Illustrator Gaul Albert Uderzo with the co-creator of Asterix, writer René Goscinny

The Guardian puts it best: “Gaul Albert Uderzo, creator of Asterix, has rounded on his daughter over her accusations that he sold out by ceding control of the comic book series to a major French publisher.” As reported earlier on MobyLives, Sylvie Uderzo had published a letter in Le Monde criticizing her father for “reneging on all the values with which he raised me: independence, brotherhood, conviviality and resistance.” But Alison Flood reports in a Guardian story, the “spat has shifted up a gear” as Uderzo says “To be accused by my own daughter, in the pages of the newspaper of reference, of being an old man, manipulated and deluded in his insatiable greed by the gnomes of finance, is already quite undignified …. The accusation made against me is not only inspired by the appetite for power, it also aims to insult Asterix readers by confusing my abilities as an author with that of a publishing house shareholder.” A spokesperson for the the publisher in question — Hachette Livre — said, “We don’t want to meddle, to be engaged.”