Iznogoud

Origin

At Bagdad, Haroun el-Poussah is the great and beloved caliph and Iznogoud is his "loyal" vizir. Iznogoud himself has a loyal partner, Dilat Laraht, who helps him to carry out all of his cruel plans to become once and for all caliph instead of the caliph. At the end of each episode Iznogoud is still "only" the Grand Vizir, if he's lucky, most of the times he finishes trapped in all kind of situations (transformed into a dog, working as a slave, inside a labyrinth, etc etc). For the next issue, everything goes back to normal and Haroun el-Poussah never notices anything. Iznogoud (He's no good) is selfish, cruel, greedy, wrathful, ...evil, basically, but the Caliph, who is all the opposite, keeps calling him "My good Iznogoud".

Creation

The first appearance of Iznogoud was in 1962, in the magazine Record, published by Dargaud. Iznogoud will be later published simultaniously in Record and Pilote. The first issues are published from 1966 by Dargaud. When Rene Goscinny dies, in 1977, Jean Tabary becomes the writer of the volume, and starts publishing it through BD'Star first and then through Editions de Seguiniere. Both publishers were founded by Tabary himself along with Francis Slomka. As an exception there is one issue published by cataln publisher Glenat.
 
The character Iznogoud also participated in the "Journal du Dimanche". From 1974 he appears in a plate called "L'ignoble Iznogoud commente l'actualite" (The Vile Iznogoud Comments the News). After the death of Goscinny, journalist Alain Buhler continues writng them until 1979. Compilation of all this plates were published as well.

Goscinny, in an interview, talking about the creation of Iznogoud: 

Iznogoud was born in a special way, from the time I was working in "Le petit Nicolas" with Sempe. I wrote a story where Nicolas went on holidays and a teacher told a story to the children about an evil vizir who always wanted to be caliph instead of the caliph. That's it, that was the whole story, so when magazine Record asked Tabary and me to make a new series I had this idea of a parodying the "One Thousand and One Nights", keeping the same evil vizir. It was a good oportunity for me to make up the most dreadful plays of words.

 

Other Media

French/British animation TV series broadcasted in 1995 for the first time. It lasted 52 episodes.
 
Movie released in 2005