Henri Vernes
Charles-Henri-Jean Dewisme, born 16 October 1918 in Ath, Belgium, is better known by his pen name Henri Vernes. He was a Belgian writer who produced more than 200 action and science fiction novels. He created Bob Morane, a hero whose adventures lasted fifty years and moved from straight adventures and science fiction to fantasy. Vernes also wrote many comics stories and worked on animated films. He used several pen names, including Jacques Colombo, Robert Davids, Duchess Holiday, C. Reynes, Jacques Seyr, Lew Shannon, and Ray Stevens.
Vernes was the son of Valérie Dupuis and Alphonse Léon Dewisme. After his parents split up, he was raised by his maternal grandparents. He left high school at sixteen and briefly helped in his father’s butcher shop, but he later returned to school in Enghien. In 1937 he fell in love with a Chinese woman known as Madame Lou and traveled with her to Canton on a trip using a fake passport. Back in Tournai, he married Gilberte, the daughter of a diamond cutter, in 1938; the marriage ended in 1941. During World War II he served in the army’s intelligence services. In 1944 he published his first book, La Porte Ouverte (The Open Door).
In 1946 he moved to Paris and wrote for an American news agency and for French newspapers, while continuing to write novels. In 1949 he published La Belle Nuit pour un Homme Mort (Good Night for a Dead Man) and then moved back to Belgium. Between 1949 and 1953 Vernes wrote stories for weekly magazines such as Heroïc Albums and Mickey Magazine, under various pen names.
In 1953 he was invited to write an adventure novel for the Marabout–Junior series. His Conquérants de l’Everest (Conquerors of the Everest) was a big success and marked the birth of Bob Morane, along with his friends Bill Ballantine, Frank Reeves, Aristide Clairembart, and his first villain, Roman Orgonetz. The first comics album, L’oiseau de feu (The Fire Bird), appeared in 1959, drawn by Dino Attanasio, and was another big hit. From 1959 to 1967 Bob Morane was the star of many more books, a short film, The Spy with a Hundred Faces (1960), and a TV series with 26 episodes.
During this time Vernes started other adventure series and introduced characters like the villain Monsieur Ming (the Yellow Shadow), Dr Xathan, and Miss Ylang-Ylang. After 1967 the Marabout–Junior collection was renamed Pocket Marabout, and Vernes kept writing for the series with both old and new characters. By 1970 the series had sold over 15 million books. In 1974 he began the Ananké cycle, considered by many to be his masterpiece. But the publishing crisis of the 1970s hit, and in 1977 the Marabout series ended with Bob Morane dans le Triangle des Bermudes (Bob Morane in the Bermuda Triangle).
Over the next 28 years Vernes published many new titles, including the adult Don cycle (writing some works under the name Jacques Colombo) and he supervised reissues of his older works. His 200th novel, the Bob Morane adventure La guerre du Pacifique n’aura pas lieu (The Pacific War Will Not Happen), appeared in 1996. A documentary about him, Henri Vernes, un aventurier de l’imaginaire, was released in 1997. In 1999, at age 81, he was named Officier in the Belgian Order of Arts and Letters. A Bob Morane fan club, Club Bob Morane, was created in 1986 on the hero’s 33rd anniversary.
Henri Vernes died on 25 July 2021 in Brussels, Belgium, aged 102.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 14:08 (CET).