The text talks a bit about Goscinny and Uderzo’s friendship and work history, starting with their time creating Pilote and Asterix while working on multiple other series. The French have produced a lot of special editions of Asterix over the years, including extremely large books, black and white books, pencil-only books, editions where the scripts are facing the final pages, etc. (Maybe the original European edition of this book included more or fewer pages at the beginning, which would explain the shift in page numbers referenced in the text?)