Rene Goscinny was born in Paris in 1926. After growing up in Argentina, he came to America where he shared a studio with future Mad magazine co-founder Harvey Kurtzman and collaborators Will Elder and Jack Davis. In 1959, he founded the magazine Pilote which premiered what was to become the most successful comic series anywhere: Asterix. He died suddenly cardiac arrest in 1977 at the age of 51.

Jean-Yves Ferri was handpicked by surviving Asterix creator, Albert Uderzo, to write subsequent volumes of the Asterix franchise, with artist Didier Conrad. Their first volume of Asterix, the 35th in the series, came out in 2013.