Tell me about "Blake & Mortimer"

"The Secret of the Swordfish" (in three books) is my fave -- one of the best war comics ever. It was available in English in the late eighties, and includes top racist action: Mortimer invents a super fighter plane, just in time for the evil Japanese to declare war on the ENTIRE WURLD.

"The Mystery of the Pyramid" is second best -- it's probably the most Tintin-like of the Blake and Mortimer books, although it turns into a bit of a Classics Illustrated bore at the end, with lots of non-thrill-powered historical detail about ye olde Egyptian civilisation.

Then there's a bunch of sci-fi and time travel stories which are a bit duff, in an "I've read some HG Wells" kind of way. And then Edgar P Jacobs dies, and the franchise gets carried into eternity a la Virginia Andrews/Tupac.

I don't think any of those are in print in English, and Amazon sellers are looking for mad money for them. Il faut que je les lis en Francais, or whatever Jean Etranger likes to say.

Secret of the Swordfish is the only one I've read; fun stuff marred by a really shoddy translation job and quite unbelievable racism - the Chinese agressors are reffered to as 'yellow fellows' throughout, and there's not one of them who isn't an evil cackling lunatic.

Actually DV, if I can dig them up I may be willing to swap my English copies of the Swordfish trilogy for something or other.

Yes, and if Joe/Chap can't dig them up, you can happily have mine, although I won't be back in the UK till August.

And they really are astonishingly racist, so the faulty English translation actually works out kind of well.

Cheers for the generosity guys.

I am in Ireland, so it may be difficult to make the handover in the flesh. I am also unsure as too what I can offer in return. mmm.

"The Yellow M" and "S.O.S. Meteors" are both quite good in a Tintinesque way. I remember liking the time travel story a kid, but I haven't read it for years; from what I remember it's way more fantasy-oriented than the above two, which, despite the sci-fi elements, remain kinda realistic and dry. I don't think the post-Jacobs stories have ever been translated to Finnish.

The Wikipedia entry on B+M seems pretty useful - also good entries there on Asterix and Lucky Luke, especially the latter, easily the most complete info I've read in an English print or on-line publication.

Pre-Wikipedia, I had to write the entries on Blake and Mortimer and Lucky Luke for a big English language guide to comics, a frustrating process for a non-French speaker. There have been two attempts to 'do' Blake and Mortimer translations in America/UK - the 'Blake and Mortimer Editions' large size and the smaller size Catalan editions. The Catalans are generally better translations, done IIRC by fan/critic Dwight Decker and others; the Cinebooks edition of The Yellow M is, AFAICT, a slightly shrunken reprint of the Blake and Mortimer edition, and reads rather stiffly.

My feeling is that while Blake and Mortimer is inarguably gorgeous to look at - all that research and whatnot - it is yes, problematic politically/socially today, and generally (over)-written in a style that will probably never been seen in comics again. Jacobs coloured and drew some of the Tintin re-sets (all the costume etc stuff in King Ottokar's sceptre) and (my fave factoid) appears in mummified form on the cover of Cigars of the Pharaoh, but his work lacks the humanity and lightness of touch of Herge.

The Yellow M def seems like his best work - full of mystery and romance and a foreigner's love of London that reminds me (a teeny bit) of Gravity's Rainbow - but even that is let down by tough-going patches of pure chat where it feels as if the characters are slowly being consumed by their own speech bubbles. It's curious, at times, how indifferent and clumsy Jacobs can be to 'classical comics narrative', having drawn and done so much by the time of the Yellow M.

I did not know about these new, non-Jacobs B+M stories, and don't suppose they are going to be translated into English any time soon (although according to Wikipedia, Cinebooks are promising a second B&M. volume later this year.) Cinebooks, btw, are the latest UK publisher to try to sell Lucky Luke to the English market, with a mixture of previous translations and seemingly new editions from the classic Goscinny-Morris years. Some of my all-time favourite strips, tougher and less pun-drenched than Asterix; I hope Cinebooks reprint many more.

They also do translations of a 'bigfoot' mid-70s Euro series called Clifton, abt an English Secret Agent who is a kind of cross between James Bond and Sherlock Holmes (or a sexless Austin Powers) - another bizarre and entertaining fantasia of England and Englishness. Gosh Comics in London seem to be well-stocked on this kind of clobber, as usual.

Wordiness does indeed seem to be the biggest problem in B&M, especially compared to Tintin; I haven't read the comic in years, and I can still remember those massive speech balloons. If you like this sort of stuff, there's a great ligne claire comic called "Tim and Tom", which is kinda like Blake and Mortimer, but it's a bit more kiddie-oriented and has a better pacing.

I didn't know Lucky Luke wasn't available in English! You'd think at least the Americans would be interested in a French take of "their" native genre.

Hold on there pard, Lucky Luke has sporadically been available in English editions (in the UK) since the early 1970s, and some of the same translations were published in the US by Dargaud during a brief, failed experiment to 'crack' the American market w/ graphs novs circa the late 1970s. Hodder in the UK had some luck with the title at the same time that the best Asterix titles were first getting translated by Bell and Hockeridge, but never on the same scale - I think because the western as a genre is, European graphic novs like Lucky Luke or Blueberry aside, pretty unpopular/moribund worldwide, NOBODY gives a fuck abt cowboys anymore, and also because the humour market in America exists in newspaper strips rather than the Euro graphs novs format (note to self: write hilarious comic strip abt a cowboy, become Jim Davis)

I actually found the B&M wordiness not that problematic. Bear in mind that I am an old Chris Claremont fan. In any case, I like the way the massive speech balloons run so counter to everything The Man describes as good comics.

The antediluvian sociopolitical attitudes... pfeh, I can take it. As long as there is no "Blake & Mortimer en Irland avec les tres parasseux et ivrés Irlandais".

no, you will have to go to Corto Maltese for that (joke)

It's relatively easy to find a (small selection of) Lucky Lukes in English these days. Hopefully they'll print some of the post-Goscinny stuff eventually: some of the Xavier Fauche stories are pretty good, too.

I'd love to see some English Spirou, though: I'm actually quite surprised no one's at least tried to do a homemade translation and put it online.

Ha, there's a **cough**t0rr3nt**cough** on the relevant sites, of the cartoon Yellow M.

Hey DV - I've found vols 1 & 3 of Swordfish, so 2's gotta be somewhere. Let me know if you're still interested. If you can't come up with anything to trade don't worry, just give me money for postage and we'll consider it an indefinate loan if you like.

I only read one "Blake & Mortimer", in translation, and the vocabulary was so ridicolously stuffy, full of "furthermore" and "thereabouts" and...portuguese words that are so pompous I don't think english even has *equivalents* for them; I imagined the translator had beeen some old geezer who thought it perfectly normal that people would talk like that while, say, engaging in fisticuffs or doing a car chase. Judging by these comments I guess it's not entirely the translator's fault then!

I am sympathetic to DV's contrarianism (in re: evreything THE MAN tells you comics shouldn't be), but the thing is the plot struck me as sort of generic, too, no real "wow" moments, so I didn't investigate further.

"Lucky Luke" and "Spirou" are both aces.