My favourite are the pages from Flight 714, particularly the sketch pages. In the image of Tintin with his hands behind his back we can see how fine an artist Herge was. Also, the strange figure in the bottom left hand corner. It is an odd mix of styles, half realistic, half modern art. The pages from The Castafiore Emerald are great examples of how Herge refined the story as he drew. Look how the sequence and point of view of the images changes between the original and the inked work.

Many thanks to MetaBunker for finding these.

Size Matters

As part of a whole year of celebrating Tintin’s birthday and Belgium comics in general, Brussels unveiled the world’s largest comic page. Weighing almost 350kg and covering an area of 672 sqm (about 3 Tennis courts), the scene from Destination Moon was created using thermo-welded panels.

Record Busting Auction

To cap the weekend off, on Sunday almost 600 lots of Tintin and Herge memorabilia was up for action and broke national and world record prices. The sale raised 1,172,000 euros (1.57 million dollars), a new world record for Herge related items and a national record for comic book related sales. The sale included five large original hand-drawn pages. Two of which from the “The Castafiore Emerald” sold for a total of 312,5000 euros to an unknown Belgium collector.

Sources: Giant Tintin page takes pride of place in Brussels, Records broken at Tintin auction

Before I forget, let me just say that one of the things in that article that irritated me unduly was the repetition of the claim (which I have read elsewhere more than once) that in The Castafiore Emerald, ‘nothing whatsoever happens’. This is plainly false: plenty happens in the book; it’s just that no crime happens. Even in detective literature it is not uncommon for there to be an intrigue with all the appearance of a crime but which transpires to be nothing of the sort: see, for example, the Sherlock Holmes story The Man With The Twisted Lip, among others. In The Castafiore Emerald the story of the not-crime is managed expertly with suspense and irony (as you will remember, the magpie that turns out to have been the perpetrator of the theft is subtly drawn into the first frame and then again in the last); but stuff does happen. Still, it would have been nice to be able to say, as of Waiting for Godot where, famously, ‘nothing happens…twice’, that in The Castafiore Emerald, ‘nothing happens sixty-two times.’ Missed a trick there.

Read more: Saperlipopette

According to Variety, three books have been selected as the basis of the Tintin movies. But which three? The books were mostly written and set in the 1930’s to 1950’s and not many of them will update. Destination Moon and Explorers on the Moon seem pointless 40 years after Neil Armstrong first walked there. Many of the books have social or cultural aspects that are not popular nowadays such as The Blue Lotus which is heavily anti-Japanese and the Crab with the Golden Claws is about oil and the middle east. Other books just won’t work as popular films, e.g. The Castafiore Emerald in which nothing happens.

Here is my guesses at the three Tintin movies

• King Ottokar’s Sceptre – Has espionage, puzzles and Borduria, a Nazi-like country next door
• The Calculus Affair – Has all the main characters, secret technology, kidnapping features Borduria & Syldavia from King Ottokar’s Sceptre
• Tintin in Tibet – Features a strong storyline, daring feats, lucky escapes, and a child. My money is on Speilberg directing this one