''The Adventures of Jo, Zette and Jocko'' is a
Franco-Belgian comics series created by
Hergé
Georges Prosper Remi (; 22 May 1907 – 3 March 1983), known by the pen name Hergé (; ), from the French pronunciation of his reversed initials ''RG'', was a Belgian cartoonist. He is best known for creating ''The Adventures of Tintin'', ...
, the writer-artist best known for ''
The Adventures of Tintin
''The Adventures of Tintin'' (french: Les Aventures de Tintin ) is a series of 24 bande dessinée#Formats, ''bande dessinée'' albums created by Belgians, Belgian cartoonist Georges Remi, who wrote under the pen name Hergé. The series was one ...
''. The heroes of the series are two young children, brother and sister Jo and Zette Legrand, and their pet
chimpanzee
The chimpanzee (''Pan troglodytes''), also known as simply the chimp, is a species of great ape native to the forest and savannah of tropical Africa. It has four confirmed subspecies and a fifth proposed subspecies. When its close relative th ...
Jocko, plus their parents, Mr Legrand, Jo and Zette’s father, aerospace engineer and designer, and Mrs Legrand, Jo and Zette’s mother, housewife and Mr Legrand’s wife.
Jo, Zette and Jocko appear on the rear covers of some ''The Adventures of Tintin'' comic books, but never appear in the stories. A few Jo, Zette and Jocko comics allude to characters or events in ''The Adventures of Tintin'', such as the Maharaja of Gopal (briefly mentioned in ''
The Castafiore Emerald
''The Castafiore Emerald'' (french: link=no, Les Bijoux de la Castafiore) is the twenty-first volume of ''The Adventures of Tintin'', the comics series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. It was serialised weekly from July 1961 to September 1962 in ...
'') appearing as a prominent character, and a portrait of Captain Haddock in the Legrand house.
Synopsis
The following are the five ''Jo, Zette and Jocko'' titles, both in English and French, which are published between 1951 and 1957.
Characters
The Legrand Family
Jo
Jo Legrand is the oldest of the Legrand children. He is the son of Mr and Mrs Legrand.
Zette
Zette Legrand is the youngest of the Legrand children. She is the sister of Jo Legrand and the daughter of Mr and Mrs Legrand.
Jocko
Jocko is Jo and Zette’s pet chimpanzee. He is the cheekiest primate character.
Mr Legrand
Mr Legrand is Jo and Zette’s father. He works for S.A.F.C.A. (a French Aerospace Company) as a designer and aviation engineer.
Mrs Legrand
Mrs Legrand is Jo and Zette’s mother and also Mr Legrand’s wife. She looks after her children at home.
Recurring characters
Mr. Pump
Mr. John Archibald Pump was an American multimillionaire. In ''Mr Pump’s Legacy,'' he appeared briefly before being killed in a car accident. He leaves behind his two nephews, William and Fred Stockrise.
Werner and Charlie Brooke
Werner Brooke and Charlie Brooke are the two villains in both volumes of The Adventures of Jo, Zette and Jocko: ''Mr Pump’s Legacy'' and ''Destination New York.''
Fred and William Stockrise
Fred Stockrise and William Stockrise are Mr Pump’s two nephews. They are also both villains. Alongside Werner and Charlie Brooke, the Stockrise brothers also appear in both volumes of The Adventures of Jo, Zette and Jocko: ''Mr Pump’s Legacy'' and ''Destination New York.''
Professor Nielsen
Professor Nielsen is Jo and Zette’s explorer who looked after them when Jo and Zette’s plane crash landed in the North Pole.
Others
*The mad scientist (''The Manitoba No Reply'' & ''The Eruption of Karamako'')
*Maharajah of Gopal (''The Valley of the Cobras'')
History
Background
Beginning a series of newspaper supplements in late 1928, Abbé
Norbert Wallez
Abbé Norbert Wallez (19 October 1882 – 24 September 1952) was a Belgian priest and journalist. He was the editor of the newspaper ''Le Vingtième Siècle'' (''The Twentieth Century''), whose youth supplement, ''Le Petit Vingtième'', first publ ...
founded a supplement for children, ''
Le Petit Vingtième
''Le Petit Vingtième'' (, ''The Little Twentieth'') was the weekly youth supplement to the Belgium, Belgian newspaper ''Le Vingtième Siècle'' ("The Twentieth Century") from 1928 to 1940. The comics series ''The Adventures of Tintin'' first app ...
'' (''The Little Twentieth''), which subsequently appeared in ''Le XXe Siècle'' every Thursday. Carrying strong Catholic and fascist messages, many of its passages were explicitly
anti-semitic
Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism.
Antis ...
. For this new venture, Hergé illustrated ''
L'Extraordinaire Aventure de Flup, Nénesse, Poussette et Cochonnet'' (''The Extraordinary Adventure of Flup, Nénesse, Poussette and Cochonnet''), a comic strip authored by one of the paper's sport columnists, which told the story of two boys, one of their little sisters, and her inflatable rubber pig. Hergé was unsatisfied, and eager to write and draw a comic strip of his own. He was fascinated by new techniques in the medium – such as the systematic use of speech bubbles – found in such American comics as
George McManus
George McManus (January 23, 1884 – October 22, 1954) was an American cartoonist best known as the creator of Irish immigrant Jiggs and his wife Maggie, the main characters of his syndicated comic strip, ''Bringing Up Father''.
Biography
...
' ''
Bringing up Father
''Bringing Up Father'' is an American comic strip created by cartoonist George McManus. Distributed by King Features Syndicate, it ran for 87 years, from January 2, 1913, to May 28, 2000.
The strip was later titled ''Jiggs and Maggie'' (or ''M ...
'',
George Herriman
George Joseph Herriman III (August 22, 1880 – April 25, 1944) was an American cartoonist best known for the comic strip ''Krazy Kat'' (1913–1944). More influential than popular, ''Krazy Kat'' had an appreciative audience ...
's ''
Krazy Kat
''Krazy Kat'' (also known as ''Krazy & Ignatz'' in some reprints and compilations) is an US, American newspaper comic strip, by cartoonist George Herriman, which ran from 1913 to 1944. It first appeared in the ''New York Journal-American, New Yor ...
'' and
Rudolph Dirks
Rudolph Dirks (February 26, 1877 – April 20, 1968) was one of the earliest and most noted comic strip artists, well known for ''The Katzenjammer Kids'' (later known as ''The Captain and the Kids'').
Dirks was born in Heide, Germany, to Joh ...
's ''
Katzenjammer Kids
''The Katzenjammer Kids'' is an American comic strip created by Rudolph Dirks in 1897 and later drawn by Harold Knerr for 35 years (1914 to 1949).[Léon Degrelle
Léon Joseph Marie Ignace Degrelle (; 15 June 1906 – 31 March 1994) was a Belgian Walloon politician and Nazi collaborator. He rose to prominence in Belgium in the 1930s as the leader of the Rexist Party (Rex). During the German occupatio ...]
, stationed there to report on the
Cristero War
The Cristero War ( es, Guerra Cristera), also known as the Cristero Rebellion or es, La Cristiada, label=none, italics=no , was a widespread struggle in central and western Mexico from 1 August 1926 to 21 June 1929 in response to the implementa ...
.
Publication
In late 1935 Hergé was visited by Abbot Courtois and Abbot Pihan, the editors of ''Cœurs Vaillants'' ("Valiant Hearts"), a French Catholic newspaper that was publishing ''The Adventures of Tintin''. Courtois was often unhappy with elements of Hergé's work, and had recently complained about a scene in his latest story, ''
The Broken Ear
''The Broken Ear'' (french: link=no, L'Oreille cassée, originally published in English as ''Tintin and the Broken Ear'') is the sixth volume of ''The Adventures of Tintin'', the comics series by the Belgian cartoonist Hergé. Commissioned by ...
'', in which the two antagonists drown and are dragged to
Hell
In religion and folklore, hell is a location in the afterlife in which evil souls are subjected to punitive suffering, most often through torture, as eternal punishment after death. Religions with a linear divine history often depict hell ...
by demons. On this occasion, he asked Hergé to create new characters who would be more relateable for their young readership. Whereas Tintin had no parents and did not go to school, they wanted a series in which the protagonists had a family and acted more "normal"; they also requested that these characters have their adventures in France.
Hergé did not want to displease the editors, recognising that ''Cœurs Vaillants'' was his only foothold in the French market at the time. He later related that "I happened to have some toys at home just then, for an advertising project I was working on, and among them was a monkey named Jocko. And so I based a new little family around Jocko, really just to please the gentlemen from ''Cœurs Vaillants'', telling myself they might have the right idea." Taking on ''Jo, Zette, & Jocko'' alongside ''The Adventures of Tintin'' and ''Quick & Flupke'', Hergé soon found himself overworked, and put the latter series on the back burner.
The first ''Jo, Zette & Jocko'' adventure was titled ''The Secret Ray'', and began serialisation in ''Cœurs Vaillants'' on 19 January 1936. It would continue to appear in the newspaper in installments until June 1937, throughout being printed in red and black. Several months later it also began to appear in the pages of ''Le Petit Vingtième''. For New Year 1938, Hergé designed a special cover for ''Le Petit Vingtième'' in which the characters of ''Jo, Zette and Jocko'' were featured alongside those from ''The Adventures of Tintin'' and ''Quick & Flupke''.
Hergé was unhappy with the series, commenting that its characters "bored me terribly, these parents who wept all the time as they searched for their children who had gone off in all directions. The characters didn't have the total freedom enjoyed by Tintin... Think of
Jules Renard
Pierre-Jules Renard (; 22 February 1864 – 22 May 1910) was a French author and member of the Académie Goncourt, most famous for the works ''Poil de carotte'' (Carrot Top, 1894) and ''Les Histoires Naturelles'' (Nature Stories, 1896). Among ...
's phrase 'Not everyone can be an orphan!' How lucky for Tintin; he is an orphan, and so he is free."
''Le Thermozéro''
''
Le Thermozéro
''Le Thermozéro'' is an abandoned comics project at one point considered for Hergé's ''The Adventures of Tintin'' series, and then, later, for his ''Jo, Zette and Jocko'' series.
Synopsis
On a rainy day, Haddock, Tintin and Calculus have a car ...
'' is the sixth, incomplete, Jo, Zette and Jocko adventure. It began in 1958 as a Tintin adventure of the same name. The Tintin version is also known as ''Tintin et le Thermozéro''. Hergé had asked the French comic book creator
Greg Greg is a masculine given name, and often a shortened form of the given name Gregory. Greg (more commonly spelled " Gregg") is also a surname.
People with the name
*Greg Abbott (disambiguation), multiple people
*Greg Abel (born 1961/1962), Canadi ...
(Michel Regnier) to provide a scenario for a new Tintin story. Greg came up with two potential plots: ''Les Pilules'' (''The Pills'') and ''Le Thermozéro''. Hergé made sketches of the first eight pages of ''Le Thermozéro'' before the project was abandoned in 1960 – Hergé deciding that he wished to retain sole creative control of his work.
Sometime after this, Hergé sought to resurrect ''Le Thermozéro'' as a Jo, Zette and Jocko adventure and instructed his long-time collaborator
Bob de Moor to work on an outline. Bernard Tordeur of the Hergé Foundation has suggested, at the World of Tintin Conference held at the
National Maritime Museum
The National Maritime Museum (NMM) is a maritime museum in Greenwich, London. It is part of Royal Museums Greenwich, a network of museums in the Maritime Greenwich World Heritage Site. Like other publicly funded national museums in the United ...
,
Greenwich
Greenwich ( , ,) is a town in south-east London, England, within the ceremonial county of Greater London. It is situated east-southeast of Charing Cross.
Greenwich is notable for its maritime history and for giving its name to the Greenwich ...
on May 15, 2004, that a complete draft outline (similar to what survives of ''
Tintin and Alph-Art
''Tintin and Alph-Art'' (french: link=no, Tintin et l'alph-art) is the unfinished creative work, unfinished twenty-fourth and final volume of ''The Adventures of Tintin'', the comics series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. Left incomplete on Herg ...
'') was completed before the project was terminated This draft version of the book apparently survives in the Tintin Archives.
Bernard Tordeur of Fondation Hergé, World of Tintin Conference, Greenwich 2004 – Tintinologist.org
/ref>
Critical analysis
Commenting on ''The Secret Ray'', Hergé biographer Benoît Peeters
Benoît Peeters (; born 1956) is a French comics writer, novelist, and comics studies scholar.
Biography
After a degree in Philosophy at Université de Paris I, Peeters prepared his Master's at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociale ...
noted that it "used rather conventional elements to vivid effect", using many clichés from popular novels such as a robot, a mad scientist, and gullible cannibals. He criticised the characters as being "so colorless that we can hardly bring ourselves to care what befalls them." When discussing its sequel, ''The Stratoship H-22'', he thought that it had been "conceived in almost a single burst" from a "general framework", in this way operating in a more linear fashion than he did with his ''Adventures of Tintin''.
He felt that the series' "failure" was not inevitable, as evidence noting that comics series involving families, such as George McManus' ''Bringing up Father'', could be popular.
English translations
''The Valley of the Cobras'' was the first ''Jo, Zette and Jocko'' adventure to be translated and published in English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
in 1986. ''Mr Pump’s Legacy'' and ''Destination New York'' followed in 1987.
''The ‘Manitoba’ No Reply'' and ''The Eruption of Karamako'' remained unpublished (possibly due to Hergé’s unsympathetic depiction of the primitive natives of the island of Karamako, similar to ''Tintin in the Congo
''Tintin in the Congo'' (french: link=no, Tintin au Congo; ) is the second volume of ''The Adventures of Tintin'', the comics series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. Commissioned by the conservative Belgian newspaper for its children's supplemen ...
'') until 1994 when they were published together in a single limited-edition double volume titled ''The Secret Ray''.
Farsi translations
While Herge's Adventures of Tintin
''The Adventures of Tintin'' (french: Les Aventures de Tintin ) is a series of 24 bande dessinée#Formats, ''bande dessinée'' albums created by Belgians, Belgian cartoonist Georges Remi, who wrote under the pen name Hergé. The series was one ...
were published in early 1970s in Iran, all of The Adventures of Jo, Zette and Jocko books got translated to Farsi
Persian (), also known by its endonym Farsi (, ', ), is a Western Iranian language belonging to the Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian subdivision of the Indo-European languages. Persian is a pluricentric language predominantly spoken an ...
and published in early 1980s almost at the same time by "Original"(اوریژینال) publication for the first time. The 'Manitoba' No Reply (Le Manitoba ne répond plus) was translated with title "آدم آهنی" (Adam Ahani=Iron Man), The Eruption of Karamako (L'Eruption du Karamako) was translated "انفجار کاراماکو" (Enfejareh Karamako), Mr. Pump’s Legacy (Le Testament de Monsieur Pump) was translated "جنون سرعت" (Jonoon Soraat=Speed Maniac), Destination New York (Destination New York) was translated "مقصد نیویورک" (Magsad Neyoyork), The Valley of the Cobras (La Vallée des cobras) was translated "دره مارها" (Dareh Marha=Valley of Snakes).
See also
*''The Adventures of Tintin
''The Adventures of Tintin'' (french: Les Aventures de Tintin ) is a series of 24 bande dessinée#Formats, ''bande dessinée'' albums created by Belgians, Belgian cartoonist Georges Remi, who wrote under the pen name Hergé. The series was one ...
'', popular Belgian comic series created by Hergé.
References
Footnotes
Bibliography
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Jo, Zette and Jocko
Belgian comic strips
Belgian comics titles
Comics by Hergé
Comics about monkeys
Fictional Belgian people
1936 comics debuts
Comics characters introduced in 1936
1957 comics endings
Adventure comics
Humor comics
Belgian comics characters
Comics about women
Male characters in comics
Female characters in comics
Child characters in comics
Fictional chimpanzees
Hergé characters