The best part about the puns is you can reread the series in another language and get a whole new bunch. I do have to wonder how they translated the humour of Asterix and the Britons, one of the masterpieces of the series, which largely consisted of overly literal translations of English... seems hard to do that when you're translating back to English.

I do wish that Uderzo would stop producing new albums, though. I'm not such a purist that I think everything made after Goscinny's death is crap, the first few were still decent and quite readable, but really, the last four or five have just been dreadful. And now the man's even talking of going on with the series after he dies himself... God forbid.

And yeah, absolutely, it helps promoting interest in the Romans, and even teaches some history lessons without being boring (like that the one with the iron shield, in which the Gauls won't stop talking about Gergovia, but "I don't know where Alesia is! Nobody knows where Alesia is!".