"Pecunia non olet"

Shortly before France's most successful comic series Asterix celebrates its 50th anniversary, shares in the lucrative family business have been sold to the Lagardère publishing group. Only Sylvie Uderzo, the daughter of caricaturist Albert Uderzo, refuses to sell her stake. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung ponders the future of the brave Gauls: "There's a bad atmosphere in the small, uncompromising publishing house with its fifteen employees, and also in the family. And that doesn't bode well for the jubilee year. Eighty-one-year-old Albert Uderzo, who is planning a new Asterix album, said he wanted to get things settled for the future. But what does this mean? Will the series continue, despite all Uderzo's previous declarations to the contrary? He didn't do the final drawings for the last two albums, so he has an artistic successor. And writing better than Uderzo won't be too difficult."

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