This week on Totally Tintin, Hergé takes a huge step forward as an artist – and Ian and Dave take it with him as they discuss The Blue Lotus.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
This week on Totally Tintin, Hergé takes a huge step forward as an artist – and Ian and Dave take it with him as they discuss The Blue Lotus.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Loving the podcast so far – it drops Wednesday night here so I get up early Thursday mornings to listen with the book open before my family wake up. David, where are you getting your information from? I have a lot of books on Tintin and Herge, but you always have details and anecdotes I’ve never heard. I’m curious what books you might have that I don’t know about!
My first Tintin album was Black Island. I’d been reading Asterix already but had no idea Tintin existed until when I came across the 1972 first paperback edition in a book store and snatched it up. This would’ve been the one that had sections redrawn to make them more accurately British. They must’ve brought these reprints out gradually as it seemed like I had to wait forever in agony for the next “new” Tintin to come out although most of them had been translated into English decades before. The things is none of them came out in sequential order! According to the back cover what was available (in paperback at least) in 1972 was the Black Island, The Crab With the Golden Claws, King Ottokar’s Sceptre, The Red Sea Sharks, The Shooting Star and Tintin in Tibet… in other words some of the best of Herge’s mid-period but hardly in chronological order. It did make me wonder why Captain Haddock kept disappearing and reappearing and just how did he get cool digs like Marlinspike?
Now I’m thinking I should reread them all in chronological order.
I remember most of the titles our library had showed ‘Cigars of the Pharoah’ at the top of the sequence, so I assumed it was the first. Then ‘Blue lotus’ began appearing and it really bugged me that the artwork became crappy (as I saw it) on about page four; I had no idea the other early ones were redrawn from earlier artwork. But there was an ongoing succession of earlier titles appearing on the back covers.
Reading them in sequence is definitely worth doing!