Blake & Mortimer Book 6

Blake & Mortimer Book 6: S.O.S. Meteors, by Edgar P Jacobs, Cinebook

EDGAR P Jacobs assisted Herge on several early Tintin books, and his own Blake & Mortimer series debuted in Tintin magazine itself back in 1946. Comparisons continue: there are two main characters (in Tintin it’s the reporter himself and Captain Haddock) who solve mysteries around the world, and the clear line art style popularised by Herge is used. Thereafter matters diverge.

Blake & Mortimer fall more into line with that vintage style of British thriller detective writing as evidenced in John Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps or some Sexton Blake mystery but then the stories themselves can be all souped-up into some modernistic Jules Verne adventure too.

Captain Francis Blake is the dashing head of M.I.5; his friend Professor Phillip Mortimer a nuclear physicist, and in this adventure the pair are rarely together, in fact most of the book’s left to the Professor investigating on his own in France.

There are weird weather patterns happening on mainland Europe, and Mortimer visits Paris to meet with his friend the meteorologist Professor Labrousse to investigate, but on his journey several other strange mysteries and odd disappearances begin occur.

Weighed down with an average of 14 panels at printed European album size page where there’s rarely one panel without a long narrative caption box, plus dialogue, this is a serious read. As such the visuals tend to favour head-shots and cropped views so they’re more an accompaniment to the fiction one is reading and can be heavy going at times and not everyone’s cup of tea... You really need to sit down and get yourself in the mood to spend some time pouring over the story; when you do it becomes a fine cat and mouse cosy mystery for the most part; though the latter section where mad scientists, old enemies and more of Blake feels a little too rushed.

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