Franco-Belgian comics in English

Ah, yes of course, then that makes sense! I'd mis-remembered the activities of Olrik (his cunning disguise in Gondwana obviously fooled me! ;-)). Good excuse to re-read them!

I agree that the three Paris books could be taken as a loose trilogy, but your point about which prison he's in and when is definitely an even bigger observation, and a plot-hole in the making - perhaps you need to write to Dargaud and point this out?

My thinking had been that it could be considered unnecessary to alter Jacob's timings, but it would be better to think of your re-structure as setting the "new" books further back, rather than bringing Meteors forward.

There's a long item over at The Comics Journal which uses this album's publication as a jumping off point for all things Jacobs, including his colour sense, his relationship with Herge, and his personal background. There's also a link to Jacobs being interviewed on TV which in turn links to a number of Herge appearances.

George

Thanks for flagging up and linking to that article, George - a really interesting read!

While I ponder on what to have for my tea tonight I've run a quick Amazon 'fish' and see that Cinebook have the following series lined up for late 2023:

Redbeard
Michel Vaillant
Rin Tin Can

The slight catch is that, at least in the case of the first two named series, we're not talking about the 'classic' runs, we're talking 'New adventures'/'Legendary Races'. So the Barbe Rouge pair are from 2020/21, and Michel Vaillant from 2022. The Rantanplan book is from the 80s. Given they've burned through the existing Lucky Lukes I suppose this is a logical next step.

I'm not familar with Europe Comics digital output but I am aware that a portion of Cinebook's publications are Digital First so this may just be that the hard copies are finally landing.

Maybe I should have fish?

George