Edgar Pierre Jacobs: gli ultimi giorni della Sfinge
|
Lunedì,
1/3/2004 - Autore ©: afnews -
afNews/Goria - Riproduzione Vietata - www.afnews.info cod-BM |
Copyright
Didier Pasamonik (translation by Guido
Vogliotti for afNews www.afnews.info - all rights reserved)
EDGAR PIERRE JACOBS — THE SPHYNX’S LAST DAYS
With the 100th anniversary of E. P. Jacobs’s birth
drawing closer, his work is enjoying an unprecedented success. And yet the
gifted creator of Blake & Mortimer
died forsaken and bewildered.
The last days in Jacobs’s life are particularly
pathetic. A widower without children, confused by the success that he enjoys
for the first time in his life, the old sphynx of the Belgian school, the
brilliant creator of The Mystery of the
Great Pyramid and The Yellow “M”
is completely forsaken. A small circle of people, last-minute companions, will
take advantage from this situation.
On 30th March 2004 the centenary of his birth will be
celebrated. Edgar Pierre Félix Jacobs (he signs Edgar P. Jacobs, in the fashion
of the English novelists) is the creator of a cult comic series, Blake & Mortimer, considered a
fundamental classic of the Belgian school. He strongly influenced Hergé and
most of his contemporary colleagues like Tardi or Jean Van Hamme. His major
stories, like The Mystery of the Great
Pyramid or The Yellow “M”, are
milestones in the history of comics. After his death in 1987, his characters
started enjoying a growing and unprecedented success. The new story in the
series, Les Sarcophages du 6ème
Continent, illustrated by André Juillard on a story by Yves Sente, was
published in November by Editions Blake et Mortimer. The publisher believes it
will sell almost 600,000 copies, well over the last Goncourt prize. No doubt
this new story will be one of the year’s best sellers. The publication is
accompanied by an impressive exhibition at the Musée de l’Homme in Paris,
followed by another one at the Centre Belge de la Bande Dessinée in Brussels in
March 2004. Lastly a biography, La
Damnation d’Edgar P. Jacobs, by Benoît Mouchart and François Rivière (Ed.
Archimbaud/Le Seuil) provides for the first time a true portrait of this master
of the Brussels school; a tormented, distressed artist, who lived his success
as a curse, and who finished his life in bewilderment and solitude.
A “laser” disc player
The scene takes place in Brussels, in the shop of a
blues record dealer, chaussée d’Alsemberg. An old man pushes the door. He wears
large thick glasses, a heavy coat, he is white-haired and short of breath. He
is a regular customer in the shop, where he usually buys great opera airs this
old baritone appreciates as a connoisseur. The man asks the
dealer:
“I heard about a revolutionary device, capable of
reading discs with the help of a laser beam…”
Edgar P. Jacobs is referring to a compact disc
player, these CD’s now so familiar to us. Ignoring everything about the
technicalities, he has the player installed at home, in Lasne, a small village
in Brabant near Brussels, by the record dealer, Claude Lefrancq. The latter
does not know that, in a few months, he will become the publisher of one of the
greatest comics writers of last century.
A sort of rehabilitation of this old artist, who had
lived in the shadow of Hergé and his journal Tintin, has been going on for some years. He no doubt realised that
his recent fortune owed a lot to the parallel success of comics in general.
After a first great exhibition set up in Brussels in 1968, and after the
turmoil caused to him by the celebrations organised by Jean Van Hamme—the
future script writer of Largo Winch
and XIII—had died down, Jacobs let
go:
“This has been
the consecration of comics in Belgium. We even had the honour of a visit by a
minister, not the minister of culture, but the finance minister, which shows
that comics have become attractive because they are profitable! Maybe I am
nasty, anyway…” True, good old Edgar was malicious, but more than anything
else he was bitter about the fact that this recognition came so late…
The Swordfish contract
Only for about 10 years will our man enjoy the success
that always eluded him and which, for the time being, will not bring him any
luck. In fact the comics boom only came in the 1980s. At that time, the
post-war generation turned comics into a cultural issue. They suddenly ceased
to be what they had been until then, in the words of Greg, the creator of Achille Talon: “an open instigation to juvenile delinquency, an endless catalogue of
nonsense stigmatised by some educators and still feared by some worried parents.”
It is the triumph of adult comics heralded by Pilote, Métal Hurlant, Fluide Glacial. Asterix in the first place, followed by many others, sells
millions.
Jacobs’s encounter with fortune is due to an
exceptional chance, with the help of Claude Lefrancq. The record dealer has
become a regular visitor at Bois des Pauvres, this now gone Lasne neighbourhood
where the great man lived. Jacobs has just received a letter from his
publisher, Guy Leblanc. Having replaced his father at the helm of Tintin, the boss of Editions du Lombard
realises that the contract for Blake
& Mortimer’s first story, The Secret of the Swordfish, is
expiring. In 1951 the Brussels publisher had bought the rights for 30 years
only. At that time nobody thought comics would see such a strong growth.
Leblanc, anxious to keep a best-selling series in his publishing house, sends
Jacobs a new contract, this time written by lawyers fully aware of the
implications of the modern business of entertainment; it contains the clause,
typical in our days, stipulating that the author alienates his rights to the
publisher “for the whole duration of the artistic property”, which currently
means 70 years after the author’s death. Jacobs is flabbergasted! Since he has
no children, he concludes that Le Lombard “speculates on his death!” He will never
sign the new contract with his old publisher, for Claude Lefrancq very
opportunely convinces him to set up with him a new label for the exclusive
publication of his characters, Editions Blake et Mortimer. At the age of 78 the
old cartoonist goes into business!
And he does well: in the first year of republication
of his Swordfish he earns more money
for a single title than he had earned with Le Lombard for the whole series of
his works. But why so late, why only now?
The last one goes to hell...
This lucky concurrence of circumstances is indeed
accompanied by several problems. Apart from the health problems and the
operations to which he will be forced, he will suffer the death, in 1977, of
his second wife Jeanne Quittelier he had married in 1974, after more than 20
years of cohabitation. One by one, Jacobs will lose all his closest companions.
In the same year (1983) he will lose Hergé and his childhood friend Jacques Van
Melkebeke, the first chief-redactor of Tintin
whose lineaments had been used as a model for Professor Mortimer. Without any
direct heirs, almost without family, sick and depressed, Jacobs clings to the
visitors at Bois des Pauvres. Among them, Philippe Biermé, a young employee at
Editions du Lombard who looks after the remaking of print films for his books,
the only one in the printing house who takes the initiative, against the advice
of his superiors, to encourage the author of Blake & Mortimer to try and restore the original drawings and
colours. Jacobs is touched by this attention. He is also very close to the
commercial director of Le Lombard, Louis Bos. He will nominate both as his
heirs.
The Sphynx’s death
This small world, Biermé, Lefrancq, Bos, Labeye and a
few others, among whom there are journalists like Pierre Lebedel or comics
specialists like Claude Le Gallo, will soon be reunited in juridical
associations created to ensure the succession of the Lasne hermit: first the
Fondation Jacobs, holding the archives and the moral right of the artist; Studio
Jacobs, managing the posterity of his graphic work and of the derivative
rights; lastly Editions Blake et Mortimer, the official publisher. The
description of the artist’s last days by Mouchart and Rivière seems like a
chapter from Cousin Pons, Balzac’s
novel telling of the macabre saraband organised around a dying collector: “During the last months of 1986 Edgard
stopped eating, as if he was trying to speed up his end. He did not read or
watch television, he just stayed in his armchair watching the hours go by on
the dial of his pendulum-clock. Weaker than ever, he gives up sleeping on the
first floor and he installs himself on the ground floor, in the “Japanese room”
full of the fetichist memories of his creations. The devoted Alida Goossens
(his neighbour) tries to stimulate his appetite with her soups and desserts.
Sometimes Jacobs obliges by reluctantly swallowing them. In order not to leave
the old man unattended, Alida’s husband installs an interphone permanently
branched between Edgard’s room and their own house. On Friday 20th March 1987,
at 3.00 in the morning, Alida hears for the last time in the walkie-talkie the
chesty cough of her celebrated neighbour. Edgar P. Jacobs died that morning in
solitude and despair.”
The legacy
On Jacobs’s death the financial adventures of Blake & Mortimer are just starting.
For some 15 years Philippe Biermé and Claude Lefrancq will control the Studio
Jacobs and Editions Blake et Mortimer respectively. They will later sell both
for a number of millions. The leader of French comics will find in Blake & Mortimer one of the drivers
of its relaunch when, years later, it will lose its rights for Asterix following a long court case. The
new stories, made by different teams of storywriters and cartoonists, will be
published at regular intervals. Supported by a series of animated features and
next by a live feature film, these actions brought the two British paper heroes
into the leading group of the French-language comics.
Didier Pasamonik
4