Asterix and Cleopatra by Rene Goscinny and Albert Uderzo

OK, this is going to sound silly. But if the Carry On movies were actually for children, and made by French people, they would be a lot like the Asterix comics. There's a certain strain of mid-century humor - a little more European than American, with just a touch of world-weariness and a bit less parochialism - that's common to a lot of durable comedy institutions of that era.

I start there because, otherwise, there's absolutely nothing new or interesting or distinctive about Asterix and Cleopatra, the 1965 sixth entry in the bande desinée series originally (and at this point) written by René Goscinny and drawn by Albert Uderzo, but continued, more recently and after their time, by other hands.

Oh, there's nothing wrong about A&C, or bad about it. But the Asterix series, I'm coming to think, is deeply formulaic. Asterix and his buddy Obelix - the usual much-stronger-than-he-is-smart sidekick - go to some new corner of Roman Europe, are enlisted to Do a Thing, and they Do It very easily, despite the efforts of various nefarious figures, usually Roman, to foil them, and It Is Funny. Sometimes other Gauls come with them - in this book, the druid Getafix is along - and they support the action, and sometimes (especially if it's the horrible bard Cacofonix) they are Also Funny.

Oh, and the names are all very music-hall nudge-you-in-the-ribs style. Well, maybe not "music-hall" specifically, since this is French, but some rough equivalent.

In this one, Cleopatra - whose nose is a major topic of conversation, in that background-sexist '60s way - has a fight with Caesar and says she'll build him a palace in three months, as part of a bet to keep Caesar from invading and subjugating Egypt. (This is also part of the mid-century comedy gestalt - people make weird wagers, and always live up 100% to their commitments in those bets.) She tells a local schlubby architect, Edifis, to do it, and he immediately takes ship to find and enlist the help of Getafix, without whom he would have no chance of getting it done.

(Now, of course, traveling by ship from Cairo to the Gaul village - famously at the very northwest tip of Brittany - would probably take close to three months all by itself . This is the moment when I decided not to sweat the details.)

Edifis brings back Getafix, who brews magic potion for the Egyptian workers, which makes construction go super-fast. Edifis's rival Artifis tries to sabotage the project, as does Caesar's forces once he realizes the Gauls (Asterix and Obelix came along, of course) are there. None of that works; our heroes foil every problem quickly and without much trouble. All moves smoothly towards the standard happy ending, with the usual jokes along the way.

So this is a lot like the previous books - I read the first three in the current omnibus edition and then the fourth book, Asterix the Gladiator. I might be giving up here, though: all of these books are the same, and I'm not eight, so I'm not getting a whole lot from them. Uderzo's art is fun and energetic, admittedly, but the utter lack of tension and reliance on very dull, hoary jokes more than makes up for that.