S.O.S. Meteoros

Edgar Pierre Jacobs was born on March 30, 1904, in Brussels, Belgium.
From a very young age, he showed a great fascination for drawing and theatrical performances. His school history notebooks reproduce everyday scenes, battles, architectural or clothing details, along with the care he put into his handwriting, revealing his talent.
After having seen a representation of FaustIn 1917, his other great passion, opera, was born.
In 1919, after graduating from Commercial School, he began working in advertising, which was then entirely illustrated, creating engravings for... jigsaw puzzlescoloring books, games, catalogs for department stores, and posters, an activity he developed in the 1920s.
Simultaneously, Jacobs aspired to a career in opera, having started as an extra in a performance of William Tell at the Théâtre de La Monnaie in 1921. He became a baritone at the Lille Opera in 1929, the year he won a major singing prize.
During the years he was deeply involved in the operatic world, he also took advantage of his graphic talent, designing costumes and creating set models. He worked for ten years at the Lille Opera House until he was mobilized in 1939 with the outbreak of World War II and, later, with the invasion of Belgium, which compromised his career.
With Belgium invaded in 1940, he turned to drawing as a means of livelihood. He contacted Bravo magazine, for which he created a wide variety of illustrations. In 1942, when Bravo stopped accepting proofs of the very popular American comic strip Flash Gordon, Edgar was challenged to continue his adventures under the title "Gordon l'Intrepide". However, due to German censorship, he had to prematurely conclude his work, which aimed to provide a hypothetical continuation of the story originally created by Alex Raymond.
Between 1943 and 1944 he continued working in comics, having been invited by the same magazine to develop a story to replace Flash Gordon. His first comic strip created from scratch was... Le Rayon "U" (The "U" ray), which appeared in the magazine Bravo, in 1943. A second version appeared in 1974 in the magazine Tintin and in a Lombard album.
At the same time, he began collaborating with Hergé, the creator of Tintin, in 1944, participating in Tintin when Hergé felt the need to redraw and color several adventures initially published in black and white. Therefore, he created the background designs and did the coloring for the following Tintin stories: The Blue Lotus, Ottokar's Scepter, The 7 Crystal Balls and The Temple of the SunAs a testament to his good humor, Jacobs didn't hesitate to draw himself, Hergé, and other people known to both of them among the "extras" in some stories. Another collaboration with Hergé involved creating illustrations documenting the history of the navy, aviation, and railroads for the encyclopedia. See and Know.
On September 26, 1946, the inaugural issue of the legendary magazine was published. Tintin, which was marked by the premiere of the series Blake and Mortimer, by Edgar Pierre Jacobs, whose protagonists are an air force captain linked to the secret service and a physicist passionate about archaeology, both British citizens, cultivating a very [unclear/unclear] atmosphere throughout the series. British mid-20th century.
The initial story of the series, The Secret of the Sword (The Secret of the Swordfish), quickly and successfully gained popularity with the magazine's readers, eventually being compiled into two albums, published in 1950 and 1953, thus beginning one of the cult series of European comics.
Then came Le Mystère de la Grande Pyramide (The Mystery of the Great Pyramid), a story also in two parts, published in Tintin between 1950 and 1954 (with albums released in 1954 and 1955), and La Marque Jaune (The Yellow Mark), published in 1953 (album from 1956). This was followed by... The Enigma of Atlantis (The Enigma of Atlantis), from 1955 (album in 1957), SOS Meteors (SOS Meteors), from 1958 (album from 1959), Le Piège Diabolique (The Diabolical Trap), from 1960 (album from 1962), L'Affaire du Collier (The Case of the Necklace), from 1965 (album from 1967) and Les 3 Formulas du Professeur Sato I (Professor Sato's 3 Formulas I), from 1971 (album from 1977), all stories initially published in the magazine Tintin and released as an album by Lombard.
In between, he also created a short story, The Treasure of Tutankhamun (The Treasure of Tutankhamun) for the Tintin, in 1964, recalling the discovery of the famous Egyptian treasure.
The publication of the second volume Professor Sato's 3 Formulas I It was delayed until his death in 1987.
In 1986 he created the Éditions Blake et Mortimer label, which released all the albums in a new format, with new coloring and supplementary pages, as happened in The Secret of the Swordfish, published in three volumes.
After several health and tax problems that marked his final years, he died of Parkinson's disease in Brussels on February 20, 1987, leaving behind a small body of work in terms of the number of titles, but of undeniable narrative and artistic quality, which became an important reference point for Franco-Belgian comics.
The ultimate album, Les 3 Formulas du Professeur Sato II (Professor Sato's 3 Formulas II), whose sketches he left finished, would be completed by Bob de Moor, being published in 1990. In 1996 Jean Van Hamme and Ted Benoit continued the series with great success, to which another pair of authors, Yves Sente and André Juillard, later joined.