Description

Info on: The Yellow Sign / La Marque Jaune / Het Gele Teken

The Yellow Sign (The Yellow M) is the sixth comic album from the Belgian comic series Blake and Mortimer, by Edgar P. Jacobs. It is also the first album in the series to be a full story on its own. As such, this is the third complete story in the series.

It is the most famous story in the series. Apart from that, the album has also become one of the great classics in Belgian and European comic book history. At the end of the 90s, for example, Het Gele Teken (La Marque Jaune) was voted “Comic Album of the Century” several times by Belgian comics connoisseurs. The cover of the album has acquired iconic status.

Originally published in weekly boards in the magazine Tintin between August 6, 1953 and November 10, 1954, the Yellow Mark is the third adventure of Blake and Mortimer, heroes created by the Belgian Edgar Pierre Jacobs (1904-1987) from 1950 A 66-page album was then published by Editions du Lombard in February 1956.

The Yellow Mark is considered the most iconic album in the series. So according to Claude le Gallo, author of Le Monde by Edgar P. Jacobs, it is the heart of Jacob’s work, the “crossroads of its world”.

Mythical post-war Franco-Belgian comic book cover, and undoubtedly of the 9th Art itself, the illustration made by Jacobs for the third adventure of his characters will not have been easy. The author’s first idea is to pay a flamboyant tribute to the theatrical play of light and shadow of German expressionist cinema (Jacobs was also passionate about opera since his discovery of Faust in Brussels in 1917). The entire album is bathed in a detective and fantastic atmosphere, oscillating between film noir and Anglo-Sax mystery novel.

Around these ideas, Jacobs will carry out various cover projects featuring a London city doubly threatened by a stormy climate and a gigantic mark hovering like a Sword of Damocles above the heads of the heroes. An “M” (Maléfique, Mort, Malheur, Malédiction et… Marque) of Evil versus Good. We will also note the ideas of opposition between sky and earth, building / monument and human, cold and warm colors, curved and straight lines: everything contributes to what the visual sends unconsciously – and in particular to the young reader – the notions of imbalance , destructive and evil madness.

Jacobs was a specialist in intriguing titles, with strong fantastico-detective connotations: let us quote here “the case”, “the trap”, “the secret”, “the enigma” and therefore “the mark”. The Yellow Mark is a title inspired by the signature of the key character of the film M le Maudit (Fritz Lang – 1931), a fateful sign representing the Greek letter Mu. The influence of the film Metropolis (Fritz Lang – 1927) can also be noted.