The first episodes of Rork appeared short after Udolfo. Yet, a
difference of style was immediately visible. It didn't look like Paape.
Andreas: I asked André-Paul Duchâteau, who was chief editor of Tintin/Hello BD (fr); Kuifje (nl) back then,
if I could make something for him. He said "yes" and accepted my proposal
about Rork - at least, he could more or less agree with it. So, the first
two, three episodes I made when he was still chief editor.
Rork was influenced by American comics, which I liked and still like:
a bit of adventure, relatively classic comics. Rork was of course the first
thing I made entirely by myself. That's why it was important to me.
I worked hard on it, put a lot of energy in those first episodes.
It was not great, but it was the best I could do at the time.
Tintin/Hello BD (fr); Kuifje (nl) was then not what it had been. Greg was no longer
chief editor. The haydays were gone when André-Paul Duchâteau succeeded him. After that
Vernal took over and the quality deteriorated even more.
The editors were very uninterested. When you delivered the plates you were told:
"Yeah, yeah, put them over there!" Nobody was really interested in them.
Moreover, they published Rork pretty carelessly. Between two episodes was
sometimes a hole of six months, so the readers couldn't understand anything
about it any more. They already thought it was "hard", so you can
imagine what such a frequency of appearance could do... At the popularity poll
I was not even part of the first fifty. I believe that Rork was not at the
right place at Tintin/Hello BD (fr); Kuifje (nl). The comic was appreciated by other authors,
at least so I heard here and there.
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