The Broken Ear is the first book with a preconceived plot. In the previous serialisations, Hergé had covered the four cardinal directions—Soviet in the North, Congo in the South, America in the West and China in the East. His approach to stories had changed much after his chance encounter with a fellow artist, Chang. He started … [Read more…]
I saved the best for the last. I had to vacate the hostel room by 10 AM. I freshened up, took a bath, repacked by big rucksack for one last time and headed off to the reception. The free luggage storage facility was super handy. My bus was at 10:20 PM and I had the entire … [Read more…]
If there is one word that describes The Castafiore Emerald, it has to be deception. This is one Tintin album that is not like any of the other Tintin albums. There is no villain, no adventure, no travel, no action, or anything else that can be remotely associated with the hallmarks of a typical Tintin album. This … [Read more…]
Recently, I travelled through Vietnam. While I was in Hue, the cultural capital of Vietnam, a weird thought raced through my mind, “Can I get Tintin in Vietnamese?” Before coming to Hue, I was in Ha Noi and stayed in the Old Quarters. I explored the entire place on foot but did not come across … [Read more…]
A sketchy album Of all the albums of Tintin, Land of Black Gold remains the sketchiest book in my opinion. When I was a kid, I read this in Bengali and never got my head around many things that were happening in the story. I enjoyed the parts where the Thompsons were lost in the … [Read more…]
Just like the two volumes of Tintin in Orient, there is a B&W facsimile edition of Tintin in America. Last month I managed to get my hands on one of the copies. Chronologically, Tintin in America came much earlier than Cigars of the Pharaoh or The Blue Lotus. This was the time when Tintin as … [Read more…]
This was in August 2010. I had just finished buying all the Tintin albums. Procurement was a dreadfully slow process, bottlenecked by the small stipend that I was getting from my University. Back then I posted this on Facebook and wrote – “All 24 official books of Tintin laid out on two pieces of plywood … [Read more…]
Cigars of the Pharaoh and The Blue Lotus form a larger story arc that is commonly dubbed as Tintin in the Orient. Indeed, it was the first time that Hergé ditched the episodic format in favour of strory arcs. Recently, I managed to get hold of these two albums in their original B&W format (see … [Read more…]
Today I received the delivery of these two books. These are the original black and white editions of Cigars of the Pharaoh (1934 version) and The Blue Lotus (1936 version) by Hergé. As usual I have put my own version of transparent dust jacket to protect the books. At about 25 USD each, these aren’t … [Read more…]
