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Le Petit Vingtième: Cover art

derdup
Member
#1 · Posted: 1 Jun 2004 10:55
Whilst hunting on the Web for info and any history pertaining to the Adventures of Tintin, I've found examples of the many wonderful covers to Le Petit Vingtième. Most, if not all, have been in colour.
It occurs to me what an essential addition to any enthusiast's collection a volume of this cover-art would make. Perhaps there are enough covers for more than one volume?
Does such a collection exist already?

I envisage a book of cover-art, each reproduced to original size and in chronological sequence. A brief history of each adventure could be included as one ends and the next begins.

The covers I've seen so far are usually, and understandably, showing signs of age. I imagine issues such as the yellowing of newsprint over time can be addressed with the use of digital magic and modern know-how. I'd like to see these drawings looking as they did back in the 1930's.

I'm curious to know the page dimensions of Le Petit Vingtième. Does anyone know?
Also, how many pages made up an issue, and what percentage was devoted to Tintin?

Finally, I was interested to see in Tintin and the World of Hergé by Benoît Peeters (pg. 40), a picture of the cover to Les Cigares du Pharaon. This cover clearly dates from Tintin's black and white book period but it is not the same cover I've seen on the facsimiles.
I'd love to see a nice example of this cover and I'm now wondering if any of the other b & w books had more than one type of cover-art featured during those early years?
chevet
Belgium Correspondent
#2 · Posted: 2 Jun 2004 22:01
Look here to see the various Tintin editions in French - Editions du Petit Vingtième, Casterman b/w small picture, Casterman b/w big picture, Casterman Color - (click first on Belgium):
Link broken - site no longer works

On the same site, you can also see the covers of most of the Tintin books in various languages.
Le Petit Vingtième covers were printed with one or two colors.
derdup
Member
#3 · Posted: 3 Jun 2004 05:06
Hi again,

It seems that my idea for a volume of collected cover-art would probably entail a serious and lengthy restoration effort - but hey, I can dream can't I...? ;-)

I could find no sign there, however, of the mysterious Les Cigares du Pharaon alternate cover.
Can anyone shed any light on that one?
Frankymole
Member
#4 · Posted: 4 Jun 2004 01:15
derdup:
I could find no sign there, however, of the mysterious Les Cigares du Pharaon alternate cover.

Both previous cover artworks to the modern one are there.
Here and here. Links no longer work
Unless you know of a fourth?
derdup
Member
#5 · Posted: 4 Jun 2004 06:04
Thanks Frankymole. I guess there's not much of a mystery after all.

I'd only ever seen the cover-version in question whilst reading Tintin and the World of Hergé, and that example was not captioned.

The more I see of this version the more I'm charmed by it! I guess my search begins for a 1942 B & W facsimile.

If I do ever come across a fourth cover-version for Les Cigares du Pharaon, I'll let you know ;-)
jock123
Moderator
#6 · Posted: 1 Jul 2004 00:04
derdup:
I'm curious to know the page dimensions of Le Petit Vingtième

Sorry to take so long to get back to you on this, but better late than never...! :-)
I only have a very small sample to which I can refer, but the layout etc. seems to be roughly the same.

For a start, the whole thing is printed on what would originally have been a single sheet of paper, making up four full-sized newspaper pages (two on the front, two on the back), so I guess it came as the centre spread in the paper - remebering that that sheet, when folded once, makes four individual pages in the newspaper.

A copy of Le Vingtième Siècle would appear (I am extrapolating from my tiny sample) to have been somewhere around 44cm wide and 62cm tall, quite large for a newspaper by today's standards (it's interesting to note (if printing and publishing are an interest to you) that the page size is almost (but not quite) twice the size of a so-called "Berliner" newspaper, which is 31.5cm x 47cm, and was a common size for continental papers in the past (although confusingly not the size of the Berliner Zeitung newspaper). I imagine that the industry went from papers of the size of the XXe Siècle to Berliner quite easily with a simple extra fold and cut.

You then took this sheet out (leaving it as it was originally folded in the newspaper), fold that in half, and fold it in half again; once you slit the outer edges (getting an adult to help you, if young, and remembering not to slit the spine!), you had a mini-newspaper 22.5cm wide, and 31cm tall, running to 16 pages.

Inside, four pages were given over to the strips:
Tintin was the centre two pages, facing each other, with the content being roughly equivalent to a single page in an album - the 18/09/1937 edition has what became page 32 of The Black Island in it.

The other two pages were a subsidiary strip - J,Z&J in The Mysterious Ray in the 18/09/37 one, with Jocko on the barrel-organ and at the seance - he also gets the cover, being chased by a policeman. Another one I have has what I think is a Quick & Flupke bit called Nocturne, about a blond boy who can't sleep, but as the Q&F names don't appear I am not certain if it's part of the canon.

The rest is a variety of features, and ads for toys. The ads take up about four pages, although I have one with the back page given over to single panel gag cartoons, so I guess the advertising content was variable to demand - and the approaching Christmas season might have increased the advertising.

There is a piece on the museum at Tervueren written by someone called Dédé, on the same page as a competition to win one of four free trips to the Catholic shrine at Lourdes; an autographed (!) photo of St. Nicholas sending best wishes to the readers; another page is given over to a list of competition winners, and another is a puzzle page.

It seems a bit dry by current standards, but it is not far from the sort of thing that still might have been put out when I was at school in the 70s (I recall a sort of children's newspaper being handed round in French which was similar, just lacking the Tintin!).

Hope this helps!
derdup
Member
#7 · Posted: 4 Jul 2004 04:49
Hello jock123,

So it would seem the cover dimensions of a folded-up Le Petit Vingtieme were almost identical to those of a modern Tintin album. Interesting.

Thanks so much for taking the time to research all that, and for answering my question :-)

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