Ancient Egyptian cults, sarcophagi and mummies fascinated him early on and stimulated his imagination. When Edgar Pierre Jacobs was fifteen at the age of fifteen with his friend Jacques van Melkebeke in the “Musée du Cinquantenaire” in Brussels to immerse himself in the creepy atmosphere of an Egyptian burial chamber, he had no intention of making exciting comics like “The Secret of the to make the Great Pyramid.
The enthusiasm for the “Ninth Art” came much later. Although fond of drawing and studying fine arts from an early age, he was more drawn to the world of theatre, particularly opera, and aspired to a career as a baritone,
Edgar Pierre Jacobs (1904-1987) would become one of the most popular and influential Belgian comic artists. In 1946 he created the popular adventure series “Blake and Mortimer” for the comic magazine “Tintin” and drew it until the end of his life.
The Comic Biography “Edgar P. Jacobs – Dreams and Apocalypses” (by François Rivière and Philippe Wurm, translation Harald Sachse, Carlsen, 144 pages, hardcover, 22 €) is now dedicated to the eventful life of the famous draftsman.
In the tradition of Ligne Claire
A few years ago, a first drawn biography about him appeared, “Der Fall EP Jacobs – Ein Leben für den Comic” by Rodolphe/Alloing (2014 in German by Carlsen Verlag). However, this was kept quite superficial and could not convince either narratively or graphically.
The author of the current biography is the Frenchman François Rivière, born in 1949, who has been working as a comic scenario writer since the mid-1970s and who met Jacobs personally. For a long time he cooperated with the well-known Ligne Claire draftsman Jean-Claude Floc’h.
“Edgar P. Jacobs” also follows the tradition of ligne claire, that clear, contour-emphasizing, easily legible graphic style that was decisively influenced by Hergé (“Tim and Struppi”) and Jacobs. The draftsman Philippe Wurm, born in 1962, is clearly based on Jacobs’ works, the whole volume appears like a – subtly modernized – original Jacobs in his realistic variant of the ligne claire.
Thorough down to the last detail
Like his role model, Wurm attaches great importance to thorough research into the background, the architecture of Brussels or the historical costumes of his characters. The pastel coloring by Benoît Bekaert completes this impression of a careful and sensitive approach to Edgar Pierre Jacobs as a person and his aesthetics.
Rivière’s scenario is essentially based on Jacob’s autobiography “Un opéra de papier” from 1981 – Jacobs, with gentle self-irony, described his comics as “paper operas”, which were mostly characterized by creative and often narrative opulence.
His artistic career began with advertising graphics for Brussels department stores and elaborate scenery and costume designs for Brussels theaters. Since his youth, Jacobs was primarily enthusiastic about operas and began to sing himself at an early age. As a baritone, he appeared at opera houses in Lille and Brussels in the 1920s and 1930s, but did not have a major breakthrough.
It all started with Flash Gordon
During the Second World War, when Brussels was occupied by the German Wehrmacht, his career as a comic artist began rather by accident: initially, the illustrator, who was unfamiliar with comics, drew an episode of Alex Raymond’s science fiction series “Flash Gordon” for the youth magazine “bravo!” ended when American comics were banned from imports when the USA entered the war.
Jacobs’ pages were so compelling that he was given the opportunity for a longer comic adventure of his own: The U-Rays (recently reprinted by Carlsen in the Blake and Mortimer Library, 56 pages, €18) was similar “Flash Gordon”, a content-wise naïve but technically remarkable mixture of adventure and science fiction, which already contained some ingredients from his later masterpiece “Blake and Mortimer”.
During this time, Jacobs also met Georges Remi, alias Hergé, whose already famous comic series “Tim and Struppi” he had not even read before. Jacobs became his assistant, responsible for the coloring and elaborate background decorations, and left a lasting mark on the other “Tim” adventures with his dedicated, careful design.
After the war, the friendship with Hergé cracked, as he did not want to acknowledge Jacobs’ part in “Tim” by naming him. Nevertheless, they continued to work together: Edgar Pierre Jacobs developed “The Battle for the World” from 1946 for the new comic magazine “Tintin”, whose artistic director was Hergé.
It is the first adventure about his heroes “Blake and Mortimer”, the British MI5 Colonel Francis Blake and his Scottish friend, the astrophysicist Professor Philip Mortimer. In her adventures, Jacobs combined crime and thriller plots with adventurous and fantastic elements right up to apocalyptic science fiction.
In addition to Jacobs’ professional career, “Edgar P. Jacobs” also examines his private life, such as his relationships with his two wives, Ninie (flirty) and Jeanne (solid and domestic), who have very different personalities, as well as his long-standing friendship with the painter and artistically versatile jack-of-all-trades Jacques Van Melkebeke, who was also a friend of Hergé, worked on both comic series and was convicted and imprisoned after the war for his collaboration with the Nazi regime.
Rivière and Wurm thus succeed in providing an interesting, atmospheric insight into the beginnings of Belgian comic production. The comic is also a multi-faceted and anecdotal portrait of an exceptional and humanly irreproachable artist whose influence can still be felt in many Franco-Belgian and international illustrators.
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