Janusz Christa’s 'Kajko and Kokosz' and ‘the Asterix Controversy’ Through the Lens of Gérard Genette’s Transtextuality

Abstract

This paper revisits the long-standing ‘Asterix controversy’ in Poland surrounding Janusz Christa’s Kajko and Kokosz, often accused of plagiarizing René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo’s Asterix. Using Gérard Genette’s theory of transtextuality, the study considers plagiarism as one among several possible intertextual relationships and tests the applicability of Genette’s taxonomy to comics. Through comparative analysis of two cases – the gagged troubadour and the Pain-Powered Leap motif – the article demonstrates that although Christa’s panels bear clear similarities to specific Asterix scenes, they involve substantial processes of transstylization, transformation, and imitation rather than plagiarism in Genettian terms. Methodologically, the paper employs an experimental approach inspired by experimental archaeology: by re-creating selected Asterix panels, it attempts to measure the degree of proximity between the original and Christa’s reworkings. This highlights both the usefulness of Genette’s taxonomy in analyzing comics and the potential of this method, while noting that it still requires further verification. The study concludes that, while Christa reworks shared visual and narrative tropes found in Asterix, he infuses them with his own style so that his work can be seen as part of a broader transtextual dialogue with global popular culture, demonstrating the circulation of cultural texts across political and linguistic borders.