author's text
Albert Uderzo, born in 1927, became an assistant draughtsman in a Paris publishing house in 1941. In 1945 he helped for the first time to produce an animated film, a year later he drew his first comic-strips, became a screenwriter and soon also made self-contained drawing series. During this time he wrote, among others, "Belloy, Knight without Armor" (for the magazine OK) and "Verbrechen lohnt sich nicht" (for the newspaper France-Soir). Uderzo joined a Belgian agency in Paris, where he met Jean-Michel Charlier and Rene Goscinny in 1951. With Charlier Uderzo made "Belloy", "Tanguy" and "Laverdure" and with Goscinny he first created "Pitt Pistol" and "Der unglaubliche Korsar", followed by "Luc Junior" (for La Libre Belgique), "Benjamin und Benjamine" (for "Top Magazin") and "Umpah-Pah" (for "Tintin"). In 1959 Uderzo and Goscinny founded their own magazine called "Pilot". The crowning achievement was "Asterix the Gaul".
In June 2004 Albert Uderzo was awarded the Max und Moritz Prize of the Comic-Salon Erlangen for his outstanding life's work.

blurb
In the year 45 after its first release in Germany, Asterix undergoes its first major revision! In careful detail work, all 34 Asterix albums were uniformly coloured and the speech bubbles lettered anew. The cover design has been carefully modified, some covers have even been redrawn by Asterix artist Albert Uderzo himself! This makes the great success Asterix fit for a new century and can look forward to a glorious future!