Tintin Forums

My Play.com order shipped today if anyone still hasn't bought it yet.

Rik

I think it was all very well for Hergé to apologise for his youthful indiscretions, yet he could have gone back later and revised the narrative to good ends, but didn’t, and seems happy to gloss over the fact that he didn’t improve things in the re-drawing/ editing/ colouring process at a much later date)

In all honesty, having re-read this in the new edition, I'm not sure there's much that could've been done to save this short of a 95% re-write; time that might've been better used coming up with other stories.

The plot, such as it is, is all over the place. A trip to Africa, patronise the locals, a bit of wildlife slaughter, a strange interlude about Al Capone, a bit more slaughter and off home! A story set in Africa offers a lot of opportunities, and 20 or so years later Tintin visits another continent far more succesfully with a far surer touch when it comes to stereotyping, but this Congo is unsavable. Unsaveable on a story level at least, the art is quite a lot of fun, if you can try to ignore the stereotyping.

Perhaps in terms of the 1940s the tidying up and blunting the first edition's edge was seen as being good enough?

Nonetheless I'm glad it's out - now when are we going to get English versions of the stories as they ran in Tintin magazine, cut scenes and all? Yum!

George

I have brought one today from science museam okkatars store and i have already have b&w version but i always wanted a colour one so i brought last one from that store. Lucky me eh?

At last my collection is completed from land of soviets to alpa-art

Lexino

My Amazon order's being prepared for dispatch, so hopefully it should be sent soon. Funny that it's still estimated to arrive on the 5-6th September 2005, though. I'd like to see it happen!

You might require a TARDIS for that one.
;oP
I can imagine Tintin walking into a clear-line drawn TARDIS in a Tintin book...

My (Amazon) order hasn't been packed yet but with the amount that I've been spending on the credit card recently perhaps a week or so longer might give me a breathing space to pay the thing off first!
lol

It is nice Lexino to have all the Tintin books in English in colour now isn't it. Even a few months ago pretty much everyone was saying (including ymself) that it seemed a bit of a fools dream to expect that Tintin In The Congo colour version would make it out in English, so maybe we'll see even more of the more rare or archive type Herge works being released in English as well now...

The B&W facsimiles are a wonderful addition, so maybe they'll also do the colour facsimiles like the Black Island and Land Of Black Gold earlier editions which you can get in French too one day?

Kam

Just received news from Amazon.co.uk, my copy has been dispatched and at the bargain price of £6.99!!

At long last...
Richard

Yaaay - and mine is being dispatched soon too... I must come across as an obsessive fan the way I've been going on about this release, but I do have a life outside my love for the work of Herge - I promise!
Hehehe...
It's just that this is the last colour (i.e. not including the colour facsimiles) Tintin book to be released in English and that is something I've probably been waiting for since I was a wee 8 year old and discovered Tintin in my school library.

It didn't take long to realise that there were gaps in the english Tintin 'canon' and that we missed out on a lot of really cool material in english speaking countries. I remember when Herge died (I felt like a friend and father had died that day, he lived through his work...), and there were articles in the newspapers here (New Zealand) about him having died (I still have some of them) and there were tantalising references for a Tintin fan such as I was back then that referred to earlier B&W versions of the Tintin books and a couple of mysterious Tintin books (the very first two) that were practically unobtainable, even in french.

So the words "At long last" does ring very true for me as well!

Kam

I might as well add to the hullabaloo and say that mine's been dispatched too! And just after I'd emailed them asking why it still hasn't been sent. Isn't that always the way?

Anyway... I remember the thrill of discovering the existence of the three books I'd never heard of in Tintin and the World of Hergé, and when I found a copy of Tintin au Congo in my old secondary school's library ... well, you can imagine. I think I was the only person to ever borrow it; I remember sitting at home with Congo open in front of me and a French-English dictionary to hand. That's dedication to the cause. :)

LOL

I must admit to having to get the french dictionary out when reading french versions of Tintin books (usually ones' that aren't avaialble in english) too.

I learned basic french at school and now I at least have a good reason for ever having bothered! Even though my french is very basic it still helps when translating Tintin into english as the construction of the two languages is so different.

Kam

Have to agree with the sentiments here, been dying to read it in English since I saw a foreign copy on holiday in Majorca when I was 8.

Wasn;t until much later that I found out about it, got the English fascimile and the French Color.

Rik