Tintin Forums

Sorry Balthazar it wasn't my intention to rob the point and question from you.

Where do we see Snowy jolly and playful in one frame but the very next he looks almost angry?

There is no explanation for this moodswing and hopefully it doesn't occur more than once.

The Seven Crystal Balls, page 2, I quess.

There might be a reason for being angry or worried. Milou may have a hunch that everything is not OK.

That's the one I was looking for. Sorry if the question wasn't very good, it's hard to come up with new ones sometimes.

Could there have been some more frames when the episode ran in Le Soir perhaps that featured something happening to Snowy?

Anyway, well done Tuhatkauno, now it's your turn.

labrador road 26
Could there have been some more frames when the episode ran in Le Soir perhaps that featured something happening to Snowy?
This is an interesting one, as there are in fact three variants of this opening sequence. As well as the album version we have:

a) In Le Soir, there are in fact two strips which make up a now excised sequence. The first frame now found on p. 2 of the album is followed by a sequence without any dialogue, in which Snowy runs across a field and rolls in the grass (unusually shown as four little frames arranged in a two by two pattern); he then chases a little butterfly, and jumps in the air, which is followed by a splash-down in a stream - this explains Snowy’s unhappy expression. Frame two of the album’s page two is where this incident comes back into sequence.

b) In the Journal Snowy runs along the track ahead of Tintin, where he comes across a hedgehog, and is stuck with some of its prickles; Tintin removes these, and the pair then walk off; because Tintin is reading his paper and not paying attention, he misses a plank over the stream and ends up in the water; frame two of the album’s page two is then replaced by one of Tintin walking along wet. In this version Snowy isn’t scowling, he is looking at Tintin and smiling.

What makes the changes interesting is that Hergé has realised that in taking the slapstick fall out of the Journal colour version he has to replace the dripping Tintin with a dry version; but he has gone and used the exact artwork from the Soir without removing Snowy’s scowl. It would be interesting to know why he didn’t produce at least an edited version of the Soir frame, replacing Snowy with the one from the [/i]Journal[/i].
It’s also a minor point, given that he took it out, but to me the gag would also appear to work better if the original and the second version were to have been combined: Snowy doesn’t pay attention and falls in the water, Tintin gives him a row for doing it, and then promptly does exactly the same himself.

There is nothing wrong with the question, Milou being worried was just my assosiation. And you are very right, it is hard to find something special and original. I'll have a try.

labrador road 26
Sorry Balthazar it wasn't my intention to rob the point and question from you.
You didn't rob it at all, labrador, you got it fair and square! Richard asked for two portraits and I didn't get two correct ones with my guess. You had to build on my half-correct answer in order to complete the fully correct one, and I think the quiz has to work like that, otherwise semi-correct wrong answers would scupper the whole question for everyone else. And anyway, the bit I got right - the Francis Haddock portrait - was clearly the easy half of the answer, which I'm sure you'd have got by yourself in any case!

Sorry if the question wasn't very good
Like Jock and tuhatkauno, I think this was an interesting question, and a pleasingly tricky one. I'd never even noticed that unexplained scowl of Snowy's before, and I'm impressed that tuhatkauno got the answer so quickly.

Thanks for the interesting info Jock. Are you sure, though, that variant b) - the subsequently deleted hedgehog scene - comes from the same place? My understanding (which may be wrong!) from a couple of books I've read was that Tintin's run in the pages of the newly founded Tintin magazine started more or less where the story had been abandoned when Le Soir closed at the end of the war, rather than starting from the beginning of The Seven Crystal Balls again. If that's right, this hedgehog sequence, which has Tintin arriving at Marlinspike village by bus, fits in somewhere near the end of what is now the book The Seven Crystal Balls, the scene where Tintin comes to Marlinspike Hall some time after Calculus's kidnap, to find Haddock somewhat in the doldrums, moping in a chair in his brown dressing gown. Presumeably this new arrival-at-Marlinspike sequence was designed to properly introduce Tintin, Snowy and Haddock to new Tintin readers of the newly-founded magazine; and presumeably it wasn't necessary to keep it in the book of The Seven Crystal Balls, where it would have unnecessarily repeated the book's opening.

But, as I say, I could have got that all wrong!

Hey balthazar

It wasn't a mirical. Labrador answered Q165 The seven crystal balls, so I took the same album and had a look. I thouhgt that labrador might have noticed Snowy's odd behavior while he was looking for the answer to Q165. Just logic and luck.

Balthazar
Are you sure, though, that variant b) - the subsequently deleted hedgehog scene - comes from the same place?
Ah, you are quite right! I mixed the incidents up, and the version with the hedgehog is indeed the reprise at the start of the Journal version, to bring readers up to speed with the story so far, not the start of the story itself. Thanks for correcting me on that!
You touch your marble! ;-)