Best 1959 Adventures (10)

By: Joshua Glenn
October 11, 2019

One in a series of 10 posts identifying Josh Glenn’s favorite 1959 adventure novels.

Maurice Tillieux’s Gil Jourdan crime comic Les cargos du crépuscule (English title: Catch as Catch Can).

The Parisian private eye Gil Jourdan made his début in a 1956 issue of Spirou magazine. His rather mercenary attitude towards fighting crime, and his ménage — clumsy but effective Inspector Crouton, wisecracking ex-burglar Crackerjack (Libellule, or “dragonfly,” in the original French), and ace secretary Miss Midge (Queue-de-Cerise, or “cherry-stem”) — are strongly reminiscent of Leslie Charteris’s Simon Templar, though Jourdan is more serious, less devilish than Templar. Jourdan’s adventures would take him to South America and the Middle East, but Les cargos du crépuscule, his fourth outing, is set in postwar Paris; it’s a beautifully drawn, eerily atmospheric story — taking place almost entirely at night. Syringe Joe, bank robber who’d sworn revenge against his lawyer, Samson Louc, makes a dramatic escape from prison — leaping thirty feet at a time. Crouton is assigned to protect Louc; Jourdan and Crackerjack offer their protective services for a fee. But Syringe leaps through a second-floor window and carries Louc off! We only catch glimpses of the action — it’s all very “Murders in the Rue Morgue.” Jourdan returns to the scene of the crime, only to be apprehended by yet another character — which results in a dramatic chase through Paris’s docks, and an escape from a blazing inferno through sewer tunnels. Crackerjack and Miss Midge do some investigating, and turn up important clues to what’s really going on; meanwhile, Jourdan finds himself locked into a laboratory freezer… What next?

Fun facts: Along with Goscinny and Franquin, Tillieux is considered one of the most important contributors to postwar Belgian comics. In 2011, Fantagraphics reissued the book in English translation, as a double album with the third Jourdan adventure Murder By High Tide.

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Best 1959 Adventures (10)

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