This work began to be published in the weekly magazine Tintin on March 30, 1950, nineteen years before the arrival of man on the moon. It is not science fiction but an anticipation as accurate as possible. Hergé contacted Dr. Bernard Heuvelmans, author of the book L'homme parmis les étoiles (Man Among the Stars), a specialist on the subject, who collaborated with the team. An extraordinary model of the rocket was made and submitted for the approval of Ananolf, author of the book Astronautics. It was entirely dismountable and allowed the young Bob de Moor, who was mainly responsible for the scenery, to know where the characters were in the spaceship at all times. Hergé has the grace to give a humorous tone to all the scenes of scientific explanations that could bore the reader. Thus, when Wolf and Professor Calculus explain more or less complicated elements, Captain Haddock is there to make us smile with his replies.

Translated by Concepción Zendrera

23 x 30 cm

Cardboard

64 pages

THE JEWELS OF CASTAFIORE - Journal Tintin special edition.

In the early sixties, The Adventures of Tintin was beginning to reap success. Hergé, who was beginning to pay special attention to contemporary art, decided to break the creative rules and do something surprising. And he succeeded. Before conceiving the definitive album edition, known all over the world, the cartoonist had produced a first version published in Tintin magazine, the originals of which had been lying in the archives for 60 years. Carefully and meticulously restored, these documents allow us today to show the public The Jewels of the Castafiore as it appeared in its entirety, between 1961 and 1962, in the weekly magazine for young people from 7 to 77 years old.

Characteristics:

Cardboard binding

80 pages

Size: 24 x 32 cm

1st edition, November 2023

Tintin travels on a cruise ship bound for the Far East. On board he meets the strange Egyptologist Philemon Cyclone, who is traveling in search of the tomb of the Egyptian pharaoh Kih-Oskh. Tintin accompanies him to the tomb and there he discovers the mysterious cigars, which hide more than just tobacco. He is then kidnapped and abandoned at sea, but is saved and lands in Arabia. After numerous vicissitudes he ends up in India, where he stays with the Maharaja of Rawhajpurtalah. Here appear characters that we will meet again later: the ineffable policemen Thomson and Thompson, the evil Rastapopoulos and the peculiar Oliveira de Salazar. Cigars of the Pharaoh begin to appear in Le petit Vingtiéme on December 8, 1932. It was the time when the news of the curse of Tutankhamun's tomb occupied many pages of the tabloids. This subject interested Hergé so much that years later he raised it again in The Seven Crystal Balls.

Translated by Concepción Zendrera

23 x 30 cm

Cardboard

64 pages

This time, Tintin sets out on a journey to Scotland on the trail of evildoers. He discovers the secret behind the walls of the castle of Ben More, on the Black Isle, and its mysterious monster. The Black Island appeared in Le Petit Vingtième from April 15, 1937 to June 16, 1938. The album was first published at the end of 1938 in black and white. In 1943 it was changed to color, reducing the number of pages to 62. In 1965, when the English translation was made, the British publisher pointed out to Hergé numerous errors that this volume contained from the English point of view. Hergé sent his collaborator Bob de Moor to England with the list of errors and the assignment to rejuvenate and authenticate the story. Thus Black Island was completely redrawn and modernized. It should be noted that already in the 1937 edition a television set appears, and although the first essays date from 1923, it was still a relatively confidential invention at that time.

Translated by Concepción Zendrera

23 x 30 cm

Cardboard

64 pages

In this adventure, Tintin goes to the center of Africa, to make a report. There, dangerous adventures await him, as his enemies are chasing him to kill him. On Tintin's return from his trip to Russia, described in Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, Hergé is commissioned to take Tintin to the Congo, then a Belgian colony. This album is an excellent document to see how Europeans of the time imagined Africa and Africans. The story was first published on June 5, 1930 in Le Petit Vingtième (see Hergé's biography). In 1946, Hergé completely redrew the album to change it to color and reduce its 110 original plates to the 62 pages that the albums would have from then on. In this new color version, he introduced numerous modifications, softening the colonialist overtones a bit. In spite of this, Tintin in the Congo fell out of favor from the 1950s onwards, and became quite difficult to find. It was the troubled time of decolonization, and the album was not particularly timely. But curiously it was in a Zaire magazine that the story first reappeared, ending the quarantine of Tintin in the Congo.

Translated by Concepción Zendrera

23 x 30 cm

Cardboard

64 pages

This second installment of Tintin's lunar adventure was first published in 1954 (15 years before the first manned Apollo 11 moon landing. As in the first part, Destination Moon, Hergé did exhaustive research for the realization of this album. In fact, the realism of these two books led Paris-Match magazine to commission Hergé to illustrate the explanation of the Apollo 12 mission.

Translated by Concepción Zendrera

23 x 30 cm

Cardboard

64 pages

Tintin travels this time to millenary China. In Shanghai he discovers the origin of a powerful poison that makes you go mad. He is confronted with a terrible gang of opium traffickers and with Japanese agents who keep the reader in suspense until the end of the book. At the end of Cigars of the Pharaoh, Hergé had announced in "Le Petit Vingtième" that Tintin was going to continue his journey to the Far East. He then received a letter from Father Gosset, chaplain to Chinese students at the University of Louvain, who advised him to learn more about China and its culture and introduced him to Tchang Tchong-Jen, a young Chinese art student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Louvain. (We can recognize him in the character Tchang, the Chinese friend of Tintin). Through long conversations with Tchang, Hergé was able to get to know the culture of China, moving away from the clichés about the Chinese that Europeans had, absolutely far from reality. The friendship with Tchang would last a lifetime, both in fiction and in reality. This is the first album that Hergé would fully assume, and from here on he always documented in depth the countries where Tintin had to travel.

Translated by Concepción Zendrera

23 x 30 cm

Cardboard

64 pages

This comic masterpiece, published in 1944, is the continuation of 'The Secret of the Unicorn' and tells the story of the search for the treasure of the pirate Rackham the Red. Professor Calculus enters the scene, the endearing scientist inventor, wise and absent-minded, whom we will meet again in the following adventures of Tintin, and who will become one of his good friends.

Translated by Concepción Zendrera

23 x 30 cm

Cardboard

64 pages

Tintin buys a model of an old galleon at the old market. It turns out to be a replica of the ship that Captain Haddock's ancestor, the knight Hadoque, commanded, who fought against the pirate Rackham the Red, who carried on his ship a great treasure that has been hidden for centuries. This story was first published in Le Soir on June 11, 1942, during the occupation of Belgium, and was one of Hergé's favorite albums. For the design of the Unicorn, Hergé relied on precise documentation of 17th century ships in the Paris Navy Museum.

Translated by Concepción Zendrera

23 x 30 cm

Cardboard

64 pages

Tintin travels to North America, where he confronts the fearsome Chicago gangster syndicate, including the notorious Al Capone. Hergé's initial idea was to build his story around the Redskin Indian village that had always fascinated him, but then he also wanted to show as much of America as possible: the deserts and prairies, modern industries and big cities, alcohol prohibition, gangsters, cowboys and the plundering of the Redskin Indians, denouncing how they were expelled from their lands when oil was found there. Tintin in America began to be published on September 3, 1931 in Le Petit Vingtième, at the rate of two plates per week, where it would be published for a year. As in the case of Tintin in the Congo, the color version of the album was produced in 1945, benefiting from the progress that the practice and experience of these years had given to Hergé, who had already reached a great mastery and mastery in the language of visual storytelling, where the images narrate by themselves, without waiting for the text to do so.

Translated by Concepción Zendrera

23 x 30 cm

Cardboard

64 pages