Blake and Mortimer
Blake and Mortimer is a Belgian comics series created by the
Belgian writer and comics artist Edgar P. Jacobs. It was one of the first
series to appear in the Franco-Belgian comics magazine Tintin in 1946, and was
subsequently published in book form by Les Editions du Lombard.
The main protagonists of the adventures are Philip Mortimer,
a leading British scientist, and his friend Captain Francis Blake of MI5. The
main antagonist is their sworn enemy, Colonel Olrik, who has appeared in almost
every book. Their confrontations take them into the realms of detective
investigation and science-fiction, dealing with such themes as time travel,
Atlantis and espionage.
Since the death of Jacobs, new books have been published by
two separate teams of artists and writers. A television series based upon the
series was produced in 1997, entitled Blake and Mortimer.
The books by Jacobs himself are generally set in the very
period of their writing, but those authored by others after his death are set
mostly in the 1950s and 1960s.
When Tintin magazine was launched on 26 September 1946, it
included the story, Le secret de l'Espadon (The Secret of the Swordfish) which
introduced the characters of Captain Francis Blake of the British Intelligence
Service, his friend Professor Philip Mortimer, a leading physicist, and their
sworn enemy Colonel Olrik.
The epic of the Swordfish ended in 1949 but Olrik, Blake and
Mortimer continued their conflict through a whole series of
science-fiction/detective stories that saw them go all the way from the lost
continent of Atlantis to the Catacombs of Paris.
After Jacobs' death in 1987, Bob de Moor completed his
unfinished last story.
Post-Jacobs
From 1987, the Jacobs estate, centred on the still-operating
Jacobs Studios, republished all of Jacobs' works.
In the 1990s, after much debate about story authenticity,
Dargaud got permission to revive the Blake and Mortimer series, with new
stories by a new team of author/draughtsman. The series was still firmly set in
the 1950s and included many new regular supporting characters, most notably
Blake's colleagues in the security services. Much of series has been created by
two separate teams, Van Hamme/Benoit and Sente/Juillard.
The first book, The Francis Blake Affair, was published in
1996. Famous scenarist Jean Van Hamme provided the storylines while Ligne
claire specialist draughtsman Ted Benoit (whose style resembles the later
Jacobs's) was contracted for the artwork. Purists immediately objected to the
choice of Van Hamme and, upon publication, went on to discover some typical Van
Hamme plot twists they disliked.[citation needed] Jacobs' science-fiction was
noticeably absent with the story focusing on espionage. However the book became
a relative success and the publisher decided to continue the line. In the
meantime, however, both Benoit and Van Hamme were tied up on other projects and
work on the next book started to lag.
As an interim solution, writer Yves Sente and artist André
Juillard were contracted to publish another adventure, The Voronov Plot (1998)
which took its theme from the Cold War.
Finally, Van Hamme and Benoit managed to finish their album
and The Strange Encounter appeared in 2001, with Blake and Mortimer confronting
mysterious alien creatures.
This was followed by Sente and Juillard's two-book
adventure: The Sarcophagi of the Sixth Continent (volume 1,The Universal Threat
in 2003; volume 2, Battle of the Minds in 2004) which also dealt with Blake and
Mortimer's youth and how they first met in pre-independence India.
In 2008 Sente and Juillard released another book entitled
The Gondwana Shrine which chronologically follows the events of The Sarcophagi
of the Sixth Continent.
The next adventure in the series, The Curse of the Thirty
Denarii, is divided in two volumes and is written by Jean Van Hamme. The first
volume, titled Le Manuscript de Nicodemus (The Manuscript of Nicodemus), was
drawn by René Sterne, who suddenly died on 15 November 2006, delaying the
publication of the book. Sterne's girlfriend Chantal De Spiegeleer eventually
completed his work, which was published on 20 November 2009. Aubin Frechon drew
the second volume of the adventure, which was published 26 November 2010.
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