Just to note that while I was reading this book in its original French (Astérix et le Griffon), I am for simplicity’s sake, using the English language title (Asterix and the Griffin) in my review.
Well, I personally really do think that it now is more than high time for the world famous and globally popular Asterix comics series to be declared over and done with (and indeed finally, once and for all).
Because while after the death of author René Goscinny in 1977, illustrator Albert Uderzo still managed to pen nine adequately entertaining and sufficiently readable (but certainly also no longer even remotely narrationally, verbally spectacular) Asterix and Obelix tales, sorry, but the recent five Asterix books, which are penned by Jean-Yves Ferri and are now illustrated by Didier Conrad instead of Albert Uderzo, who does an adequate enough job imitating Uderzo's art and style but whose pictures are for me rather unimaginative and with generally none of Albert Uderzo's illustrative humour and delightfully satirical facial expressions, Asterix and the Picts, Asterix and the Missing Scroll, Asterix and the Chieftain's Daughter, Asterix and the Chariot Race, and the latest story to date, Asterix and the Griffin, they really in my humble opinion no longer have ANY of René Goscinny's (and even might I add Albert Uderzo's) textual humour and magic, the stories all feel forced and artificial, with none of the delightful and often also educational cultural and political satire that have always made the Asterix comics so fun and engaging to and for me (and with especially Asterix and the Griffin absolutely being so horribly tedious and boring and with such mundane and pointless pieces of groan-worthy attempts at humour and entertainment, that I very quickly became both hugely angry and frustrated, decided to stop reading and to declare Asterix and the Griffin not only as a DNF but to also tell myself to not bother trying out ANY more Asterix comics penned by Jean-Yves Ferri, period). And sadly, even the oh for so many of the Asterix stories standard and obligatory pirate scenes, in Asterix and the Griffin they are redundant and unfunny, and the allusions to current 21st century tropes such as fake news, the internet and social media platforms (as well as covid 19) do leave me totally cold and annoyed and in fact wanting to let especially Jean-Yves Ferri himself know that he is not only NO René Goscinny by any stretch of my textual imagination but that his printed words, that Ferri’s stories in the last five Asterix books and particularly in the most recent tome, in Asterix and the Griffin, I actually kind of even find them like an insult to the original author, to René Goscinny and to his characters, to Asterix, Obelix et al.