VANCE

WILLIAM VANCE ◊ BOB MORANE The Emperor of Macau (T.27), Dargaud 1980 Original plate no. 13 (marked 14), prepublished in Le Journal de Tintin no. 180 February 20, 1979. Signed. Indian ink and white gouache on paper 25.4 × 34.8 cm (10 × 13.7 in.) Bob Morane is mistakenly considered a secondary production by William Vance. Yet it was in this series, based on the novels and also with dialogue by Henri Vernes, that he perfected the graphic grammar that was to prove so successful in the Bruno Brazil and XIII series. But for the time being, he had to produce. The pages were published every week in Femmes d'Aujourd'hui, a women's magazine that offered some financial stability to William Vance, who was beginning to feel the pinch of the publishing ups and downs of his scriptwriter Greg, who had moved from Lombard to Dargaud. It's worth noting that Vance isn't very particular about the text: the boat that takes his hero from Hong Kong to Macao is, according to the text, a steamer... It's actually a sailboat...