Blake and Mortimer, By Jove is 75 already!
The capital's streets have been adorned with a new comic book mural to mark the 75th anniversary of the Black and Mortimer series.
This comic book features Edgar P. Jacobs' two heroes, Sir Francis Blake, a career RAF serviceman at the service of the British military counter-espionage service (MI5), and his friend Professor Philip Mortimer, a scientist specialising in nuclear physics.
The inauguration took place on Rue du Temple, in the Marolles, the old working-class district in central Brussels. Other events celebrated the longevity of the famous pair, including the release in bookstores of a new album of their adventures, The Last Swordfish, on 19 November. The story by Jean Van Hamme, the first scriptwriter to take up the adventures of the famous friends, with The Francis Blake Affair, is a sequel to the inaugural album in the series by the man who would very quickly become a great comic master, having abandoned a career as an opera singer.
The very "Jacobs-style" graphics are by Teun Berserik and Peter van Dongen, the illustrators of The Valley of the Immortals.
The Swordfish, the revolutionary weapon developed by Mortimer, a submersible, supersonic, radio-controlled jet plane, is present at the start of the series, in September 1946. And it is this weapon that provides the title for the exhibition hosted from 30 September 2021 to 16 April 2022 by the Brussels Comics Art Museum, "The Secret of the Swordfish", which aims to reveal the hidden dimensions of the work of Jacobs, nicknamed the baritone of the 9th art, who anticipated the advent of the graphic novel.