The Secret of the Unicorn & The Treasure of Rackham the Red (Double Album)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

After two years of absence in Peru and Bolivia, the Sanders-Hardmuth ethnographic expedition returns to Europe having discovered several Inca tombs. They brought back the mummy of the Inca Rascar Capac, also called "the one who unleashes fire from the sky", who was wearing valuable solid gold jewelry. After a short time, all the participants of the expedition fall victim to a mysterious evil, and whenever this happens, fragments of small crystal balls are found.

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

Cardboard

48 pages