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

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

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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

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A meteorite is heading towards the earth and many are predicting the end of the world. Tintin goes to the astronomical observatory where he meets Professor Calys. Fortunately, the omens are not fulfilled and only a fragment of the meteorite reaches the earth, falling into the Arctic Ocean. When he notices the presence of an unknown element, Professor Calys organizes an expedition on the ship Aurora, in which Tintin and Captain Haddock take part. The Shooting Star will be the first album already designed in color and was published in 1942.

Translated by Concepción Zendrera

23 x 30 cm

Cardboard

64 pages

This album is based on the cartoon film by Raymond Leblanc. The script was written by Greg, and the adaptation of the drawings and dialogues of the film was made by Hergé Studios.

Translated by Concepción Zendrera

23 x 30 cm

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48 pages

La Castafiore announces her arrival in Moulinsart, and the captain tries to flee the trip in a hurry, but stumbles on a broken step that they have not yet come to fix and breaks his ligaments. The rumor of a sentimental relationship between the singer and the "old sea dog" is born and everything is full of paparazzi. And the jewels disappear... In this album there are no travels or great adventures, and that is the grace of Hergé to maintain the intrigue. All the action takes place in Moulinsart, in and around the gardens of the castle. As Hergé himself tells us: "When I started this album, my intention was also to simplify, to train myself to tell, this time, a story in which nothing happens, without resorting to exoticism. Simply to see if I could keep the reader in suspense until the end.

Translated by Concepción Zendrera

23 x 30 cm

Cardboard

64 pages

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

After reading the news of a airplane crash in the Himalayas, Tintin has a dream where his injured young friend Tchang asks for help half buried in the snow. The next day he learns from the newspaper that Tchang was on the crashed airplane, and that no survivors have been found. But Tintin believes that Tchang is alive and sets off for Kathmandu to organize a rescue expedition. Tintin in Tibet coincides with a period of serious turbulence in Hergé's life, and its creation constituted a real therapy for him that really helped him to overcome it. According to Hergé himself, at that time (1958), he was going through a real crisis and his dreams and nightmares were almost always white. These dreams were always repeated and the author had to go to a psychiatrist who advised him to abandon this work because he would never finish it. Fortunately, Hergé did not do so. Not only did he finish Tintin in Tibet, but, in the opinion of many, it is one of his masterpieces. The color white also reigns in almost all the work, but this time not as a nightmare but as a purification. .

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

Fans of Tintin's adventures had to wait eight years after Flight 714 to Sydney to read Tintin and the Picaros, which began appearing in 1976. Hergé was now only working for pleasure, and was in no hurry. The idea took time to take shape. The setting was clear to him: South America. For the story he drew some inspiration from the Regis Debré and the Tupamaros affair. But these events are only the backdrop for the adventure. We go back to the imaginary republic of San Teodoros, (see The Broken Ear), where two generals aspiring to dictatorship wage a continuous war to achieve power. We meet again the ineffable General Alcazar (see The Broken Ear, The Seven Crystal Balls), Colonel Sponsz (The Calculus Affair), now under the name of Sponge, who has been sent by Borduria to support General Tapioca, and the explorer Ridgewell (see The Broken Ear). Serafin Brass is also around with his overwhelming personality, presiding over the group of the merry Turulones, and we also find Tapioca's  charming wife: the terrible Peggy. What is striking in this album is that Tintin wears jeans, drives a motorcycle wearing a helmet with the hippie peace sign and does yoga.

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 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