Plutarch's Staff

"Plutarch's Staff" is a prequel of sorts, the events of the book deal with the end of WW2 and the start of WW3 which was covered in the Secret of the Swordfish saga (which began the Blake & Mortimer series back in the 1950s) so the strip can be considered as having travelled full circle.

Though to be honest i'm finding the current pop culture obsession with filling in gaps and continuity-porn a bit tiresome, as it was with this volume and a number of other volumes in the series. It would be nice for future volumes to explore new territory. "Plutarch's Staff" does cover some interesting origin details though, especially for one of the series' major characters.

The criticisms aside, the story is very good, and drawn beautifully of course. This story sees Blake more to the fore and so is less mystical and more action and intrigue based. 

At the risk of contradicting myself in the previous paragraph the events that lead up to Secret of the Swordfish are very interesting indeed and fit in perfectly well with the later stories even though they were written by another author (the original master Edgar P. Jacobs of course) and over 60 years before.