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Edgar P. Jacobs: Le secret de l’Espadon (GraphicNovel, French language, 2010, Les éditions Blake et Mortimer) 3 étoiles

1947. Alors que dans le monde se multiplient les pactes et les conférences destinées à …

Revisiting childhood classics can be a fraught exercise …

3 étoiles

… and, coming back too this almost forty years after last reading it, I wasn’t expecting too much. Sure enough, the world view is horrifically dated: white Brit dudes saving the world through süperior technology with the help of other white dudes and some loyal colonial dudes. A cruel, generically ‘yellow’ enemy bent on world domination slash destruction of civilisation. Literally not one woman in sight and a view of non-whites that, at its most kind, can only be called folkloristic – j’en passe et des meilleures. Superficially, there is enough to erase Jacobs’ early work from comics art memory. And yet, I’d argue it very much needs to stay in it.

First, the are some saving graces: in 1950, five years after the conclusion of World War II, the idea of an aggressively imperialistic asian empire wasn’t exactly outlandish (and yes, Jacobs did model his supposedly ‘Tibetan’ military …

@kopischke@bookwyrm.social we had Blake and Mortimer BD at home when I was growing up, and yeah from what I remember I pretty much agree with your review.

A comic series from that time that might not stand the test of time is Lefranc. Same école Franco-belge, published at the same time, with the same type of sci-fi settings with a leg standing in reality, combatting a same mysterious enemy that’s tall and dark-haired with interesting facial hair and a propension for treason… but way more dated IMO

@joachim@lire.boitam.eu absolutely agree on Lefranc – I loved it as a child, but wouldn’t be very interested in re-reading it (or Alix, to mention another childhood favourite, also by Jacques Martin). Also funny you mention the antagonist, whose name eludes me; contrast that with Olrik, whose name I never forgot in four decades. The man is certainly one of comics history’s more memorable villains, and that is because, as a rule Jacobs characters – unlike Martin’s –, however dated, feel very much real.

@kopischke@bookwyrm.social The antagonist is Axel Borg :)

You're right about Jacobs' characters being more real. On the other hand, his drawing style is a little bit less realistic, a little bit more cartoon-ey than Martin's, which contributes to it feeling more "ageless". Jacques Martin was always pushing for details and realism (not as much as Jean Graton's Michel Vaillant), and I think he touched a little too close to the Uncanny Valley. Which is always bad…

@joachim@lire.boitam.eu I think you are spot on on the uncanny valley thing; I never thought of it like that. Not a counterpoint, but Jacobs was notoriously maniaque about detail. He famously once spent three weeks researching Japanese trash cans (though, this being pre-internet, most of that time was probably spent waiting for documentation), but that did not translate into the kind of pseudo-hyper-realism Martin preferred. Which basically comes back to my point that Jacobs belongs in the pantheon of comics classics: the lighter stroke, achieving more expressiveness with less detail, is certainly an artist’s mark.

Martin, OTOH … I remember quite vividly that, even at nine years old, while devouring the adventure yarns he was spinning, I found his artwork stilted and static. Ah … you’ve sent me down memory lane, no doubt – maybe I need a list of childhood favourites that did not age well (I just remembered …

@kopischke@bookwyrm.social Haha yeah, I remember the same thing about the drawing style. And the stories were overly complicated. And speaking of Blake and Mortimer as a gay couple, Alix and Enak are in a much weirder relationship (Lefranc and Jean-Jean not as much, they have a bigger age difference). It's always Alix rescuing an Enak, who in turn is always a victim.