Iznogoud The Infamous
By Rene Goscinny and Jean Tabary
Rene Goscinny is a master of the simple idea; the Gaulish village that holds out against the Romans with the aid of a magic potion, the laconic cowboy who shoot faster than his own shadow – perfect summaries of Asterix and Lucky Luke.
But with Iznogoud it’s even simpler – and it’s our main character’s catchphrase as seen on this intro page from Volume 7 of the series:
And that’s such a perfect distillation of the entire series (27 volumes) that there’s no point me even covering what it’s about in any depth.
Here in Volume 7 we have a Djinn that dissolves anything he touches, invisibility spells, a spectacularly unlucky diamond, a voodoo doll, and a magical billposter. Every single time the Grand Vizier Iznogoud hatches a plan to get rid of the Caliph and every time it fails.
But it fails in a magnificently clever, ridiculously silly and funny way. Every time.
Iznogoud doesn’t bother with long, whole book narratives like Lucky Luke or Asterix. Goscinny simply wrote the funny setups and resolved them before they got too tired. So in 8-10 pages we have setup, gag after gag and final resolution. Then it’s on to the next stupid gag.
Or at least that’s the way here with Goscinny and Tabary. With later volumes published after Goscinny’s death Tabary takes on writing and art and adopts a one story per album format. I haven’t read them but imagine they’re lesser works.
I could go on and on here about the wonderful wordplay that Goscinny uses (all credit to the translators for retaining the spirit of Goscinny’s original words here), I could talk about the cleverness of his ideas, I could talk about the stylised, funny artwork by Tabary, or I could do all that with just one page from the story “The Sinister Liquidator”, where Iznogoud has the idea of using a water Djinn with magical powers to achieve his goal of getting rid of the Caliph:
And that pretty much sums the whole thing up. If you smiled during that page, there’s a damn good chance that you’ll be smiling all the way through and have a fine time with Iznogoud – just as I did.
May 4th, 2011 at 9:34 am
I’ve only read a few of the books Tabary wrote himself after Goscinny’s death, but unlike Asterix and Lucky Luke he actually got very close to keeping the same level of quality… I dunno about the later books though.
May 4th, 2011 at 12:56 pm
I haven’t read any of the Tabary solo works, but the idea of Iznogoud being involved in one, whole book long story sounds like a recipe for failure to me – it’s the sharpness and immediacy of the gags here that really works. However, if Cinebook keep Iznogoud going I’ll hopefully be proved wrong!