Edgar Pierre Jacobs

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Blake and Mortimer, The Yellow Mark
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Blake and Mortimer, The Yellow Mark

Edgard Félix Pierre Jacobs, (b. March 30, 1904, d. February 20, 1987), better known under his pen name Edgar P. Jacobs, was a Belgian comic book creator (writer and artist), born in Brussels, Belgium. He was one of the founding fathers of the European comics movement, through his collaborations with Hergé and the graphic novel series that made him famous, Blake and Mortimer.

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[edit] Biography

Edgar Pierre Jacobs was born in Brussels in 1904.[1] Jacobs remembered having drawn for as far back as his memory would go. His real love though was for the dramatic arts and the opera in particular. In 1919 he graduated from the commercial school where his parents had sent him, and privately swore he would never work in an office. He kept on drawing in his spare time, focusing his greatest attention on musical and dramatic training. He took on odd jobs at the opera, including decoration, scenography, and painting, and sometimes got to work as an extra.[1] In 1929 he received the annual Belgian government medal for excellence in classical singing. Financial good fortune did not follow, since the Great Depression hit the Brussels Artistic community very hard.

After a career as extra and baritone singer in opera productions between 1919 and 1940, punctuated by small drawing commissions, Jacobs turned permanently to illustration, drawing commercial illustrations and collaborating in the Bravo review until 1946. This review or periodical was a smashing success, hitting a circulation of 300,000 at times.

When the American comic strip Flash Gordon was prohibited in Belgium by the German forces of occupation during World War II, he was asked to write an end to the comic in order to provide a denouement to the readers. German censorship banned this continuation after only a couple of weeks. Jacobs subsequently published in Bravo his first comic strip, Le Rayon U (The U Ray), largely in the same Flash Gordon style.

Around this time, he became a stage painter for a theatre adaptation for Hergé's Cigars of the Pharaoh. Although the play was only a modest success, it brought him into contact with Hergé and the two quickly become friends. As a direct result, he assisted Hergé in the recasting of his earlier albums Tintin in the Congo, Tintin in America, King Ottokar's Sceptre and The Blue Lotus for book publication. After the project, he continued to contribute directly in the drawing as well as the storyline for the new Tintin double-albums The Secret of the Unicorn / Red Rackham's Treasure and The Seven Crystal Balls / Prisoners of the Sun. Jacobs, as a fan of opera, decided to bring Hergé with him for a concert. Hergé did not like opera, however, and for decades he would gently lampoon his friend Jacobs through the device of Bianca Castafiore, a minor character and opera singer in The Adventures of Tintin. Hergé also gave him tiny cameo roles in Tintin adventures, sometimes under the name Jacobini, for example in The Calculus Affair where Jacobini is the name of an opera singer advertised as starring alongside La Castafiore in Gounod's Faust, and as a mummified egyptologist on the cover of Cigars of the Pharaoh.

In 1946, he was part of the team gathered around the new Journal de Tintin magazine, where his comic strip The Secret of the Swordfish was published, the first of the Blake and Mortimer series.

In 1947, Jacobs asked to share the credit with Hergé for Tintin's adventures. When Hergé refused, their collaboration had a bit of a setback. Hergé still remained a friend however, and as before the adventures of Blake and Mortimer continued to be serialized in Tintin magazine. In 1950, Jacobs published The Mystery of the Great Pyramid. Many others soon followed. Jacobs finally published in 1970 the first volume of The Three formulas of Professor Sato, which was staged in Japan.

In 1973 he restyled his first full-length album, Le Rayon U, and wrote his autobiography under the tile Un opéra de papier: Les mémoires de Blake et Mortimer. He then wrote the scenario for the second episode of Les Trois Formules du Professeur Sato, but the artwork remained unfinished at the time of his death. Bob de Moor was drafted in to complete the album, which was published in 1990.

Jacobs had not one but two stone sphinxes to commemorate him. One of them is in the Bois des Pauvres near Brussels, where his home used to stand, and the other one is over his tomb at the Lasne cemetery, also near Brussels. The cemetery sphinx has a "collar" beard, and his face looks a lot like Philip Mortimer, the protagonist of most of the Jacobs albums.

From 1987, the Jacobs estate, centred around the still-going Jacobs Studios, republished all of Jacobs’s works. In the 1990's, after much debate about story authenticity, Dargaud got permission to revive the Blake and Mortimer series with a set of new stories by a new team of author/draughtsman. 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. 1996 saw the publication of The Francis Blake Affair, and although purists immediately objected to the choice of Van Hamme, and upon publication went on to discover some typical Van Hamme plot twists they disliked, the book became a relative success and the publisher decided to continue the line. In the meantime however both Van Hamme as well as Benoit were tied up in other projects and work on the next book started to lag. As an interim solution, writer Yves Sente and artist André Juillard were contacted to publish the second new Blake and Mortimer: The Voronow Complot (1998). Finally, Van Hamme and Benoit managed to finish their album and The Strange Encounter appeared in 2001. The team immediately followed up with a two-book adventure: "The sarcophages of the sixth continent" (volume 1,the universal menace in 2003, volume 2,Battle of the Minds in 2004)

Jacobs’ style and consistency, his plotting talent and his care in character building vary greatly from one album to another. There are however many common threads, such as the theme of subterranean descent and the consistent Ligne claire drawing style.

[edit] Bibliography

  1. Le Rayon U (The U Ray), in 1943
  2. Le Secret de l'Espadon (The Secret of the Swordfish), in 1947 (3 volumes)
  3. Le Mystère de la Grande Pyramide, (The Mystery of the Great Pyramid), in 1950 (2 volumes)
  4. La Marque Jaune (The Yellow 'M'), in 1953
  5. L'Énigme de l'Atlantide (Atlantis Mystery), in 1955
  6. S.O.S. Météores: Mortimer à Paris (S.O.S. Meteors), in 1958
  7. Le Piège diabolique (The Time Trap) in 1960
  8. L'Affaire du Collier (The Necklace Affair) in 1965
  9. Les trois Formules du Professeur Sato: Mortimer à Tokyo (The Three formulas of Professor Sato) in 1970 (vol. 1; vol. 2 Mortimer versus Mortimer completed by Bob De Moor, 1990)

[edit] Awards

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ a b De Weyer, Geert (2005). "Edgar Pierre Jacobs". In België gestript, pp. 129-131. Tielt: Lannoo.
  2. ^ ActuaBD

[edit] References

  • Guyard, Jean-Marc. Le baryton du neuvième art. Bruxelles: Éditions Blake et Mortimer, 1996. ISBN 2-87328-000-X
  • Jacobs, Edgar P. Un opéra de papier: Les mémoires de Blake et Mortimer. Paris: Gallimard, 1981. ISBN 2-07-056090-2
  • Lenne, Gérard. L'affaire Jacobs. Paris: Megawave, 1990. ISBN 2-908910-00-4
  • Mouchart, Benoit. A l'ombre de la ligne claire: Jacques Van Melkebeke, le clandestin de la B.D. Paris: Vertige Graphic, 2002. ISBN 2-908981-71-8
  • Mouchart, Benoît and Rivière, François La Damnation d'Edgar P. Jacobs, Seuil-Archimbaud, 2003. ISBN 2-02-085505-4

[edit] External links

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