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 of cardiac arrest in 1977 at the age of 51.

Albert Uderzo was born in France 1927 to Italian immigrants. In 1959, Goscinny and Uderzo became editor and artistic director (respectively) of Pilote magazine. Their creation, Asterix, became a runaway success. After Goscinny's death in 1977, 26 volumes of Asterix were complete, Uderzo continued to write and illustrate the Asterix books on his own, publishing 8 volumes. He retired in 2011 but continued to oversee Asterix publications by Jean-Yves Ferri and Didier Conrad until his death in 2020. The Asterix cover credits still read "Goscinny and Uderzo.”