MARTIN - Lot 64

MARTIN JACQUES MARTIN LEFRANC The Hurricane of Fire Original cover of the Belgian n° 41 of October 14, 1959. Signed. India ink and white gouache on paper 34 × 48 cm (13.39 × 18.9 in.) It has to be said, Jacques Martin's beginnings with Lefranc were somewhat laborious. When he took on the Lefranc series, Hergé's "artistic direction" (i.e., the newspaper's editorial staff) forced him to "fit into the mold", to do things under Jacobs, especially as the latter was finding it increasingly difficult to meet delivery deadlines. The first to complain was, of course, Jacobs himself! Following an agreement with the creator of Blake and Mortimer, Martin agreed to change his style. It was in L'Ouragan de Feu that this change took place. Here, we see the emergence of a more naturalistic drawing style, less schematic than that of Hergé and Jacobs. In L'Ouragan, a historic moment, Martin was still working with four strips, but soon, in Le Mystère Borg (an album published by Casterman), his style became truly original.