Writer Henri Vernes, creator of Bob Morane, is dead
Belgian writer Henri Vernes, here in Paris in 1993. AFP - PIERRE VERDY
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Belgian writer Henri Vernes died Sunday July 25 at the age of 102.
He was the creator of the adventurer Bob Morane, hero of a series of more than 200 novels of which nearly 40 million copies have been sold worldwide.
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He was the father of Bob Morane, the hero with nerves of steel and a magnetic gaze sung by the Indochine group in 1982. Henri Vernes passed away on Sunday "
from a general weakening
", Jacky told AFP Legge, curator of the Folklore Museum of Tournai who dedicated a permanent exhibition space to the author after his centenary at the end of 2018.
“
He was someone who had kept an incredible memory.
That's what surprised me every time I saw him.
He kept a memory of the facts, the people, the places where they had met them really phenomenal.
He had a faculty to tell us again, to make us passionate about what he had lived,
”he confided.
Equally endowed with a fertile imagination, Henri Vernes kept, throughout his life, the passion for writing and the pleasures of life, with a malice and an energy that made him forget his old age.
"
I would still like to write a hundred books, court a few ladies and for the rest I leave everything to the lot,
" he declared to the French-speaking radio and television channel RTBF on the occasion of his 100th birthday.
Originally created for young readers of the Marabout editions, the character of Bob Morane quickly seduced a much larger audience and largely inspired the future parents of many adventure heroes, often for the cinema, such as Indiana Jones.
Almost 40 million copies of Bob Morane books have been sold.
Immediate success
Charles-Henri Dewisme, his real name, was born in Ath, in Wallonia (south), on October 16, 1918. From the age of 18, he preferred to travel, especially in China, rather than study with the Jesuits in Tournai.
Back in Europe, he worked for the Belgian and English secret services during the war, was a journalist in Paris, a correspondent for a Lille daily and an American press agency.
"
I attended Saint-Germain-des-Près and I made Juliette Gréco dance, it didn't go any further,
" he joked.
After a few texts that cannot find publishers, in 1953 he signs his first Bob Morane (
The Infernal Valley
, where the hero fights in New Guinea against formidable emerald traffickers).
The success is immediate, the Morane adventure begins ... Some years, a book comes out every two months.
The covers are neat.
Sometimes they take the reader to parallel worlds, to science fiction.
After the bankruptcy of Marabout in 1978, the series continued elsewhere, but sales fell.
However, the author perseveres.
In 2009, according to the bobmorane.fr site, the last one appeared, number 222,
Alerte aux V1
.
Un aventurier conjugation in imperfect subjunctive
Gray eyes and brush hair, 1m85, Bob Morane was invariably 33 years old.
He was French, ex-squadron commander, hero of the Battle of Britain, did not lack composure.
He was a martial arts specialist, a fearless vigilante against pirates, space monsters, the disturbing Miss Ylang-Ylang or her nemesis, the Yellow Shadow.
There was no sex - a taboo theme in children's literature - in these fairly well-written books, where it was not uncommon to come across, here and there, an imperfect subjunctive.
Widely translated (including in Russian and Japanese), the adventures of Morane and his pal, a beefy red-haired whiskey lover, the aptly named Bill Ballantine, will never know the honors of the big screen, unlike James Bond, another hero of post-war.
On the other hand, the comic strip, in his Belgian kingdom, very early on took hold of a hero born on his land: in 1959, Bob Morane was adapted with
L'oiseau de feu
, drawn by Dino Attanasio.
A variation which will be followed by 72 others under the pencil of Gerald Forton, William Vance - the designer of XIII - and Coria.
Henri Vernes also created in the 1980s a naughty series, "Don", where the hero's adventures always end in bed.
This great reader of American black novels finally wrote a number of fictions under different pseudonyms (Gaston Bogard, Jacques Colombo, Lew Shannon etc).
In 2012, he signed his Memoirs.
This pen marathoner lived in the Brussels municipality of Saint-Gilles, surrounded by masks, statuettes or paintings brought back from his travels.
“
It may sound strange, but I never dreamed of Bob Morane.
I wrote, I delivered my texts and I forgot them immediately.
But, thanks to him, I had the means to live well
, ”he said in 2012.
(
With
AFP)
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