March 30th - Blake and Mortimer

A Year in Comics - March 30th 2017

Philip Mortimer, Francis Blake and Colonel Olrik - Blake & Mortimer

Edgar Félix Pierre Jacobs, more commonly known as Edgar P. Jacobs, was born on March 30th 1904 in Brussels, Belgium.  Already at a young age, Jacobs became interested in drawing, yet as a teenager he discovered an entirely different passion - opera.  Schooling himself as an opera singer, Jacobs became a bit-part actor at the Brussels Munt, while working as an illustrator during the day, before deciding to follow formal education.  In 1929 he graduated as an opera singer, but he was only hired as a bit-part actor by the Munt the following two seasons as he 'only' graduated from a music school instead of a conservatory.  Hoping to get himself hired as a soloist, Jacobs finally started working at the Opera de Lille in France.

The outbreak of World War Two and subsequent German occupation ended Jacobs' career as an opera soloist, as it became impossible for him under the German occupation to work across borders - instead, he returned to Brussels where he once again picked up his drawing pen.  After working for advertisement firms and publishers, he became an artist at the Bravo! weekly, where he initially penned illustrations for the locally-published Flash Gordon stories; however, not long after he had started working for Bravo!, the United States declared war on Germany, and Germany banned the publication of American comics.  As a result of this, Jacobs was forced to come up with his own, Flash Gordon-inspired story: Le Rayon U ran in Bravo! from 1942 to 1943.

Jacob's work drew the attention of Georges Remi, 'Hergé', the artist of the Tintin series, who had been asked by his publisher Casterman to redraw and/or recast the first seven albums of the series to a standard 62-page format.  Overwhelmed by the work, Hergé started working with assistents, of which Jacobs would become the most important one.  Starting in 1943, Jacobs helped Hergé on colourising his new albums, and subsequently he assisted him in redrawing The Broken Ear (1937, redrawn 1943); Tintin in America (1932, redrawn 1945); Tintin in Congo (1931, redrawn 1946); The Blue Lotus (1936, redrawn 1946); and King Ottokar's Sceptre (1939, redrawn 1947).  Jacobs also helped Hergé in conceiving the two-part story The Seven Crystal Balls /Prisoners of the Sun, for which Jacobs collected documentation, worked out plot elements and drew backgrounds.  In return, Hergé is said to have partly inspired the character of Captain Haddock on E.P. Jacobs - as well as the captain's love for opera (as seen in The Seven Crystal Balls), stemming from Jacobs' insisting Hergé accompanying him to opera productions.  Hergé also included cameos of Jacobs in a number of Tintin stories - he even appears on the front cover of the re-draw version of Cigars of the Pharaoh (as the mummified egyptologist E.P. Jacobini).

However, once again war events would turn Jacobs' fortunes.  On September 3rd 1944, Brussels was liberated by the Allied forces, and Hergé found himself in trouble for having published in a Nazi-collaborating newspaper.  Not being able to continue publication The Seven Crystal Balls, Hergé and Jacobs started working on a number of projects, including illustrations for a youth encyclopedia.  Meanwhile, Hergé, officially blacklisted, was approached by a publisher who wanted to start a new weekly publication, and who requested his permission to use Tintin for this weekly - and in return offered Hergé his help in solving his legal trouble.  Hergé agreed, but this left the publisher with the problem of finding enough material to fill weekly publications.

As such, Jacobs was asked to contribute to the new publication.  In response, he started working on a war story, featuring a British scientist, Philip Mortimer, and his friend, the intelligence service officer and former fighter pilot Francis Blake.  Their first story, Le Secret de l'Espadron (The Secret of the Swordfish), saw the pair as resistance fighters opposing an Asian superpower which manages to conquer and subdue most of the free world in a surprise attack.  It also sees the pair meet and oppose their most enduring opponent for the first time: the secretive adventurer and master-villain Olrik (whose appearance was a self-portrait by Jacobs).

The Secret of the Swordfish started serialisation in the first issue of the new Tintin weekly on September 26th 1946, alongside Hergé's Prisoners of the Sun.  However, the story's instant success made Hergé envious, and soon cracks started to form in the partnership of Hergé and Jacobs.  Initially, the pair had started work on a story which was to succeed Prisoners of the Sun, but when Jacobs asked if he could share credit, Hergé abandoned work on the story, and the two parted ways.  Despite this professional disagreement, the two would remain friends for life.

Jacobs' Blake & Mortimer stories soon became a success in their own right, being unusually action-packed for their era.  Unlike other series, most of the Blake & Mortimer stories would often start with the heroes being thrown into an ongoing story; some stories were straight-out detective stories, while others were pure science-fiction ones.  Like Hergé, Jacobs was a master at using the Ligne Claire drawing style, but added a touch of his own to it, sometimes omitting backgrounds or using dramatic colourisation to punctuate action, often accompanied by large captions or text balloons.

Especially his third story, La Marque Jaune/The Yellow "M" (1953-1954), gained Jacobs fame - a sci-fi/detective story in which Blake & Mortimer investigate the theft of the British crown jewels, it left its mark both among readers, as well as influencing many of Jacobs' colleagues who started emulating his more action-packed style of writing.

However, Jacobs himself never was fully satisfied with his work, and tried to continually improve on it.  For The Yellow "M", Jacobs resided in London for numerous weeks; for S.O.S. Meteors (1958-1959), he used so much documentation that it is actually possible to follow the entire story on a route map.  Unfortunately, this perfectionism impacted heavily on his productivity: whereas the first 8 (originally 7 ) stories of the Blake & Mortimer series were issued between 1946 and 1959, the next decade saw only two new albums appear (The Time Trap in 1962, and The Necklace Affair in 1967).  In 1973, Jacobs started work on Professor Sató's Three Formulae; however after finishing the first part of the story, he suffered a breakdown in his health which halted him from working on the second part to the story.

Edgar P. Jacobs passed away aged 82 on February 20th 1987.

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But wait, it doesn't end here!

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While Jacobs was unable to finish the second part of Professor Sató's Three Formulae, he did finish the complete script for it, allowing his friend and colleague Bob de Moor to complete it, entirely in Jacob's style, in 1990.

During his life, Jacobs gave his permission for his series to continue after his death; in 1996, the first 'post-Jacobs' album in the Blake & Mortimer series appeared, written by Jean van Hamme and drawn by Ted Benoit.  This was followed by an entire series of new albums, written by alternating writer/illustrator teams - currently, 12 titles have been issued, equalling the amount Jacobs made during his life.  As such, Edgar P. Jacobs' characters continue to live on.

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110th entry of ?

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