On September 29, 1949 Bob De Moor saw his very first work published in the Tintin weekly. He had been hired by Karel Van Milleghem to aid Eugène Van Nyverseel (aka Evany) with the layout work of Tintin, more precisely to make small drawings, do the lettering etc.

The first story for which Bob De Moor delivered some accompanying drawings can be seen on the left. It’s about a certain Professor Cosinus. Bald, he is confronted with someone suffering from a black hairy tongue, a side-effect of using Penicillin. The affliction is caused by bacteria or fungi in the mouth, which make the tongue appear black and hairy. They can grow to 15 times their normal length actually. Tasty no?

Anyhow, Penicillin can also provoke a sudden hair growth (not just on the tongue) and as a result Professor Cosinus decided to rub his bald head with Penicillin. Little did he know that Penicillin is not only known to cause temporal hair growth, it can also provoke hair loss with people with high blood pressure, rheumatoid arthritis, high blood cholesterol, multiple sclerosis, depression and so on.

We’re not sure what the problem was with Professor Cosinus, but he starts losing his hair the moment he arrives at the table. He leaves ashamed and ridiculed by his fellow academy members. You would have thought that Professor Cosinus was a bit smarter than that, since he is a member of the Science Academy.

The style used here is quite similar to the one he would use for Mieleke & Dolf aka Fee & Fonske aka Bouboule et Noiraud in French which would start to appear later that year.