Edgar P. Jacobs

Biography

Edgar Félix Pierre Jacobs was born in Brussels in 1904. He recalled drawing from his earliest memories, but his primary passion was dramatic arts and opera. After graduating from commercial school in 1919, he resolved never to work in an office, instead pursuing musical and dramatic training while drawing in his spare time. He took odd jobs at the opera, such as decoration, scenography, and painting, and occasionally worked as an extra.

In 1929 he received the annual Belgian government medal for excellence in classical singing, but the Great Depression severely affected the Brussels artistic community. Between 1919 and 1940 he worked as an extra and baritone singer in opera productions in Brussels and Lille, with occasional small drawing commissions. He then turned permanently to illustration, producing commercial illustrations and contributing to the children's weekly comic magazine Bravo until 1946, after being introduced there by Jacques Laudy.

Bravo sometimes reached a circulation of 300,000. During World War II, when the American comic strip Flash Gordon was banned in Belgium by German occupation authorities, Jacobs was asked to write an ending for the strip, but German censorship stopped this continuation after a few weeks. He then published his first comic strip in Bravo, Le Rayon U (The U Ray), which was largely in the same style as Flash Gordon.