The co-creator of legendary comic strip character Asterix, Albert Uderzo, has come out of retirement to pen cartoons in memory of the victims of the killings at French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo.

“Moi aussi je suis un Charlie” (“I’m Charlie too”) says Asterix in one of the cartoons released on Friday, in which he appears to have punched an adversary high into the air.

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The sketch borrows from the slogan “Je suis Charlie”, which has been adopted by protesters around the world horrified by an attack on freedom of expression – the magazine has a reputation for mocking Islam and other religions.

The second cartoon shows Asterix and his sidekick Obelix bowing their heads in grief, holding their hats. Asterix grasps a rose, and their pet Dogmatix looks on with a sad look.

“Charlie Hebdo and Asterix are very different, of course. I am not going to change my stripes,” said 87-year-old Uderzo.

“I simply wanted to show my friendship for these cartoonists who have paid with their lives.”

The Albert-Rene publishing house that holds the rights to the Asterix books said Uderzo “was close to Cabu”, or Jean Cabut, one of the cartoonists shot dead by two gunmen who stormed Charlie Hebdo’s Paris offices in an attack that claimed 12 lives.

Uderzo has joined cartoonists around the world to pay tribute to some of France’s best-known cartoonists slain in the attack, by producing special drawings in their memory.

The suspected killers of the Charlie Hebdo staff, brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi, were shot dead by French police after they had taken a hostage north of Paris on Friday in a the dramatic end to a three-day manhunt.

Asterix is the highest-selling series of cartoon books in the world and has been translated into 111 languages.

Demand for Danish cartoon ‘off the charts’

Meanwhile, the man behind a Danish cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed that outraged Muslims dedicated a drawing to Charlie Hebdo, causing his gallery’s computer server to crash as demand soared for it.

“It’s completely off the charts,” said Erik Guldager, who owns the gallery that is selling Kurt Westergaard’s cartoon.

Westergaard’s caricature of the prophet wearing a bomb in his turban was one of 12 cartoons published by Danish daily Jyllands-Posten in 2005.

Westergaard on Friday renamed a 2009 cartoon “Je suis Charlie” and pledged to give proceeds from reprints to the French satirical magazine where gunmen on Wednesday killed 12 people.

Within hours Galleri Draupner in the western Danish town of Skanderborg was inundated with orders from around the world for the 50 euro ($73) reprints.

“He wants to support Charlie Hebdo and their contribution to freedom of speech and their right to do their work,” Guldager said.

“People from all of Denmark and Europe, and even distant corners of the world now, have logged on and want to support Charlie Hebdo and Kurt Westergaard’s drawing for them,” he added.

At last count “hundreds” of reprints had been sold but by early afternoon Guldager was unable to check his emails due to the “huge number of orders coming in,” he said.

The 79-year-old artist has lived under police protection since his cartoon was published almost a decade ago, sparking massive protests.

AFP