Customer Reviews

The Strange Encounter: Blake and Mortimer 5 (Adventures of Blake & Mortimer)

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This is another great Blake & Mortimer comic, now finally in english. There is a great science-fiction story, and the return of past villians.

But let's make a few things clear first.

While Cinebooks has this as their 5th volume in the B&M series they are printing, this is really 15th volume!!!! They even included a list of all the albums in the back of this one. And its one of several NOT done by EP Jacobs, who created the series. This is the second volume done by the team of James Van Hamme & Ted Benoit.

I really wish they would focus on reprinting the EP Jacobs volumes before moving to the post-Jacobs stuff (done after he died).

This volume, is very enjoyable. We got a great s-f story dealing with either aliens or time travel (you'll find out). We get the return of Colonel Orlik AND a major villian from an earlier story. Once again, we get hints of what happened in the first B&M story, Secret of the Swordfish (done in 3 parts). But they have yet to publish this story in English!!!

The next planned volume is the classic SOS Meteor, which is a Jacobs album. It will be followed by another Jacobs album (The Affair of the Necklace) then a non-Jacobs album (The Voronov Plot).

This is the fifth in Cinebook's English-language release of the classic comic series, although like Tintin or Asterix, the books all stand alone.

Mortimer and Blake are a terrific team of British (through a continental perspective) heroes. Mortimer is a grumpy Scottish physicist, Blake is an RAF soldier-spy type. The two have appropriately dashing adventures - atomic science, time travel and the occult are all mixed up with the everyday business of running the Empire. Mortimer and Blake aren't conventional heroes either - making the series more like the continued adventures of Dr. Henry Jones, Senior.

All the books can stand alone, but this is one of my favorites - Mortimer and Blake dash about in the American southwest in a battle to fend off baddies old and new (and past and future, given the time travel!).

Blake & Mortimer is great series. Based on the Edgar P Jacobs, Jean Van Hamme and Ted Benoit created an adventure that is timely, and entertaining.

With the discovery of the recently `deceased' 177 year old Lachlan Macquarrie, a mystery unfolds that leads Blake and Mortimer into a nuclear powered/UFO enhanced mystery. A secret message accompanies the corpse, that is identified as Lachlan, this is equally mysterious. What does "Yellow King 8061, Danger, Light, Plutonium, H Poplar Trees, Temple 1954' mean?

Aided by the FBI and the history of a great, great, great, great, great grandson, the secret is unveiled and a desperate race to save the world (and change the world) has begun.

Cinebook has given us excellent new adventures that appear nostalgaic (check out the vehicles), and yet have a present time point of view. Environmental/Arms race warnings are not new, yet date back to the `50's with the cold war heating up. This book may have originally been published in a larger format as the pages seem cramped with as many as 14 panels per page!

Do not think that this is a juvenile adventure, European series have appealed to all age levels and make no apologies for mature themes. That is one reason why I like this series. Look for "The Francis Blake Adventure" too, it is just as good.

Tim Lasiuta

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