“Lost in the infernal valley / The hero’s name is Bob Morane / In search of the Yellow Shadow / The bandit’s name is Mister Kali Jones…” Further away : “And suddenly looms up against the wind / The true hero of all time / Bob Morane against any jackal / The adventurer against any warrior…”
We couldn’t help but wink at Adventurer, the Indochina hit, which tells all about Bob Morane, one of the great paper adventurers of the 1950s and 1960s, whom Nicola Sirkis had discovered at 12, while he was a boarder in Belgium. “At that age, for us, it could only be a model. We dreamed of becoming Bob Morane… ”
207 adventures
Bob Morane is French, eternally 33 years old, multilingual, expert in combat sports and weapons, fearless vigilante against pirates, space monsters, the disturbing Miss Ylang-Ylang or her sworn enemy, the Shadow yellow… He rubs shoulders with various secret services around the world. “Orphan of father and mother, he was brought up in Brittany by an old aunt”, Wikipedia reminds …
Born in Ath, near Tournai, Belgium, October 16, 1918, Henri Vernes – Charles-Henri Dewisme of his real name – is also a traveler. He himself was an agent of the Belgian intelligence services, then the British during the Second World War.
Journalist, he was approached in the early 1950s by the Belgian publisher Marabout, to launch a new collection for young people. Under his pen, Bob Morane has experienced the trifle of 207 adventures, The Infernal Valley, in 1953, at The gray gold of Bolivia, in 2012.
40 Million Bob Morane Books Sold
If Henri Vernes also created other lesser-known characters in other novels, he sold nearly 40 million Bob Morane books worldwide. His hero also became a comic book character, adapted by Henri Vernes himself, of which William Vance was the most iconic designer.
Henri Vernes has inspired more than one writer. Recently the bestselling author Bernard minier confided to us: “In the early 1970s, when I was 10 years old, I started reading The Adventures of Bob Morane. And I started to write little stories, inspired by those of Henri Vernes… ”
Interviewed by the Quebec daily Press, in March 2020, in his Brussels apartment, surrounded by masks, statuettes and other paintings brought back from his distant travels, Henri Vernes said that if he wrote a Bob Morane today, the coronavirus would be “An invention of the Yellow Shadow!” “
He admitted, he who could write a Bob Morane in two months, that not all were good. On the other hand, The panther of the highlands and A scent of Ylang Ylang were “More than good Bob Morane, from good suspense books. But if I had written them in simple books, we wouldn’t have wanted them. It was the name of Bob Morane that interested people… ”
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