The Last Pharaoh

The Brussels-born comic-book author Edgar P. Jacobs published his first ‘Blake and Mortimer’ adventure in 1946, in the Tintin magazine. This was to be followed, in 1950, by ‘The Mystery of the Great Pyramid’. The publishing houses Blake et Mortimer and Dargaud Benelux, who now own the rights to the renowned British heroes, had long envisaged producing a one-off album, separate from the traditional series and emanating from the personal vision of a writer who was themselves an admirer of Jacobs. Their choice fell naturally on another native of Brussels: François Schuiten.
It was Schuiten, along with Benoît Peeters, who spearheaded the revival of the Autrique House and it seemed to us only right that the original artwork for The Last Pharaoh should find a welcome there.
François Schuiten did not tackle the task alone. He enlisted film-maker Jaco Van Dormael and novelist Thomas Gunzig to flesh out the storyboard for this unique Blake and Mortimer adventure and give it its final polish. Laurent Durieux made a gorgeous work as colorist. The Last Pharaoh is neither a homage nor a nostalgic return to the past. Played out between the Giza Plateau and the hills of Brussels, it offers a new slant on the myth created by Edgar P. Jacobs.