishly hoping they’d be stocking HD DVDs and that I’d find something to my fancy, but evidently Borders still think it’s the 20th century, so I had to settle for good old-fashioned literature instead. I picked up The Peoples of Middle-earth, Christopher Tolkien’s account of his father’s writing of the Appendices to The Lord of the Rings, and a copy of the original graphic novel of V for Vendetta by Alan Moore and David Lloyd. Unfortunately, the only version I could find had been subjected to an incredibly naff colouring job (the original publication was black and white, but evidently nowadays readers want their comics in colour, no matter how crummy that colour might be), but it’s better than nothing, and the paint job is so faint that, if I squint hard enough, I can just about manage to make it look monochromatic. It also happens to be printed on something closely approximating toilet paper, which, for £16.99, seems a bit mean, but that’s evidently how many people like their comics. Personally, I prefer the glossy surface of the most recent Asterix re-releases.

Speaking of Asterix, I note that the first two albums, Asterix the Gaul and Asterix and the Golden Sickle, have recently been re-released in a larger print format with new covers and, according to the official Asterix blog, completely re-inked and re-coloured panels.

Personally, I’m of two minds about this. On the one hand, many of the books do have very poor painting, especially the first four titles, and, in addition, many of them, even comparatively recent ones, suffer from what I imagine is erosion on the master plates themselves, resulting in lines that are faint and at times lost entirely, DVNR-style (Asterix and the Soothsayer is particularly affected). At the same time, though, these books are products of their time, and any attempt to bring them “into line” by giving them all the same colour palette and lettering style seems like meddling with a piece of history. (It’s also incredibly pointless because, even if you standardise the colouring, you still have to contend with the fact that the look of the characters and indeed the overall art style have continued to evolve with every album.) I can’t deny that many were produced in less than ideal circumstances, but it all seems a bit intrusive to me. The first eight books were, a few years back, released re-coloured and re-inked (although I believe that these most recent releases re-colour them yet again), and, while the likes of Asterix and the Goths, which was incredibly poorly coloured in its original state, certainly benefited, others, such as Asterix and the Banquet, which already looked very nice, lost a lot of their vibrance and subtlety in their new homogenised versions.

Still, part of me is actually quite tempted to pick up at least one of the new books and see whether these re-issues are worthwhile. The €14 price tag at Amazon.fr is pretty damn steep, though, and, morbid as it is, I’m also a little concerned that Uderzo will either retire or pop his clogs before he can finish re-doing the cover art for each book.

PS. You can view a Flash demonstration of the “restoration” process if you’re interested.