Seen on ebay

Tintin and Alph Art

"Ultra-rare English-language colour version of the Yves Rodier/Herge Tintin book originally completed in the early 1990s. It has a different cover to the French colour edition which can often be seen on Ebay.

"This edition published by Rackham, numbered limited edition (inner page says this is copy #17 of 50 copies). Fine-mint condition large format book in card covers, bound with cloth spine."

I love these alternative covers for Cigars of the Pharaoh and King Ottokar's Sceptre. They are from 1942 editions but Casterman have recently reissued them in (French only).

TIntin and the Blue Oranges

The book of the movie. Considered by many to be not as good as Tintin and the Golden Fleece a few years earlier. Professor Calculus invents an orange that will grow in all climates from a desert to an iceberg. This will solve food shortages for peoiple living in these areas, and so naturally bad guys kidnap Calculus. Oh, and the oranges happen to be blue.
The book is the same size as the Tintin adventures. It has descriptive text and dialogue from the movie, some colour photos and a few drawings.

Tintin replaced by an imposter?

I wonder why Herge started to redraw the Blue Lotus for the coloured version of the book in 1946 but then reused the original artwork from 1934? The new artwork follows on from the redrawn Cigars of the Pharaoh but then five pages into the book, the elegantly proportioned TIntin is is replaced by a rounder headed, no-necked version.
Above are two panels, the first from page 4 and the second from page 5.
It is certainly beautiful artwork and along with the colouring, some of the backgrounds have been adjusted but it still appears to be an odd decision to change the appearance of the main character for the first four pages. Maybe time and cost were a factor.
I have to admit that when I first read the book (It was first translated into English in 1983 and I would have purchased it around this time) I did not notice the different looking TIntin.

Books and years

A great presentation of all the TIntin books with the date of the publication of their first versions is here.

Tintin and the Golden Fleece

Methuen published this book version of the 1961 live action film in 1962 with an english translation in 1965. It tells the story from the screenplay written by Andre Barret and Remo Forlani adapted and translated by Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper and Michael Turner, the translators of all the Tintin books. There are 44 pages of text with plenty of black & white photos and some illustrations. The book was produced in the same size and style as the Herge adventures, including the inside cover portrait galleries.
From the back: "Tintin, the boy reporter, Snowy his dog, and Captain Haddock, travel to Istanbul to collect the Golden Fleece, a ship left to the Captain by an old friend. But when a stranger offers an enormous sum for the boat it is obvious that there is more involved than a rusty old tub. Events move fast, and Tintin and the Captain find themselves against ruthless crooks. Treasure is at stake. The trail leads from Turkey to Greece, from a remote mountain monastery to a lonely Mediterranean island. Thomson and Thompson and Professor Calculus join in the hunt, but only after many narrow escapes does Tintin solve the mystery of the Golden Fleece."
A DVD of the movie dubbed in english was released in 2008 but I have yet to view it. I really enjoyed reading this book when I bought it over 35 years ago and assumed it was a story from the Tintin's regular adventures. It did not make me feel uneasy in the way that the Lake of Sharks did (and still does). The images from the film are great. There are great images of Turkey and Greece from the late fifties/ early sixties. This film has had quite good reviews recently from Tintin fans however I think a certain spell will be broken if a voice is given to TIntin and the other characters. The sound of his voice exists in my head and it is very similar to my voice. I will keep that spell alive until the Jackson/ Speilberg/Del Toro films come out.

The Strange Encounter

This is another adventure of Blake & Mortimer, characters created by Herge's collaborator, EP Jacobs. This was published in Belgium in 2001 and translated into english in 2008. It is much easier to read than The Yellow M and I think the artwork is better also with cleaner lines. It is similar in size to the Tintin adventures, with 64 pages, but not as much seems to happen. Even The Castifore Emerald seems pacier than this book. It shows the skill of Herge's storytelling that he can communicate so much with simplier pictures and fewer words. The Strange Encounter was written by Jean Van Hamme and illustrated by Ted Benoit with color done by Madeleine De Mille. Although written around 2001, he story is set in the mid-1950s and it is enjoyable looking at the details in the illustrations. It is quite a fun story and I enjoyed involving myself in the science and science fiction of the 1950's.
I highly recommend this book to fans of Tintin