Blake and Mortimer - Story Characteristics

Story Characteristics

Although the series is (no doubt for reasons of euphony) called Blake and Mortimer, it is Professor Mortimer who is the main protagonist. In the original series, it is mainly he who, through his impulsive character, gets entangled in adventurous circumstances. Blake is the straight man, the serious army officer who comes to the rescue. On the bad-guy side, Colonel Olrik combines characteristics of both heroes.

Blake and Mortimer are sometimes shown to live in the same house, sharing an apartment in the same manner as Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson. Many Belgian comics have had similar themes of confirmed bachelors living together, including Tintin and Captain Haddock, Asterix & Obelix, Spirou & Fantasio and Tif & Tondu.

Jacobs always drew his stories as being contemporary, and so the first few titles have a 1950s look and feel while the last installment looks decidedly 1970s. One exception to this rule is, again, Time Trap, which starts in the present (i.e. early sixties) but whose action, due to a malfunctioning time machine, largely takes place in the 51st century, and includes a short ventures in medieval times and a stopover in the Jurassic period. Post-Jacobs stories are based in the 1950s.

The layout in most of the stories include some similarities: when the adventure begins certain important but unseen events have already taken place: at the beginning of The Yellow Mark, for instance, the titular character has already made himself known through various activities which the reader only learns about when Mortimer reads a newspaper about these events.

Some of the adventures also end with the characters reflecting on what they have learned from their experiences: after his travels through time in Time Trap, Mortimer concludes that rather than dwell on the "good old days" or look forward to a "brighter future", one should be content with the present.