glashab:
I guess I am trying to brainstorm or theorize too much
Well, you've come to the right place - we've built a website doing just that... ;-)
glashab:
I also didn't know that he had started Alph-Art and went back to it and then started other projects. Do you mean ThermoZèro?
He seems to have largely put
Alph-Art aside when he started to work on the mural designs for Stokkel, a station on the Brussels underground railway. It's useful to note that while he seems to have been somewhat thwarted with the development of a satisfactory story for
Alph-Art, the mural appears to have reinvigorated his interest, and raised his spirits with the Boy Reporter. Renewed enthusiasm may have led to a satisfying attempt at completing
Alph-Art and further adventures, had he lived.
Le ThermoZèro was much earlier, and - in its Tintin incarnation - was being worked on as the Fifties turned into the Sixties; later work was done to transpose the plot to accommodate Jo, Zette & Jocko, but was also left unpublished.
glashab:
Or do you mean A Day at the Airport, where he wanted to start a story that takes place entirely in the terminal?
As far as can be told, that was purely an idea he mentioned in an interview as being an ideal location for adventure, as it would turn things on their head from the normal: the characters would come from around to the world, and encounter Tintin, rather than the Boy Reporter globe-trotting himself. As such, it might only have ever been an idea he pulled out of the air as a "for instance...", during this interview.
I can't remember when exactly the interview was given, but if it was pre-
Castafiore Emerald, it could be that the idea was subsumed into that, which has the single location similar to the terminal idea. If it post-dates it, he may in time have thought that that had used the same gag.
Either way, it remained little more than a throw-away remark.
glashab:
Which do you think was the last real sketch he completed?
He kept drawing Tintin right up until the end - a hand-drawn and hand-coloured vignette of Tintin dressed as a Viking and done for his Scandinavian publisher as a birthday present recently sold at auction, and that was given within months if not weeks of his death. Chances are, we will never be certain of which drawing it was; in all likelihood however, it probably wasn't Tintin on his way to be plasticized in
Alph-Art.
glashab:
I meant in Picaros was the 3rd to the right where Calculus, Tintin and Haddock are in the picture.
I'm afraid I'm still not seeing a glaring error as described anywhere on that page... If you start top left on the page, and work your way left to right along the row, then down to the next row, count the frames (where p. 42 top left is frame 1, and bottom right is frame 13), and give the number of the frame the error is in (there are four frames with the three characters in).
I would venture that you might be talking about frame 7, but the drawing is perfectly inked and coloured in my copy, to my eyes at least.
glashab:
Thank you so much for your expertise to all of us!
It's a two-way thing, honestly - I learn so much from these discussions! :-)