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

The Black Island revisited

In the 1960s the Tintin books were beginning to be translated into english to reach a new audience. They appear to have been translated in no particular order but when it came to The Black Island, set mainly in England and Scotland and written in the late 1930s, it was suggested by the english publishers that Herge updated the artwork to reflect present life. So he did. In 1966, the version most of us know was published and it is one of the best drawn adventures in the series.
When The Black Island first appeared, it was in black and white. It was redrawn and coloured in the 1940s and published in book form. It was the first of the black and white Tintin adventures to be coloured. This 1940s coloured version was finally translated and printed in 2008. The story is exactly the same, the text is almost exactly the same, most of the scenes are exactly the same.The colours are different, they are more muted. The detail is different, there is less background detail and all the buildings, cars, trains, fire trucks are older. I prefer the 1966 version but this is a great way to rediscover this Tintin adventure.

The Yellow M

Edgar P Jacobs assisted Herge with the creation of the Secret of the Unicorn/Red Rackham's Treasure and Seven Crystal Balls/Prisoners of the Sun adventures. He also worked on the coloured versions of Congo, America, Blue Lotus and King Ottokar's Sceptre. Jacobs created his own comic book characters, Blake and Mortimer and wrote and drew books featuring Blake & Mortimer from 1950 until 1971. After his death in 1987, first Bob de Moor, another Herge collaborator, and then two teams working together on seperate books, Jean Van Hamme and Ted Benoit, and Yves Sente and Andre Julliard.
THe Yellow M first appeared in Tintin magazine and was collected and published in a single book in 1956. This english translation was published in paperback in 2007 by Cinebook and was translated by Clarence E Holland.
THe artwork is finer than the clear line art of Tintin and has more detail in the subjects and background. Although written in Belgum it is set in London. The plot involves a detective mystery and science fiction. In amy ways the story is similar to Herge's The Secret Ray. It is beautiful to look at but unfortunately it is very hard to read. There is too much text which slows the pace of the adventure. Much of the text is redundant as in addition to dialogue boxes there are also scene explanation in almost every panel. Often both boxes repeat the same information. e.g. Scene explanation: "The Inspector recognises a black felt hat stuck on the end of a boat hook and dripping with water." Speech bubble: "It's his hat!!!". Most of the text boxes are stuffed full of words that are not needed. Some text boxes are so big that they are exhausting to look at and really made me struggle with enthusiasm when reading the book.
I found it very frustrating to read. I don't know if it is the text or the translation into english that is the problem. It needs a ruthless editor to remove at least half of the text to allow the story to flow. Herge was very economical with his words and often let the pictures tell the story. Jacobs obviously did not trust his pictures enough to do this.
There is a great read buried somewhere in this book.

The Secret Ray

The adventures of Jo, Zette and Jocko
The Secret Ray
Part one: the ‘Manitoba” No Reply
Part two: The eruption of Karamako

I was very excited when I found this collection of early Jo, Zette and Jocko adventures. This collection had been translated into English in 1994 but I had not seen the book available until recently. It is published by Sundancer and I bought it from the London Tintin shop. It is a good looking hardback edition with two pages of introduction and two pages of early artwork prefacing the story.

This is not a Tintin adventure but one based on another set of characters created by Herge. First written from 1936 these adventures are based on brother and sister Jo and Zette and their pet monkey, Jocko.

Three later Jo, Zette and Jocko adventures, The Stratoship H.22 part one: Mr Pump’s Legacy and part two: Destination New York (both artwork 1951, English translation 1987) and Valley of the Cobras (artwork 1957, English Translation 1986) have been readily available for some time in English and they are well drawn, well written adventures. These later adventures could easily be Tintin adventures if the characters were substituted for TIntin, Haddock and Snowy but The Secret Ray is too simplistic and illogical compared to the Tintin books. It is clearly written for a younger audience than the readers Herge was considering when writing Tintin.

All the books have been translated into English by Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper and Michael Turner as were all the Tintin books.

The covers of the two parts (part one on the front cover, part two on the back cover) are very well drawn but the inside artwork does not match this level of detail and colour. The artwork in this collection was redrawn in 1952 and while not as good as the drawing in Tintin adventures from around this time, is still recognisable as Herge’s style. Some backgrounds are often very sketchy or ignored and some occasional panels are very poor. In one occasion a dialogue caption is coming from the wrong character in a panel. The depictions of island-dwelling cannibals suffer the same criticisms as Herge’s drawing of Africans in TIntin in the Congo. Other panels and situations are almost exact duplications from earlier Tintin adventures.

The story is a rollercoaster ride of events that is similar to the early Tintin adventures Soviets, Congo and America. One situation after another drives the story filled with robots, submarines, crazy scientists, and children outwitting adults. It makes no sense and towards the end, the children’s father has to spend three panels explaining some of the plot. However it is 103 pages of fun and is as close to reading an early Tintin as you will ever get.

Movie News II

On 16 May, news came out about the proposed Tintin movies. Steven Spielberg announced on 14 May that he and Peter Jackson had signed on to make three films about Tintin.
Both directors will each make a feature based on a different Tintin adventure and a third director, yet to be named, will direct the final film.
Spielberg told Variety magazine: "We want Tintin's adventures to have the reality of a live-action film, and yet Peter and I felt that shooting them in a traditional live-action format would simply not honour the distinctive look of the characters and world that Hergé created."
"We're making them look photo-realistic," said Spielberg. "The fibres of their clothing, the pores of their skin and each individual hair. They look exactly like real people - but real Herge people."
Jackson says WETA will stay true to Remi's original designs in bringing the cast of Tintin to life, but that the characters won't look cartoonish. The pictures will be produced in full digital 3-D using performance capture technology. Jackson and Weta Digital, the team that created King Kong and the Lord of the Rings trilogy, have apparently already made a 20-minute test reel.
Variety says Spielberg has been trying to get the film rights to Tintin for 25 years. He realized that goal in the past year and since then he and Jackson have begun developing the project.
It has not been announced which of the Tintin stories will feature in the films but a rumour (I can’t find the reference) suggests that each film will feature stories from two books each.

Just when I thought the cupboard was bare

I have just discovered Tintinoligist.org. It used to be called The Cult of Tintin and is a website for Tintin fans. It has forums where people can discuss Tintin trivia and it lets me know what is happening in the world Tintin-wise. For instance, I found out about a Tintin video event put on by the British Film Institute in London. The showing included television interviews with Herge, the documentary Tintin and Me, and an english-dubbed version of Tintin and the Golden Fleece. It sounded like a fantstic event. Even better was a Tintin seminar as part of the Tintin and the Sea exhibition at a maritime museum in London. This had lectures by the english translators of the Tintin books and someone from the company that looks after Herge's estate and owns the rights to Tintin. Again, sounded fantastic.
I also discovered more works in the TIntin library. The colour version of Tintin in the Congo has been translated into English - I thought that was never going to happen. Apparently it has a warning band wrapped around it, effectively apologising for the depictions of Africans in the book. The black and white versions of Tintin in America, The Cigars of the Pharoh, and the Blue Lotus have all been translated into english. Flight 714 is now named Flight 714 to Sydney. While not Tintin, another of Herge's creations, Jo, Zette and Jocko has had their first two stories translated and put into one volume. Apparently it was done in the early nineties but copies keep turning up infrequently at the Tintin shop in London. I think the black and white Tintin in America is now sold out, but these other finds are still available.
I have always wanted the first colour versions of the Black Island and the Land of Black Gold, but rather than serach out the french versions, I will keep my ear to the ground via Tintinoligist to see if there is any chance of them being translated.