Character page for the comic book Blake and Mortimer.
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Blake
Captain Francis Blake
"By Jove!"
Voiced by: Robert Guilmard (French, animated series)
A Welsh pilot and agent of MI5 and Philip Mortimer's best friend. The more action-oriented of the pair.
- Ace Pilot: He was trained as a pilot during World War II, and he's the main pilot of the Swordfish fighter rocket plane.
- British Stuffiness: Downplayed. He's quite calm and level headed in most situations, as required for a Brit working in the intelligence service, though just like Mortimer he happens to show emotions (especially surprise) in a lot of situations. See Stiff Upper Lip below.
- The Captain: His rank.
- Catchphrase: "By Jove!" Some of the continuation albums remind you he's actually Welsh by adding "Dewi Sant!" ("Saint David!")
- Cultured Warrior/Officer and a Gentleman: British, posh, polite, member of the Centaur Club, etc.
- Frontline General:
- He isn't exactly a Desk Jockey, as one can tell by how many bullets have been fired at him. Ironically, he spends less time leading his troops than being the only troops available... And one of the few instances he does lead troops (a squad of MI6 operatives during The Curse of the Thirty Denarii) ends as a fiasco.
- Heterosexual Life-Partners : To Mortimer. However, the near absence of any meaningful female characters in Jacobs' work makes any
Ho Yay ship between the two extremely easy. - Lesser Star: Despite his name coming first in the title, Blake tends to play second fiddle to Mortimer, who is usually the viewpoint character. The post-Jacobs albums even the score by giving Blake more prominence in some stories.
- Made of Iron : Downplayed. He can occasionally suffer injury like any man, but the really extraordinary thing is how many injuries he has shrugged off over the whole of his adventures.
- Scientist vs. Soldier: Inverted, he's military, but the scientist Philip Mortimer is his best friend, and they'll do anything to protect each other.
- Stiff Upper Lip: As mentioned above, he's both British, and a soldier working at MI-5, so he's able to keep calm even in gunfights. One or two Heroic BSODs can be seen throughout the series, mostly when he's led to believe that Mortimer is dead. It happens frequently. Interestingly, he also comes close to losing it when Nastasia Wardynska's cover is blown and she is interrogated at the Lubianka, going so far as to rescue her himself, which is an incredibly dangerous thing to do when you are the head of MI5.
Mortimer
Professor Philip Mortimer
Voiced by: Michel Papineschi (French, animated series)
A Scottish scientist (born in India), presented as an expert in nuclear physics, but really just at ease in every scientific field. He is Blake's best friend, and theoretically the less action-oriented, although he gets far more than his fair share of emotions.
- Absent-Minded Professor: Averted. Mortimer is extremely competent and almost always very level-headed.
- Badass Bookworm: Mortimer is a renowned scientist, but is more than able to handle himself in a fight. He knows how to use firearms or blades expertly, and in hand-to-hand combat, if he isn't taken by surprise or vastly outnumbered, you can expect him to take care of any mook attacking him.
- Distressed Dude: He usually investigates alone and gets captured, leading Blake to rescue him. But he does find ways to escape.
- For Science!: Mortimer is guilty of falling into this sometimes... In The Time Trap, he tests a time-travelling machine built by a deceased Mad Scientist whom he himself helped to defeat in a previous adventure... Not the greatest idea to step into that device, but Mortimer does so anyway.
- Good Smoking, Evil Smoking: Mortimer often smokes his heavy wooden pipe, which doesn't prevent him from being fit enough to fight crime and punch mooks with impressive efficiency.
- Made of Iron: Like his friend Blake, Mortimer has never suffered what would be an automatically lethal injury to a normal human at once, but over the course of his adventures he's shrugged off enough to kill a lot of people several times. So far he has managed to survive being punched (a lot), shot (a lot too), drugged (a lot), poisoned, stabbed, irradiated, strangled, put into fires... At this point he might in fact have sustained more damage than Blake, who's a soldier.
- Omnidisciplinary Scientist: Oh so much. Mortimer is presented as an expert in nuclear physics, but he has demonstrated a deep knowledge of so many other fields that one might wonder how he might have learned all of that in such a comparatively short lifespan. To name a few : Archeology (Egyptology and Ancient Greece), meteorology, history, robotics, astronomy... He also speaks fluent French and Ancient Greek.
- Scientist vs. Soldier: Inverted. He's the scientist, but military man Blake is his best friend. In The Secret of the Swordfish arc, Mortimer was the main designer of the eponymous futuristic, nuclear-powered fighter plane, while Blake was the one who would fly it.
- Wide-Eyed Idealist: Philip was this in his youth. Despite the rising tension between Indians and British colonists, he still thought that his friendship with Sushil could transcend such divisions.
Olrik
Colonel Olrik
Voiced by: Mario Santini (French, animated series)
The recurrent main antagonist, Olrik is described as a "ruthless adventurer" by the author. He is first introduced in The Secret of the Swordfish as The Dragon to the dictator Basam-Damdu, and comes back later, generally as a world-class criminal.
- Affably Evil / Faux Affably Evil: he walks the line between these two tropes, with his politeness being sometimes genuine - such as him complimenting Blake and Mortimer's skills - and other times skin-deep.
- Archenemy: The most recurrent of Blake and Mortimer's foes, by far.
- Dastardly Whiplash: He sports a thin moustache.
- The Dragon: Nearly all of the stories involves Olrik working for someone.
- It's Personal with the Dragon: Inverted. Olrik has a very personal vendetta against Blake and Mortimer which is never satisfied due to his employer usually ordering Olrik to keep them alive for one reason or another.
- Evil Laugh: He wouldn't be an acceptable villain without one.
- Good Smoking, Evil Smoking: Contrasted with Mortimer's Good Smoking pipe, he smokes cigarettes with a cigarette holder, which is typically aristocratic Evil Smoking.
- Joker Immunity: He ends up surviving even the craziest ordeals in order to come back later (often in the next album). This is best shown in "Atlantis Mystery" where he somehow escaped the collapsing Atlantis while the rest of the album's villains drowned. It runs out in Professor Sató's Three Formulae.
- Killed Off for Real: He finally kicks off in Professor Sató's Three Formulae. The following books are constantly set before this one to ensure Olrik makes an appearance.
- Noble Demon: Olrik has a certain degree of nobility. In The Call of Moloch, Olrik let Mortimer live even though he had him at his mercy. Olrik reasoned that the professor cured his mental state following The Yellow M, and The Septimus Wave and they shall meet again some other time. He also wants Blake and Mortimer to realize that their worst enemy saved the world.
- Omniglot: According to him, he is fluent in many Slavic languages.
- Smart People Play Chess: Olrik is very good at playing chess. Too bad for him that never translates into victories on the field.
Septimus
Doctor Jonathan Septimus
Voiced by: Hervé Bellon (French, animated series)
A psychiatrist who conducted research on a brain wave called 'Mega Wave'. He built a machine that emits said wave and uses it to control the mind of Olrik, using him to commit crimes as "The Yellow Mark", as well as the mind of the people who screwed him.
- Evil Genius: Evidently doesn't use his scientific genius for benevolent purposes.
- Four Eyes, Zero Soul: He wears thick glasses, and he's a diabolical scientist.
- Hate Sink: States that a part of the brain, the Mega Wave, could be used for brainwashing purposes. After scathing articles attacked his book, his publisher James Thornley instigated libel action against scathing press articles attacking the book and died after losing the case. After meeting a mind-raped Olrik, Septimus brainwashed him through his Mega Wave and had him commit robberies all across London, before having him kidnap all of those who attacked his book and brainwashing them as well, forcing them to constantly apologize to him. He also sent Olrik after Blake and Mortimer to kill them, and verbally abuses him when he fails, even threatening to kill him. While he didn't deserve to deal with the press attacking him, especially since his theories turned out to be right, he became a much worse person than those who humiliated him.
- Hypno Ray: The Mega Wave works like one.
- Mad Scientist: His researches led to a way to make people his puppets.
- Pen Name: Used the alias "John Wade" when he wrote his book about the Mega Wave.
- Revenge: Wants to take revenge on the scientist, journalist, and judge who made him lose his trial.
- Some Kind of Force Field: The Mega Wave can also be used to project a force field that's powerful enough to render someone Immune to Bullets.
Basam-Damdu
Emperor Basam-Damdu
The Emperor of the Yellow Empire who starts World War III in order to rule the world.
- Big Bad: Absolute ruler of the "Yellow Empire" (a fantasy counterpart to Tibet), and main villain of the Secret of the Swordfish story arc.
- The Caligula: Basam Damdu proves to be nothing more than a power hungry despot that would rather destroy the world than admit defeat.
- The Emperor: He is the ruler of the Yellow Empire.
- Hate Sink: Despite his claims of wanting peace, he proceeds to attack and take over the world, capturing the world's major capitals. When the international resistance started to fight back, Basam-Damdu and his High Council put the blame on Olrik, Basam-Damdu's right hand, threatening, in two days, to send someone to torture Mortimer if Olrik doesn't manage to force Mortimer into revealing the Swordfish's plans. Basam-Damdu doesn't even care for his own empire, attempting to use its nuclear weapons to destroy the world out of spite when the resistance starts winning.
- Race Lift: The 1997 animated series makes him white (along with not naming him), and overall bowdlerizes his empire's features and origins from Yellow Peril to generic Commie Nazis.
- Sanity Slippage: Emperor Basam Damdu as his global empire slips through his fingers. He only appears in a limited number of scenes, but his transition from Inscrutable Oriental in his early appearances to Hitler-like temper tantrums at the end is very noticeable all the same.
- Take Over the World: Unlike a great many villains, the Yellow Empire actually succeed, conquering the entire world in an atomic blitzkrieg at the beginning of the story. This is slightly more plausible when you remember that most of the world in this era was still ruled by colonial empires: all the Empire had to do was conquer the colonial power in order to inherit all of their colonies. The difficulties of keeping the world under their boot are also alluded to, as the ruling council is shown facing opposition from all over the quarters, and ridicule Olrik's attempts to assure them that everything is under control.
- Taking You with Me: Once it's clear the Yellow Empire is doomed, Basam tries to fire off all his nuclear missiles at once.
