Asterix creator denies his daughter's accusation of selling out
Alison Flood writing in guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 27 January 2009

French cartoonist Albert Uderzo poses with his characters in 2005. Photograph: Pierre-Philippe Marcou/AFP/Getty Images

That indomitable Gaul Albert Uderzo, creator of Asterix, has rounded on his daughter over her accusations that he sold out by ceding control of the comic book series to a major French publisher.

Earlier this month, Uderzo's daughter Sylvie wrote a piece in Le Monde suggesting that her 81-year-old father had been pushed into the deal to sell Hachette Livre a 60% share in Asterix's publisher Editions Albert-René. "I find myself entering the fight against, perhaps, the worst enemies of Asterix: men of industry and finance," she wrote. "They who pushed my father into reneging on all the values with which he raised me: independence, brotherhood, conviviality and resistance."

The intra-family spat has since shifted up a gear, after the illustrator responded to his daughter's claims, saying they made him look undignified and insulted Asterix readers. "To be accused by my own daughter, in the pages of the newspaper of reference, of being an old man, manipulated and deluded in his insatiable greed by the gnomes of finance, is already quite undignified," he said in a statement to the French press. "What has been given away is nothing more than shares in a publishing company, Editions Albert-René, that I set up in 1979. The accusation made against me is not only inspired by the appetite for power, it also aims to insult Asterix readers by confusing my abilities as an author with that of a publishing house shareholder."

The full story here.