René Goscinny: Creator of Asterix and Lucky Luke
René Goscinny (14 August 1926 – 5 November 1977) was a French comic editor and writer who created the Asterix comic book series with illustrator Albert Uderzo. He also wrote Lucky Luke with Belgian cartoonist Morris for more than 20 years, a period considered the series’ golden age.
Early Life and Education
Goscinny was born in Paris to Stanisław Simkha Gościnny, a chemical engineer from Warsaw, and Anna Bereśniak-Gościnna from Chodorków, a village near Kiev in Ukraine. When René was two, his family moved to Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he studied in French-language schools and developed an early talent for drawing. His father died of a cerebral hemorrhage in December 1943, shortly after Goscinny graduated from lycée.
In 1945, Goscinny and his mother immigrated to New York to join her brother. To avoid military service in the U.S., he enlisted in the French Army in 1946, serving at Aubagne in the 141st Alpine Infantry Battalion, where he was promoted to senior corporal and appointed as the regiment’s artist.
Career and Achievements
After returning to New York in 1947, Goscinny worked through a difficult period of joblessness and poverty before joining a small studio by 1948, where he befriended future MAD Magazine contributors Will Elder, Jack Davis, and Harvey Kurtzman. He became art director at Kunen Publishers and wrote four children’s books. In New York, he met Belgian cartoonist Morris, with whom he began collaborating on Lucky Luke starting in 1955.
Goscinny returned to France in 1951 at the urging of Georges Troisfontaines, chief of the World Press agency. There he met Albert Uderzo, beginning a long creative partnership. In 1955, Goscinny, Uderzo, Jean-Michel Charlier, and Jean Hébrad founded the syndicate Edipress/Edifrance, which launched publications including Clairon and Pistolin. Under the pseudonym Agostini, Goscinny wrote Le Petit Nicolas for illustrator Jean-Jacques Sempé, a children’s series that appeared in Le Moustique, Sud-Ouest, and Pilote magazines.
In 1959, the Édifrance/Édipresse syndicate launched the Franco-Belgian comics magazine Pilote, and Goscinny launched Astérix with Uderzo in its first issue. The series became an instant hit and remains popular worldwide. When Pilote was bought by Georges Dargaud in 1960, Goscinny became editor-in-chief. He wrote Iznogoud with Jean Tabary and created numerous other series for the magazine, including Les Dingodossiers with Gotlib and La Potachologie Illustrée with Cabu.
In April 1974, Goscinny, Uderzo, and Morris founded Studios Idéfix, an animation studio designed to produce their own cartoon films.
Awards and Honors
Goscinny received the Adamson Award for best international comic strip artist in 1974 from Sweden. In 2005, he was inducted into the Will Eisner Hall of Fame as a Judges’ choice. Since 1996, the René Goscinny Award has been presented annually at the Angoulême International Comics Festival in France to encourage young comic writers. As of August 2017, UNESCO’s Index Translationum ranked Goscinny as the 20th most-translated author, with 2,200 translations of his work. On 23 January 2020, a life-sized bronze statue of Goscinny was unveiled near his former home in Paris, the first public statue in Paris dedicated to a comic book author.
Notable Events and Milestones
Goscinny married Gilberte Pollaro-Millo in 1967, and their daughter Anne Goscinny was born in 1968. She later became an author and co-wrote the screenplay for Little Nicholas: Happy As Can Be, a 2022 animation film based on her father’s Le Petit Nicolas series.
Goscinny died on 5 November 1977 in Paris at age 51 from a heart attack during a routine stress test at his doctor’s office. He was buried in the Jewish Cemetery in Nice. Goscinny died while writing Asterix in Belgium, which was published in 1979. As a homage, Uderzo drew darkened skies and rain into the comic at the point where Goscinny died, and included a tribute near the final panel showing a rabbit looking back toward Goscinny’s signature. In the 1981 album L’Odyssée d’Astérix, Uderzo gave Goscinny’s likeness to the Jewish character Saul ben Ephishul as a further tribute.
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