Roselyne Bachelot-Narquin, Minister of Culture, pays tribute to Henri Vernes, author and creator of the mythical character of Bob Morane.
A man of adventure, Charles-Henri Dewisne says Henri Vernes was successively an agent of the Belgian intelligence services, engaged alongside the British army during the Second World War, journalist, reporter, novelist and comic book writer!
It was in 1953 that Henri Vernes created the adventurer Bob Morane, which he made evolve in adventures first published in series for Marabout Junior.
Bob Morane, a French polytechnician who distinguished himself during the England campaign, is a polyglot and an expert in the handling of weapons, which allows him to emerge glorious from all his vigilante fights. Thanks to Henri Vernes' pen and the art of twisting, the adventures of his hero, to whom he maliciously lent part of his identity, were immediately a huge success. Always triumphant and generous, Bob Morane has offered thousands of escape pages to generations of readers of all ages.
The immense graphic potential of the adventures of this flamboyant hero quickly inspired other authors and artists. Bob Morane is thus very early transposed into comics for which Henri Vernes adapts the scenario (since 1959, in Women of today then in Pilot and Tintin’s diary), in cartoons, television series and films. In 1982, the Indochine group dedicated a song to him (The adventurer), became a tube, illustrating the anchor of the character in the collective imagination. Bob Morane is definitely the embodiment of the hero of the modern era.
In parallel to this series, Henri Vernes has published other books, black novels, short stories and espionage under a dozen pseudonyms or his real name.
Roselyne Bachelot-Narquin pays tribute to the memory of this talented writer who invented a new fantasy universe and a character who knew so well through the ages.