By William Vance & Jean Van Hamme, coloured by Petra (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-039-9
One of the most consistently entertaining and popular adventure serials in Europe, XIII was created by writer Jean Van Hamme (Wayne Shelton, Blake and Mortimer, Lady S.) and artist William Vance (Bruce J. Hawker, Marshal Blueberry, Ramiro).
Van Hamme – born in Brussels in 1939 – is one of the most prolific writers in comics. After academically pursuing business studies he moved into journalism and marketing before selling his first graphic tale in 1968.
Immediately clicking with the public, by 1976 he had also branched out into novels and screenwriting. His big break was the monumentally successful fantasy series Thorgal for Tintin magazine. He then cemented his reputation with mass-market bestsellers Largo Winch and XIII as well as more cerebral fare such as Chninkel and Les maîtres de l’orge.
In 2010 Van Hamme was listed as the second-best selling comics author in France, ranked beside the seemingly unassailable Hergé and Uderzo.
William Vance is the comics nom de plume of William van Cutsem, who was born in 1935 in Anderlecht. After military service in 1955-1956 he studied art at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts and promptly became an illustrator of biographic features for Tintin in 1962. His art is a classical blend of meticulous realism, scrupulous detail and spectacular if understated action.
In 1964 he began the maritime serial Howard Flynn (written by Yves Duval) before graduating to more popular genre work with western Ray Ringo and espionage thriller Bruno Brazil (scripted by “Gregâ€). Further success followed when he replaced Gérald Forton on science fiction classic Bob Morane in Femmes d’Aujourd’hui, (and later Pilote and Tintin).
Constantly working on both serials and stand-alone stories, Vance’s most acclaimed work is his collaboration with fellow Belgian Van Hamme on a contemporary thriller based on Robert Ludlum’s novel The Bourne Identity…
XIII debuted in 1984, originally running in prestigious comics anthology Spirou to great acclaim. A triad of albums were rushed out – simultaneously printed in French and Dutch language editions – before the first year of serialisation ended.
The series was a monumental hit in Europe – although publishing house Dargaud were initially a little slow to catch on – but has fared less well in its many attempts to make the translation jump to English, with Catalan Communications, Alias Comics and even Marvel all failing to maximise the potential of the gritty mystery thriller.
The epic conspiracy thriller of unrelenting mood, mystery and mayhem begins as The Day of the Black Sun (originally Le jour du soleil noir) opens on a windswept, rocky shore where retired Abe‘s quiet day of fishing is ruined after he reels in a body…
The shocking catch is still alive despite being shot in the head, and as Abe’s wife Sally examines the near-corpse she finds a key sewn into his clothes and the Roman numerals for thirteen tattooed in his neck. The area is desolate and remote and the fisherman has already gone for the only medical assistance he can think of: an alcoholic surgeon struck off for operating whilst inebriated…
After a tense, makeshift and rushed procedure ends in miraculous success, the three conspirators agree they can never tell anyone. Old Martha performed a miracle in saving the presumably shipwrecked stranger, but if the authorities ever find out she would face jail for practicing without a license.
There is a further complication. The gunshot victim – a splendid physical specimen clearly no stranger to action or violence – has suffered massive and probably irreversible brain trauma. Although now sound in body he has completely lost his mind. His language skills, social and reflexive conditioning and muscle memories all remain intact, but every detail of his personal life-history has been utterly erased…
Some time later as Martha explains all this to the swiftly recuperating stranger – whom Abe and Sally have named “Alan†after their own dead son – his lost past life explosively intrudes when contract killers invade the remote beach house with guns blazing…
Terrifying skills he has no conception of immediately surface and Alan lethally counters the attack, but too late to save anybody but himself and Martha…
In the aftermath Alan finds a photo of him and a young woman on one of the hitmen and, with Martha’s help, traces the picture to nearby metropolis Eastown. Desperate for answers and certain that more killers must be coming, the human question mark heads off to confront unimaginable danger and hopefully find the answers he so urgently needs…
Eager to find the mystery woman he was clearly intimate with, Alan tracks the photograph to the offices of the local newspaper, which brings him to the attention of a less than honest cop who recognises the amnesiac and makes sinister plans…
The woman in the photo is Kim Rowland, a local widow officially listed as a “missing personâ€. When Alan goes to her house he finds the key he was carrying fits the front door…
Inside is a scene of devastation, but a thorough search utilising gifts he was unaware he possessed turns up another key and a note warning someone named “Jake†that “The Mongoose†has found her and she’s going to disappear…
As he continues his probing Alan/Jake is ambushed by the dirty cop and newspaper Editor Wayne. Gloating Lieutenant Hemmings calls him “Shelton†and demands the return of a large amount of money the baffled amnesiac has no memory of.
Thinking fast, Alan/Jake/Shelton guesses that the new key he found is for a safe-deposit box and bluffs the thugs into taking him to the biggest bank in town…
The bank manager there also knows him as Mr. Shelton and happily escorts him to his private room, but when Hemmings and Wayne examine the briefcase left in Shelton’s deposit box a booby trap goes off. Taking advantage of the confusion their prisoner snatches up the case and expertly escapes from the bank despite the institution rapidly initiating lockdown procedures…
Later in a shabby hotel room the agonised amnesiac considers the huge amount of cash in the case and not for the first time wonders what kind of man he used to be…
Preferring motion to inactivity, Alan prepares to leave and stumbles into a mob of armed killers about to bust into his room. In a blur of lethal activity he escapes to the roof with the thugs in hot pursuit and stumbles into another group led by a man addressed as Colonel Amos…
The chilling executive calls his captive “Thirteenâ€, claiming to have previously dealt with his predecessors XI and XIII over something called the “Black Sun caseâ€â€¦
The Colonel also very much wants to know who Alan is, but has a few shocking facts already at his disposal. The most sensational is a film of the recent assassination of the American President which clearly shows the lone gunman to be none other than the now-appalled Thirteen…
Despite Alan’s heartfelt conviction that he is not an assassin, Amos continues to accuse his memory-wiped captive of being an employee of a criminal mastermind. The Security Supremo wants the man in charge but fails to take Alan’s forgotten instinctive abilities into account and is taken completely by surprise when his prisoner rashly leaps out of a fourth floor window…
Impossibly surviving the plunge and subsequent pursuit, the frantic fugitive heads for the only refuge he knows, but by the time he reaches Martha’s beachside house trouble has beaten him there…
Another band of murderers is waiting; led by a mild-seeming man Alan inexplicably calls The Mongoose. The smug killer expresses surprise and admiration: he thought he’d killed Thirteen months ago…
Tragedy follows an explosion of deadly violence as the agonised amnesiac goes into instinctive action. The henchman are mercilessly despatched – although too late to save Martha – but The Mongoose escapes, promising dire revenge…
With nothing but doubt, confusion and corpses behind him, the mystery man regretfully hops a freight train west and heads toward into an uncertain future…
And so began one of the most compelling and convoluted mystery adventures ever conceived, with subsequent instalments constantly taking the questing Thirteen two steps forward, one step back as he encountered a world of pain and peril whilst tracking down the web of past lives he seemingly led…
Fast-paced, clever and immensely inventive, XIII is a series no devotee of mystery and murder will want to miss.
Original edition © Dargaud Benelux (Dargaud-Lombard SA), 1984 by Van Hamme, Vance & Petra. All rights reserved. This edition published 2010 by Cinebook Ltd.