February, as short as it may be (and then there is leap year once in every four - one more thing to thank Julius Caesar for), brought a raft of pleasant surprises!

We have broken every record for traffic to the website: 260,000 visitors in just one month! 19,986,138 hits in one month! 2,383,166 pages viewed in one month! The site is a place where ideas are shared and right now we want to share our happiness with you! Here we go then, one more click for the road, Mister Statistix the druid, it's not over yet…

The Albert Uderzo Awards, presented for the fourth year running at the European Comics Exhibition in Nîmes in the south of France, was an occasion charged with emotion.
As with other years, the fifty or so authors present (half of whom have been here before) were assembled around the Asterix's creator and showed a similar passion and admiration for the likes of Jean Giraud, Dany, Van Hamme, Raoul Cauvin, Laurent Gerra & Achdé, Arleston and others.
While conversation in the amphitheatre centred around the secrets and methods of each author, fans of the diminutive Gaul were literally falling all over one another to get their hands on one of the thousand copies of our first silk-screened "Addendum" (a second batch is planned for the Comics festival (Fête de la BD) in June in Paris and a third in September in Brussels).
The 2005 jury, comprised this year by Axelle Red, Lorie, Aveline Lucas, journalist with La Provence, Bruno Salomone, Laurent Boyer, Yannick Noah, Alexandre Jardin, Thierry Dubois, president of BD en Bulles (association organizing the exhibition) and, of course, Sylvie and Albert Uderzo, bestowed the following awards:

• The Sanglier d'Or (Golden Boar), rewarded to a cartoonist for their lifetime achievement, went to GRZEGORZ ROSINSKI (most recent album, La vengeance du Comte Skarbek, written by Yves Sente for Dargaud);
• The Sanglier d'Argent (Silver Boar), which honours a cartoonist for best album of the year, was awarded to PHILIPPE FRANCQ for Largo Winch 13, written by Jean Van Hamme for Dupuis;
• The Sanglier de Bronze (Bronze Boar), for a young cartoonist's work on a new album, went to PAOLO MOTTURA for Carême, written by Christophe Bec for Humanoïdes Associés.

The BD en Bulles award (presented by the show organisers to a cartoonist for their life's work) went to Didier Crisse. While it was a poignant moment for each of the award-winners, the tears of Crisse, the teary-eyed, emotional Francq and Rosinski's heartfelt thank-you speech to Albert Uderzo were the real highlights…. Out of all the people from the Village who were at the ceremony, only Miss Flo failed to break into tears, preoccupied as she was by a missing addendum. MurielrobinX, the press agent and her assistant, Liteulfourmix, specialists when it comes to wine from the Costières region around Nîmes (exclusively rosé), even had to take to the ladies' room to repair their tear-streaked faces.
In short, many awards for prestigious people!

Do you know where to find the most exotic covers of every Asterix issue ever published?
Were you aware that it is a woman, a lady in fact, who presides over such a collection? Certainly, she is not as alluring as Mrs. Geriatrix, but Asterix has been able to count on her nonetheless: Bravura…
Surf, surf, ladies and gentlemen of ze internet and make for her hut - you won't believe your eyeballs! Our legendary lady bard, famed far and wide for her "djeans" breeches, the very latest in Lutecian fashion, can feel justified in hitting her drum to spread the word to Gauls everywhere: the cataloguing of every Asterix album (in each of the 110 translated language versions) is underway! And her hut is piling up the info by the day!
After the Korean (with phonetic titles provided in local calligraphy, yessir, that's my lady!), and the new English and Portuguese titles, she is ready to attack the Swedish and Turkish editions! Not to mention Latin, the Mundart collection (German dialects), Catalan, regional French languages and many more besides.

It is not enough for Bravura though to simply gather these treasures together, she also shows them off to best advantage. She has given each album a highly detailed information sheet with new, unpublished info, links towards the files of characters in each adventure and illustrations from all the available translated versions.
For our polyglot fans, they can check out the first plates of each album in 5 or 6 languages, whilst others will no doubt dip delightedly into the "Asterix in the French Regional Languages" media kit (only available on the French website). Frankly, it's just as well that Albert Uderzo invited her to come on board for the 1991 adventure of Asterix and the Secret Weapon, because since then she's become invaluable to our little virtual village! Bless her heart!

One of our loyal subscribers from Quebec has sent us a sculpture in modelling clay, which is so beautifully detailed we simply had to share it with you. It shows our Obelix sitting on a book apparently imbued with all the melancholy of our beloved region.

Thank you, Marie-Pier! A kiss on the nose! No, Madame Doubleclix, it means nothing of the sort… It is simply an artistic thing. Hats off…

One year before the release of the animated movie, Asterix and the Vikings, you should log on to your favourite sites to find out with which film the teaser (the first trailer for the eighth animated Asterix film) will be shown in your country. A strong sign for Timandahaf, who has two parallel goals for next year: becoming a world-renowned star and winning the Nobel Peace Prize, based on his work in the area of building bridges between peoples. Can you hear me, my dear Regix? No, no, I don't mean anything by that. I'm just talking about Timandahaf, the Norman chief created by René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo in the eponymous album where the dashing and barely post-pubescent Justforkix appears for the first time.
This preview displays a level of violence that is way off the scale. I even had to take the despicable Regix and Tapisdesourix into an office to console them and you can imagine how awkward that can be….
Available from March 30, arriving in France just before the film "Valiant".