In 1947, the Brussels-based editor Editions Campéador published the album “Le Mystère du Vieux Château Fort” by R. De Moor and J. Van Looveren. R(obert) De Moor being Bob De Moor and J. Van Looveren his brother-in-law John Van Looveren. It was the first French book Bob De Moor would publish based on a scenario by his brother-in-law and if you look closely, you’ll see that it was very much in the style of Walt Disney with lots of ’rounded’ characters. Surprisingly enough, the book never got published into Dutch.

This will soon change as Brabant Strip dedicates its 100th album in the Fenix Collection to yet another Bob De Moor album, namely this very “Le Mystère du vieux chateau fort”. The album – whose Dutch title is unknown yet – will be released as a hard cover, full color, in Dutch. Word of warning, though; we were told that this book would very quickly be sold out upon release in pre-sales only. We recommend you either sign up with Brabant Strip or contact a local (preferably Flemish) comic store to get hold of it on pre-order.

Small detail. I picked up a copy of this album in my early teens on some local flee market, without knowing that R. De Moor was actually Bob De Moor. Much to my surprise, I discovered years later that that nicely drawn fairytale was actually by Bob De Moor himself. I had paid 50 BEF (roughly 1,25 Euro) for an album that is now reaching around 180 Euro on eBay and related auction sites.

Back to “Le Mystère du vieux chateau fort”; John Van Looveren wanted to write some more of these fairy tales and had started work on the follow-up, “Prince Hara-Toeri”. But this album would never be completed. We’ll be showing you some exclusive scans of some of the work Bob De Moor completed for this unpublished book in the next weeks.