The Millon auction house has decided to maintain the sale – scheduled for Sunday, December 10, in Brussels – of a major piece of comic book history: the cover of Astérix et Cléopatre ("Asterix and Cleopatra"), a small (32 x 17 cm) gouache and graphite drawing created in 1963 by Albert Uderzo, co-creator and illustrator of the Astérix series. His daughter and beneficiary Sylvie Uderzo lodged a complaint for receiving stolen goods with the Belgian public prosecutor's office on November 27. She tried, to no avail, to prevent the sale from taking place and obtain the return of this piece, which has been missing from the family home for half a century. Estimated at between €400,000 and €500,000, even though it was worth very little at the time of its creation, the work is a prime example of the double phenomenon of speculation and suspicion that surrounds comic strip originals which have escaped from their creators.
There is nothing in the cover's "history" to guarantee with certainty that it was indeed "given as a gift" by Albert Uderzo to Jean-Pierre Bellencontre, as claimed by Millon and the latter's son, who inherited it. Initially, the drawing was produced for a simple "launch page" for Pilote Magazine, in which a new Astérix story – the sixth in the series co-created with René Goscinny – was to be pre-published. Retained two years later as the cover, the illustration is particularly noteworthy for its pastiche qualities. In the upper section (of the drawing on sale), Astérix and Obélix surround the queen of Egypt, adopting the same positions as Richard Burton and Rex Harrison flanking Elizabeth Taylor on the poster for Joseph L. Mankiewicz's Cléopatre (Cleopatra), released a few months earlier in 1963.
The parody is pushed to the extreme in the lower part of the page, where the quantities of ink, brushes, pencils and even liters of beer needed to create this blockbuster on paper are listed, in the manner of 20th Century Fox's advertising campaigns. "You will see all the splendor of ancient Egypt! Sensational battle scenes! Thousands of extras! Magnificent sets!" exclaimed Goscinny next to an incredulous Uderzo, who wondered whether his storywriter had gone mad. A jewel of parody and self-mockery, the cover will impress the eyes of several generations of readers.
A few years after its production, Uderzo met Jean-Pierre Bellencontre, nephew of a friend of his former regimental colleague Berthelot Fontana. A photo supplied by Millon of a dinner party in a restaurant in Villerville (Normandy) proves that all these people knew each other. It also shows Sylvie Uderzo, barely 10 years old, sitting next to her father. Following this encounter, Bellencontre – who worked in the metallurgical industry – met Uderzo at his home in Neuilly-sur-Seine, west of Paris, to present him with an effigy of Astérix made from printed circuit boards. As a thank you, Uderzo is said to have given him the cover design for Asterix and Cleopatra. For years, the gouache hung in his son Fabrice's bedroom. It was then placed in a safe after Fabrice left home for his studies.
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