December 7 2014
Last Friday saw the publication of the 23rd volume of the already classic series that narrates the adventures of Francis Blake and Philip Mortimer, created by Edgar P. Jacobs in 1946, titled The Staff of Plutarch. This time, the authors, Yves Sente for the script and André Juillard for the drawing, have faced the challenge of explaining all the questions left by The Secret of the Swordfish, the So British heroes' first album, with a prequel that carries us to the origins of the cooperation between captain Blake and professor Mortimer, while it makes a tour around the secrets of espionage during Second World War. Below I explain in detail and with arguments my opinion of this new album, joining my review with some strips from the adventure (ptovided by Dargaud). Shall we?
Concerning the script, I agree with those who point out that Yves Sente has done a particulary good work (far better than the one of Jean Dufaux in the previous installment, published in 2013). Explaining a 3rd World War created out of the blue in the story of Jacobs (who, on the other hand, wrote his album week after week for a magazine and therefore could't develop much his explanations previous to the action), and placing all the characters and happenings into an original and coherent story asks for effort and talent. Sente has managed to create a solid, convincing, interesting and intriging plot, something which can be easily appreciated when reading it daily. The number of panels is well distributed, contributing to the story's fluency, and the sequences are placed in a way only at the end the reader realises everything fits. As if this weren't enough, coming home very day, turning on the computer and reading a strip every 24 hours for several months through the Belgian newspaper Le Soir has given me very good memories and feelings.
One of the most criticised parts of the previous album, The Septimus Wave, were the pages in which Étienne Schréder joined Antoine Aubin for helping him follow the publication schedule, resulting in a quality decrease (as I explained in my review of the album). In the 23rd volume, Schréder only inks the backgrounds and the truth is that the result is generally satisfactory. The thin drawing style of the artist remains easily unnoticed, merging well with Juillard's own style, except in the backgrounds of page 58 and in the cover of the pages edition, whose inking could have been better (its composition and colouring are not that bad, but I clearly prefer those from the cover of the strips version). Still, Juillard's drawing is in a very good moment, reaching and sometimes surpassing the quality of his last album, although there are some exceptions, such as several faces. The use of the 'lavis' technique (that is, the one in which a colour is diluted in water to obtain different tones of that colour) in a strip, that you can check out below, happens to be original and appropriate for the scene.
In one way or the other, Juillard reaches the expectations and keeps the quality increase going since his pencil first portrayed the two British heroes in the end of the last century. Knowing he has had a bit more than a year to work on the album, the achieved result is more worthy of merit due to his drawing's regularity. All this, perfectly joined by Madeleine de Mille's colouring, brilliant once more, and that combines the new fashions with the old taste which fits the series so well. The tones used are generally light ones, but with well chosen contrasts that give some relief to the pages, while they also outline the action. The neutral colour backgrounds, that Jacobs started using in his last albums, are used with great skill and accomplish their function of focusing the reader's attention on the characters and of downloading the pages, sometimes with too many detailful backgrounds.
To sum up, we have at last in our hands a Blake and Mortimer with all its letters: with a good script, a great drawing, a very appropriate colouring and a good printing. After The Septimus Wave's disaster, Yves Sente and André Juillard sign a great prequel of the series' first album, which keeps the reader stuck to the album from the beggining until the end, visits key and very interesting places (Scawfell, Gibraltar, Bletchley Park, etc.) and unveils several puzzling questions, creating a background story which offers realism and credibility to the adventures of captain Blake and professor Mortimer. I would even dare say I think it's one of the best continuations of the series, and certainly the best one signed by Sente and Juillard. I also want to add that I most impatiently expect the next adventure of this tandem, with the hope that it is as good or better than the one I've just analysed. A total success.
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