This pile of Swedish Tintin covers is just a small part of a collection of Tintin covers from around the world on a dutch website: gill4kleuren.nl.

The best part of the site is the Language page with links to images of Tintin cover art in about 30 different languages such as this one of Tintin in Tibet in tibetan.

I know nothing about this poster other than it came from BAPOM’s collection of posters and it is mentioned here.

Thanks to Toyota GB PR for finding this.

If Herge made communist propaganda, it would look like this.

The text says “The Central people’s government constitutes the only legitimate government of all”.

Source: Vibrant Chinese Propaganda Art – Part 1: Revolution, Revolution, Revolution

The bottom half of this image is from Tintin in Angola (“Tim-Tim em Angola”), the Portuguese version of Tintin in the Congo. The top half is the original version.

This is a great example of how colonial / racist attitudes displayed in Tintin in the Congo were the norm for the time. The Portuguese publisher clearly felt that their country’s superiority over its colony Angola was identical to Belgium’s superiority over the Congo. Clearly the racism demonstrated by Herge in his early work was simply reflecting the widespread racism across all western, colonial powers at that time.

This image comes from Héctor Germán Oesterheld’s and Carlos Roume’s Nahuel Barros’ Last Story – Coda, from the web site of a Portuguese comics critic. The blog is in English and probably contains lots of interesting stuff but the layout of the text is an unreadable dense mass. This is a shame as I suspect breaking things into a few paragraphs and adding a ton of whitespace would make it a really good blog.

A little while ago we mentioned the shark submersible that the grandson of Jacque Cousteau had created, inspired by the Calculas’ shark submarine from Red Rackham’s Treasure. Over on Inventor’s Spot, they have more information on the shark including some up-close photos: Shark Submarine Allows Divers A Close-Up View Of The Ocean’s Greatest Predator

Further to our reports yesterday Bad Press for Moulinsart it seems that Moulinsart (holds of the Tintin copyright) are in dispute with Casterman (Tintin’s publishers). Via a magazine interview, Moulinsart have announced they are setting their lawyers on the problem. A long and costly courtroom battle looks likely.

Combined with attacks on fan groups, this looks like Moulinsart getting organised ahead of the sales bonanza that will surround the release of the film. A box office smash will generate hundreds of millions of dollars of merchandise and book sales and a significant slice of it will go straight into Moulinsart pocket. Even a poor box office performance will generate a lot of sales of the books as old fans are reminded of Tintin and seek to complete their collections.

This is shrewd business by Moulinsart. If they can increase their earnings from Herge’s creation by just 0.5% by these legal maneuverings they will be tens of millions of dollars better off.

Source: Tintinologist (via The Tintin Blog)

The Forbidden Planet blog is reporting that Moulinsart, the copyright holders for Herge’s work, are stirring up a lot of bad feeling and hostility by aggressively targeting Tintin fan clubs in Europe.

.. the Belgian-Dutch Hergé Genootschap is supposed to have been presented with a bill of no less than 35.000 EUR (or about 600 EUR per member), while the Francophone Les Amis de Hergé was asked for 12.000 EUR. In both cases the money is supposed to be owed for unlawful use of copyrighted material, more particularly Hergé’s artwork.

Read How to lose friends and alienate people for the full story.

EDIT: And there appears to be more,,,

Casterman, the publishers of Tintin, and Moulinsart seem to be having some sort of argument. The source of this is in French so I’m a stuffed but here is a very brief, English mention of it: Hearing The Adults Argue Late At Night. Here is a link to a Google Translation of the original