THE ADVENTURES OF BLAKE & MORTIMER

Blake and Mortimer are agents with MI5.

Well, in truth, only Captain Francis Blake is an operative with the British intelligence service. Philip Mortimer is a professor who teams up with Blake (again, more accurately, Blake teams with Mortimer) to handle a lot of serious matters which MI5 needs to be concerned with for the safety of the British Empire. The time frame for these adventures starts shortly after the end of the Second World War and extends into the mid-60s, but there are some flashbacks to when these two gentlemen first met and became working companions back in the 30s.

Much of Blake's job is countering the efforts of foreign nations from dismantling what is left of the extensive British Empire, something he is well trained to do, but he finds to his amazement and sometimes disconcertion that there are other, far more astonishing dangers imperiling the Realm. Things which will involve vast armies of a secret Yellow Peril complete with incredible weaponry, time travel, and so on. Blake is stalwart throughout all this but might have fared much worse were it not for the highly impressive intelligence of his friend and partner, Mortimer. As the years go by, his position inside MI5 will increase until he becomes the head of the intelligence agency but for the most part as we follow him, he is very much an active field agent, not to mention a master of disguise.

As for Philip Angus Mortimer, he now holds a professorship at a prestigious English university though his stature is such that he is able to break away from his duties there at any time to pursue his many and eclectic interests, not to mention the numerous times he is forced to come up with explanations for the seemingly unexplainable and find solutions to impossible problems. Mortimer is from Scottish roots but was born and largely raised in India, heading back to the United Kingdom when his education warranted it. On paper, Mortimer's specialty is nuclear physics but he truly is a Renaissance man and knows a great deal about a great number of topics. For all his extremely high intelligence, however, Mortimer is routinely poking his toe into unknown waters and finding himself in a lot of trouble as a result, needing someone as stalwart and dependable as Blake to rescue him. By the same token, when the two are faced with unusual artifacts or advanced weaponry or the like, it is Mortimer who leads the way.

Mortimer is of average height and a solid build, likely in his 40s with distinctive red hair and a full beard of matching color. Indoors he favors a lab coat and outside he is usually found in a trenchcoat. Blake is a clean-shaven man of similar age, in excellent physical shape with moderately short blond hair and often with a mustache, sometimes pencil-thin but occasionally a bit fuller. He is invariably seen in proper Army uniform

It would not be proper to talk about the adventures of these two intrepid adventurers without also mentioning the dastardly Colonel Olrik. This very dangerous troublemaker is of Western descent, exact country of origin escapes me though there is an indication it is Hungary, who has no allegiance really to anyone. He might be a major player in some would-be world conqueror or he might be involved in some ordinary (well, nothing Olrik does is ever really ordinary) espionage or sabotage. We, along with Blake and Mortimer, encounter Olrik in the first adventure and their warring will continue in one form or another in nearly every single mission we have of them.

Note, for clarification, a phrase I found as a tagline for these adventures is: "In a past almost, but not entirely, like ours". The world of Blake and Mortimer is ours, just different, such as in there having been a Third World War almost immediately after the Second. Also, things like telepathy and other paranormal abilities, as well as time travel and nasty things underground are unusual but they still exist.

I am fascinated by this series on several levels.

The first is the interesting relationship between these two. Blake is a agent of the British Intelligence community, out to learn more about the 'other side' as well as keeping bad guys from learning too much about his side. He is military minded and pretty serious. Mortimer, on the other hand, is scientifically motivated, the urge to learn and understand is strong in him and he really does not like not knowing just on its own. Together they make a darn good team.

The second is the length of time that interest from a creative point of view was strong enough to create adventures. Edgar P. Jacobs started the series in 1950 and would come back to it now and then for a quarter century. And then, a couple of decades later, several other people, like Jean Van Hamme and Andre Juillard and Yves Sente, would resurrect this pair for more exciting adventures. And they would continue to visit the pair off and on for another quarter century and more.

The third is the mediums in which Blake and Mortimer would have their stories told. Graphically, of course, in pages of TinTin and then their own magazines. A radio play. An animated television series 45 years after the pair was created. Numerous unsuccessful attempts at movie versions. And lately, a couple of games, one board and one video. These two are even remembered well enough by some to be used in parodies of them.

And yet, if you went up to, I figure, most people on the street and mentioned Blake and Mortimer, you would get a whole lot of blank faces.