UPDATED: Blake & Mortimer - the first publications

In recent years Cinebook (http://www.cinebook.co.uk/index.php) have been working their way through numerous continental comic strip adaptations. The series I've enjoyed most if that of Blake & Mortimer by (initially) Edgar P. Jacobs. You can find plenty more about the series here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blake_and_Mortimer

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.

Jacobs worked for Hergé (more details here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_P._Jacobs) and his style is therefore very recognisable who has been brought up on the Tintin albums.

Cinebook have now published 23 B&M titles but they weren't the first to publish B&M books - in the late 1980s 6 volumes were published by "Blake and Mortimer editions - Brussels".

Here are volumes 2-6 of these books. I'm still on the hunt for volume 1 (which is 'The secret of the swordfish, part 1').

Blake & Mortimer (3)

And here's volume 6 (volume 1 in the Cinebook series) from January 1988

The only other publisher to tackle English language publication of B&M books were Catalan communications (under their comcat comics imprint) - they published 2 titles, I only have the first and it's shown below (volume 19 in the Cinebook series).

They also published a second volume, The Atlantis Mystery, which is volume 12 in the Cinebook series.

For more images you can't beat a trip to http://www.eurocomics.info/ which has masses of scans of English language reprints of European graphic novels. It's a fantastic site.

Blake & Mortimer (2)

Here's volume 5 (volume 3 in the Cinebook series) from August 1987, again the book is slightly larger than the Cinebook volume.

here's a page which could have come straight out of a Tintin volume - sparse dialogue, action sequence, pratfall

and yet the very next page is laden with dialogue and would be very out of place in a Tintin album

Blake & Mortimer - the first publications

Since we've looked at Alix I thought it might be interesting to show my (partial) collection of Blake & Mortimer reprints.

In recent years Cinebook (http://www.cinebook.co.uk/index.php) have been working their way through numerous continental comic strip adaptations. The series I've enjoyed most if that of Blake & Mortimer by (initially) Edgar P. Jacobs. You can find plenty more about the series here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blake_and_Mortimer

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.

Jacobs worked for Hergé (more details here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_P._Jacobs) and his style is therefore very recognisable who has been brought up on the Tintin albums.

Cinebook have now published 23 B&M titles but they weren't the first to publish B&M books - in the late 1980s 6 volumes were published by "Blake and Mortimer editions - Brussels".

Here's the cover to volume 4 (volume 2 in the Cinebook series) from June 1987. The book is slightly bigger than the Cinebook volume but is otherwise identical.

Alix - the sacred helmet

Also published in 1971 is this volume, a translation of the 4th volume, La tiare d'Oribal.

As can be seen from the back cover to this volume there were due to be 2 other volumes published but that never happened. And so the series languishes in obscurity. I'd never even seen copies of the 2 volumes before I came across them in a 2nd hand bookshop (£1.50 each thanks very much!) and had no idea about them, only resources like http://www.eurocomics.info/ helped me find out what they were.



Bookfinder.com currently does not have any copies listed for sale. Happy hunting people!

Alix - the black claw

Published in 1971 this is the very rare first volume of Alix stories translated into English. It's an adaptation of the 5th book published - La griffe noire


As we saw from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventures_of_Alix#Alix_in_English yesterday Alix stories revolve around a young Gallo-Roman man named Alix in the late Roman Republic. Although the series is renowned for its historical accuracy and stunning set detail, the hero has been known to wander into anachronistic situations up to two centuries out of his era. The stories unfold throughout the reaches of the Roman world, including the city of Rome, Gaul, the German frontier, Mesopotamia, Africa and Asia Minor. One voyage goes as far as China

Wikipedia also suggests that the reason for the failure of the series was "...A reviewer for the Times Literary Supplement [2 July 1971, p.774] found Alix singularly lacking in humour compared to Asterix, effectively killing prospects for continued publication in a market not yet accustomed to the wider Franco-Belgian tradition".


As Alix is really very different from Asterix this seems like the laziest sort of comparison you can make. Tintin is a better comparison but the story still pales in comparison, at times the story can move along at pace but too often it is slowed down by great blocks of exposition - see the page below for instance - this is not the clear and concise storytelling of a Hergé book. The font is also smaller than in a Tintin book, so the amount of  text to read takes longer, thus slowing down the story even further.

Only one copy is currently available on Bookfinder.com and is priced at $220

Theme 'week' will be Alix

So who's Alix then?
Well if you are familiar with European comics then he probably needs no introduction as he has been having adventures in the Roman empire for the last 50 years. I'm a huge fan of the ligne claire [clear line] style of European comics illustration, this style was popularised by Hergé in his Tintin stories and has been extremely influential.


There are more detail on Alix and his adventures here:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventures_of_Alix#Alix_in_English


Tintin's adventures first appeared in the (original) Eagle magazine in 1951 with an adaptation of King Ottokar's sceptre. Asterix, on the other hand, had to wait until 1963 to be published in the UK (in Valiant). Both series went on to become well-established and extremely popular and still fill bookshelves up and down the country today.


So, if these two series worked then why not launch another series in the UK? One that mixes the adventure of Tintin with the setting of Asterix, what could go wrong?


We shall see.