Las aventuras de Tintín 13 - LAS 7 BOLAS DE CRISTAL (hardcover) - Castellano

Following the trail of a mysterious can of crab, Tintin ends up prisoner on a ship owned by a gang of opium traffickers. There he meets the evil Allan and for the first time Captain Haddock, then a pathetic slave of his addiction to alcohol, a vice that causes innumerable problems for him and for Tintin who tries to help him. The captain's rehabilitation will come after his forced detoxification during his desert crossing. On May 10, German troops enter Belgium, interrupting the publication of Tintin in land of black gold. Disaster looms over the whole country. Hergé, with his daughter and his sister-in-law, left for Paris on May 15, and from there they went to a friend's house in the Aubergne region, to await events. On June 30 they returned to Brussels and there Hergé found that Le Vingtième Siècle had died, and with it Le Petit Vingtième had also disappeared.

Translated by Concepción Zendrera

23 x 30 cm

Cardboard

64 pages

This is a comic masterpiece. We prefer not to explain the plot of the story here, so that those who read it for the first time can fully enjoy it. From the very beginning, the events are chained together at a fast pace: an explosion is heard, a storm breaks out, objects break, the power goes out and Serafin Brass arrives for the first time in the series. There will be virtually no downtime in the entire story. For the creation of the sets, Hergé wanted to be as precise as possible. The story, which takes place mostly in Switzerland, reflects the Cold War, which was going through very tense moments between the two blocs, represented in the rivalry between Borduria and Syldavia. The Calculus Affair was published in 1956.

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

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 album marks a return to adventure. It begins to appear in the weekly Tintin, in September 1966, four years after the end of The Castafiore Emerald. Here we meet again Rastatopoulos, whom we thought drowned at the end of The Red Sea Sharks, and his friend Allan. A new figurine appears: the very rich Lazlo Carreras, the man who never laughs. Carreiras is a millionaire owner of airairplanes, oil companies and the Sani-Cola beverage. This character was inspired by Marcel Dassault. He is a paradoxical character: he is among the good guys, but under the effect of the truth serum he is portrayed as a being without scruples when it comes to having amassed his fortune. Towards the end of the story we discover Mik Ezdaditoff, a character inspired by Jacques Bergier, author of the book Le Matin des magiciens and animator of the magazine Planète. We see here Hergé's fascination with paranormal and extraterrestrial phenomena.

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

The theft of an Arumbaya fetish from the ethnographic museum takes Tintin to the South American republic of San Teodoro. There he is immersed in the war of this country with neighboring Nuevo Rico, and becomes an assistant to General Alcazar, a controversial character that we will meet again later in other adventures. Tintin goes deep into the jungle to find the Arumbayas and discover the mystery of the stolen fetish. This Tintin adventure was first published in Le Petit Vingtième at the end of 1935 and came out in volume in 1937. It was put into color in 1943. Here again, Hergé includes allusions to current world events. The conflict between San Teodoro and Nuevo Rico over oil is based on the bloody Gran Chaco war, which confronted Paraguay and Bolivia during the 1930s and lasted three years, causing more than 100,000 deaths. Hergé is almost absolutely faithful to reality. He converts "el Gran Chaco" to "el Gran Chapo" and transforms the names of two oil companies, but everything else is scrupulously accurate.

In this album Hergé describes the first of his imaginary countries, which he will later make one of his specialties.

Translated by Concepción Zendrera

23 x 30 cm

Cardboard

64 pages

The publication of the adventures of Tintin, reporter of the Petit Vingtième in the land of the Soviets, began on January 10, 1929 in the children's supplement of the Belgian newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle, in the form of single pages, in black and white as the present edition. In 1930 they were expanded in an album with which Hergé started the collection of the Adventures of Tintin, showing what in the future would be his way of doing both in drawings and in scripts and "gags", and that he would perfect in the following adventures.

Translated by Concepción Zendrera

23 x 30 cm

Cardboard

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

This Tintin adventure is about the struggle between the big oil companies. It all starts when adulterated gasoline invades the market. Tintin travels to the country of Khemed, where a power struggle pits Emir Ben Kalish Ezab against Bab El Ehr, each financed by a different oil company. Enter the terrible Abdalah, the emir's son. Hergé was inspired by a photograph of the real King Faisal II as a child. This album has gone through numerous versions before knowing its final form. It began to appear on September 25, 1939 in Le Petit Vingtième, following King Ottokar's Sceptre, but the war broke out. On May 9, 1940, the German forces entered Brussels and the publication of Le Petit Vingtième was interrupted, and with it, Tintin in land of black gold. The story stops on the current page 26 of the album, and will not be continued until 6 years later in Tintin magazine.

Translated by Concepción Zendrera

23 x 30 cm

Cardboard

64 pages

Tintin and Captain Haddock accompanied by the inseparable Snowy have traveled to Peru in search of Professor Calculus, who has been kidnapped for having dared to wear the bracelet of the Inca mummy Rascar Capac. Tintin discovers the professor on the freighter Pachamac, but is unable to free him. The clues will lead them on a long journey in the company of Zorrino, an Indian boy, through the Andes mountains and the jungle to a secret temple of the Incas.

Translated by Concepción Zendrera

23 x 30 cm

Cardboard

64 pages

Slave and arms trafficking are at the core of the plot of this adventure, and as usual, Tintin and the captain are involved by a series of coincidences. This album is a sort of continuation of Tintin in land of black gold, and a large number of characters that appeared in previous episodes reappear in it. The emir Ben Kalishn Ezab, in difficulties in his country, sends his little son, the terrible Abdalah to Moulinsart. Tintin and the captain flee from his mischief, leaving him with the long-suffering Nestor, and head for Khemed to try to help the emir.

Translated by Concepción Zendrera

23 x 30 cm

Cardboard

64 pages

When Tintin picks up a wallet forgotten in a bank, he cannot imagine that it will lead him to the country of Syldavia, located in the center of the Balkans. There he learns that there is a conspiracy to steal the scepter of the king, Muskar XII, without which he can no longer reign. And his neighboring country, Borduria, has clear invasion intentions. The plot is clearly influenced by the period. The story was published in Le Petit Vingtième from August 4, 1938 to August 10 of the following year. The signs heralding World War II were numerous and Hitler's Germany was preparing the invasion of Austria, which was annexed and became another province of the Third Reich. We see in King Ottokar's Sceptre how Borduria tries to annex the country of Syldavia, with the help of a certain Musstler, (whose name is a composition of Hitler and Mussolini). The Bordurians can be identified with the Nazis in many aspects: the names, the uniforms, the airairplanes and by their tactics of infiltration in Syldavia. In 1947 the album was redesigned in color.

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