Tintin and Snowy: Why do some covers have the "stripe"?

Hi All,

Do any of you know why some Tintin albums have the stripe across the top with Tintin and Snowy, so Red Sea Sharks through to the Picaros as well as the Black Island. I thought it might have been the transition to Studios Herge but that happened before the Red Sea Sharks. I apologize if this topic has been covered before but was not able to locate any. Thank you to all you geniuses on this forum in advance.

It seems that the band was adopted at the same time as the end-papers changed in 1958; Red Sea Sharks was the first title to carry the new "gallery" of blue and white portraits, and the first to get the band.

Every cover designed thereafter was given the band - the last titles from Red Sea Sharks to Picaros, plus the 1966 re-draw of Black Island, and the two live-action movie books.

Land of Black Gold was re-drawn in 1971, but the cover design was only tweaked, not changed, so the banner wasn't added - presumably because Hergé was otherwise happy with how it looked, and didn't want it to obscure the decorative "arch".

Alph-Art (in both its versions) has a similar strip, but without the portraits and text, apart from Hergé's name. This is probably to emphasize that these books don't contain a true adventure, but an archive of work in progress, and also because as far as I know, Hergé hadn't left any indication of what the finished book's cover was going to be.

Lake of Sharks doesn't have the stripe either, but as to why not, well, I've run out of ideas...! ;-)

Some foreign editions - like these from Finland - added that stripe to earlier albums as well

http://sarjakuvat.eurocomics.info/tintti.html

Thank you very much jock123 and Mikael! I had always thought it was some sort of code that maybe Herge hadn't done a lot of the drawings etc...Just like the last picture of every book does not seem to have Herge's signature which I could never figure out!

Thank you so much both!

Interesting idea, but what made you think that? He was never less than in total charge of all his books, both writing the stories and doing all the page layout for all of them, and he drew the final characters (he always drew Tintin himself); his team did include specialists who could be relied on to work up the finished backgrounds, and provide technical drawing skill for machines and vehicles, but he'd have provided them with his pencils, and it was largely a time-saving method to meet the deadlines of the Tintin magazine.
In the end, Flight 714, Tintin and The Picaros and Alph-Art were done more or less as a duo by Hergé, with Bob de Moor assisting.

I guess the styles were different of those books. For example Red Sea Sharks with an older looking Tintin with angles and zoom ups in some frames is more like a mix between Picaros and Flight. Black Island and Cigars was basically redone by his team if I'm not mistaken? Red Sea, Picaros,and Flight just look Bob De Moor. The only ones that look like complete classic Herge (That have the stripe) are Tibet and possibly Castafiore) Just another angle is Herge usually signed a lot of the last pictures in the albums. But only Castafiore, Black Island and Cigars have his signature from the ones with the stripe. None of it adds up though so maybe there is no method at all to the madness!