Asterix and the Golden Sickle is the second volume of the Asterix comic book series, by René Goscinny (stories) and Albert Uderzo (illustrations). It was first serialized in Pilote issues 42-74 in 1960.
About the Author
René Goscinny was born in Paris in 1926, to a family of Jewish immigrants from Poland; his parents were Stanis?aw Simkha Go?cinny (the surname means hospitable in Polish, Simkha is his Jewish name meaning happiness), a chemical engineer from Warsaw, Poland, and Anna (Hanna) Bere?niak-Go?cinna from Chodorków, a small village near Zhitomir, in the Second Polish Republic, now Ukraine. Claude, René's older brother was born 6 years earlier; on 10 December 1920. Stanis?aw and Anna had met in Paris and married in 1919. The Go?cinnys moved to Buenos Aires, Argentina, two years after René's birth, because of a chemical engineer post Stanis?aw had obtained there. He spent a happy childhood in Buenos Aires, and studied in the French schools there. He had a habit of being the "Class Clown", probably to compensate for a natural shyness. He started drawing very early on, inspired by the illustrated stories which he enjoyed reading.
In December 1943, the year after he graduated from school, 17 year old Goscinny lost his father to a cerebral hemorrhage, forcing him to find a job. The next year, he got his first job, as an assistant accountant in a tire recovery factory, and when he was laid off the following year, he became a junior illustrator in an advertising agency.Goscinny, along with his mother, left Argentina and went to New York in 1945, to join their uncle Boris. To avoid service in the US military, he travelled to France to join the French Army in 1946. He served at Aubagne, in the 141st Alpine Infantry Battalion. Promoted to senior corporal, he became the appointed illustrator of the regiment and drew illustrations and posters for the army.
Book Plot
Disaster strikes in the Gaulish village when Getafix the druid breaks his golden sickle. Without one he cannot attend the annual conference of druids, or cut mistletoe for the magic potion which keeps the Roman armies at bay. Asterix and his friend Obelix set out for Lutetia (present-day Paris) to buy a new one from Obelix's cousin, the skilled sicklesmith Metallurgix. On the way they enocunter bandits, but easily defeat them. A man in an Inn they stay at says sickles are in short supply in Lutetia. They finally get to the city.
However, Metallurgix has mysteriously gone missing, and before long our heroes are exploring the underworld of the big city. They go to an Inn opposite, but when they ask about Metallurgix the man close up, and after they are gone gives a description of them to another man. This man finds them, and introduces himself as Clovogarlix, claiming to be a friend of Metallurgix. He takes them to a place where they meet a man called Navishtrix who tries to sell them a sickle for a vast price, though they refuse and wreck the place. They are arrested, but released by the Prefect, and find out from a Centurion that Metallurgix may have been kidnapped. They uncover a sickle-trafficking gang with sponsors high up the Roman bureaucracy, whose shadowy business is run from below a portal dolmen in the Boulogne forest. The two enter the forest and get directions from a bandit they save from wolves. They get into the lair and find a horde of Golden Sickles, but are attacked by a gang that includes Clovogarlix and Navishtrix, but they defeat them. Navishtrix gets away, but they find him with the local Roman Prefect, revealed to be the leader. When all is revealed and the Gauls have rescued Metallurgix, and the Prefect has been arrested for sickle-trafficking, while the sickles beneath the Dolmen have been returned to Metallurgix, they can go home with a new sickle for the druid which Metallurgix gives them for free and the magic potions will continue to flow.
