Last month's adventure of 'Asterix the Gaul' was one of the best in the series thus far, 'Asterix and the Roman Agent' hitting every beat perfectly. This month's, the sixteenth in the series, is enjoyable but a poor follow-up. Maybe it's one of the most average thus far, hitting every beat but usually with somewhat subdued effect. I guess even the famous team of Goscinny & Uderzo can't hit it out of the park with every book.

It starts well, with Chief Vitalstatistix finally firing his shield bearers because they dropped him once too often. He appoints Asterix and Obelix as their replacements but, of course, they're of such wildly different height that the results are ridiculous, prompting a collection of neatly bad puns by the highly entertained villagers. Meanwhile, in Condatum, modern-day Rennes, Varius Flavus, a powerful and decadent Roman governor, is hosting yet another orgy, but it's strangely reminiscent because he has the impresario Fellinus to organise them.

We've literally gone from puns, traditionally regarded as the lowest form of wit, to a Federico Fellini joke, in fact a 'Fellini Satyricon' reference, in successive pages. Puns and art films. That's the reach of the 'Asterix' stories! No wonder I enjoy them so much.

This governor is wildly corrupt, of course. Caius Eucalyptus brings him plenty of gold from taxes and fines and he keeps almost all of it, with almost all of the rest left with his lackey, who thinks he might be going a little too far. Maybe Rome will send out a quaestor, or tax inspector, before long to look into why Condatum is sending so little gold back to Rome. And that naturally means that a quaestor promptly shows up on the next page. He's Vexatius Sinusitus and we're told that his ship was attacked by pirates but they argued with each other and scuttled their own vessel. We don't even get a single pirate panel this time, only a recap!

Anyway, Varius Flavus is prepared enough for this eventuality to promptly poison the vegetable soup of his guest and leave him seriously ill. After all, a dead quaestor can't look through any of his books and figure out what he's up to. All the physicians work for him too, so even if he makes it through the poison, he won't make it through them. However, the quaestor is no fool and he remembers a little Gaulish village that Julius Caesar often mentions during his epileptic fits, a village that has a druid. After getting rid of the physicians on a pretext, he asks a centurion to fetch Getafix to him. It may be his only way out alive.

Note: apparently it's accepted knowledge that Caesar suffered from epilepsy, but that's being challenged by those who believe that he actually had mini-strokes. This scholarly kerfuffle is an agreeable rabbithole to dive into, yet another introduced to you by a French comic album. For all the parodies and jokes that Goscinny and Uderzo trawl out, I keep learning actual history in this series! Another bit of actual history, albeit a lot more modern, is the detail that Goscinny chose to take Asterix to Switzerland at the request of French prime minister (future president) Georges Pompidou.

In an echo of the Hippocratic oath, Getafix is bound to help anyone that he can, even an enemy, so he, inevitably accompanied by Asterix and Obelix, break into Flavus' palace to consult. Yes, there's Roman bashing. What series do you think this is? The good news is that Getafix can cure Eucalyptus. The bad news is that there's an essential ingredient that he does have on hand. It's called silver star, or edelweiss, and it only grows on the highest mountains of the Alps, notably in Helvetia. Cleverly, Getafix doesn't just ask Asterix and Obelix to get some for him, he makes an interesting condition: his patient must remain in the village as a hostage until they get back, ostensibly to ensure their safe return but really to keep him alive.

And so they set off for Switzerland and all the stereotypes that we saw in earlier foreign jaunts, especially 'Asterix in Britain' but also 'Asterix and the Goths', 'Asterix in Spain' and 'Asterix and the Banquet', come out to play once more, this time Swiss. I'd expect that you could conjure up most of them off the top of your head, but the first one is fondue, served in a cauldron, with an interesting set of rules regarding what happens if you drop your bread into the pot. For a first offence, you get five of the best with a stick. Do it again, it's twenty lashes with a whip. And the third time, you're thrown into Lacus Lemanus with weights tied to your feet. That's strict! And Malodorus Caseus seems to enjoy all three, the masochist.

Otherwise, it's cleanliness jokes and politeness jokes. It's yodelling jokes and William Tell jokes. It's rock climbing jokes and snow jokes, Asterix effectively inventing the former out of necessity. It's military service jokes and conference jokes. ICTC are meeting in Ganava, the International Conference of Tribal Chieftains, naturally at the United Tribes building. I thought Goscinny lost an opportunity here of staging a brawl during a peace conference. I thought he was going to do that, as the equally corrupt but far cleaner Governor Curius Odus sends in men to locate the Gauls, but he moved back to cuckoo clock jokes instead.

Of course, there are cuckoo clock jokes, here mostly centred around the hotel landlord carrying an hourglass and shouting CUCKOO whenever the sands run down, so that everyone else knows to turn theirs over too. There are bank jokes too, prompting scenes in which Asterix and Obelix, being sought by the local Roman garrison, hide in a bank vault, run by Zurix. They don't want to know what you put in your vault, as long as you pay the fees. "Discretion is our watchword!" Of course, they end up in a vault of Egyptian treasure looted by a Roman centurion.

And so it goes. It's fun but it's not outrageous fun. What I enjoyed more than anything was the uncharacteristic sharing of magic potion. Asterix puts some in fondue so the locals way up in the mountains can help rout a garrison of oncoming Romans to give Asterix time to find the flower he needs. Sure, they want to stay neutral but hey, Roman bashing! They even share some with Quaestor Sinusitus after his recovery so he can bash the governor. He becomes the first Roman to be welcomed into the traditional final panel banquet too, which is a heck of an honour.

Arguably the best joke is told during that panel, as Obelix is asked what he thinks of Helvetia, a country rightly known for its mountains. Given that he was unconscious for his entire time, his reply is "Flat". And so there's much to enjoy here but it's hardly an essential 'Asterix'. There's a dearth of punny Swiss names that's rather disappointing, Petitsuix and Zurix being about it. Up next month, however, is one of the titles I've been waiting for in this runthrough, in which Julius Caesar plans the construction of 'The Mansions of the Gods'. ~~ Hal C F Astell

For more titles by René Goscinny click here
For more titles by Albert Uderzo click here