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Hergé: "They Explored the Moon" Apollo XII strip

midnightblueowl
Member
#1 · Posted: 15 Feb 2006 15:31
Hi
I saw this in Tintin, the pocket essentials:
"In 1969, the magazine Paris-Match (a French Life) - which Hergé later lampooned as Paris-Flash in The Castafiore Emerald - asked Hergé to draw a realistic 4-page sequence depicting the actual Apollo XII Moon journey and landing."

I know the website it's on but is it breaking rules to link to it as it was made by Hergé, but is not an official Moulinsart produced book? Any moderators please advise.
jock123
Moderator
#2 · Posted: 15 Feb 2006 15:41
midnightblueowl
I know the website it's on but is it breaking rules to link to it as it was made by Hergé, but is not an official Moulinsart produced book? Any moderators please advise.

I think you have become a little confused somewhere over the status of what is copyright, and what isn't. All Hergé's work is, for want of a better way of putting it, "owned" by Moulinsart, a company which holds the rights to all work created by Hergé - it's a little more complicated than that, especially in this case, as Paris-Match may also have some rights in the matter, but that more or less expresses the situation.

As a result, if and only if the web-site on which the Apollo story has had the permission of Moulinsart, would it be permissable to make any sort of link. I would think that it is best to err on the side of caution, and not make any link.

There are several threads dealing with the Moulinsart/ Fondation/ Hergé rights issues, and it might be worth a search of the forums to see how the whole thing hangs together.

Paris-Match (a French Life) - which Hergé later lampooned as Paris-Flash in The Castafiore Emerald
I think this says it all about the standard of research to be found in the Pocket Essentials book! The Castafiore Emerald pre-dates the Paris-Match feature, so there is no "later" about it!
midnightblueowl
Member
#3 · Posted: 15 Feb 2006 22:21
Well, it's about the Apollo XII moon landings, and is drawn in a pop-art style, our first real indication that Hergé could do different art forms.
On the cover it shows a astronaut being greeted by the Tintin crew in space suits on the moon. Inside it has nothing to do with Tintin.
jock123
Moderator
#4 · Posted: 15 Feb 2006 22:44
midnightblueowl
Well, it's about the Apollo XII moon landings and is drawn in a pop-art style, our first real indication that Herge could do different art forms.

Hergé was actually a very versatile artist, and didn't just work in the ligne claire style; as you say, the Apollo story isn't the same as Tintin books, but neither was Popol, which pre-dates it.

If you want to see the many and varied styles Hergé used over the years (and he had far more styles than you might think), you should look for some the books which have show-cased his early work, such as the Chronologies.
Harrock n roll
Moderator
#5 · Posted: 16 Feb 2006 01:18
The book, which is called Ils ont marché sur la Lune, was produced for a 1985 exhibition. I saw it in Paris and bought a copy. It has a cover which Hergé drew to celebrate the Apollo 11 moon landings. It originally had a speech bubble with Tintin saying (in French) "Welcome to the Moon, Mr Armstrong!"
The image was used as a poster for the exhibition as well but without the speech bubble.

The content is mainly pictures and makes a comparison between the real moon landings and the fictional one from the Tintin adventure.
There's an interesting account of the French astronaut Patrick Baudry who paid hommage to Tintin, Snowy, Haddock and Calculus in space. And there's a photo of Baudry holding an image of the cover whilst onboard Discovery in 1985.

It also has the four page story which Hergé drew for Paris-Match. Personally I don't think the style of the art is that much different to Hergé's 'clear line' style.
Perhaps it's a little more 'realistic' in places (one of the astronaut's faces for example), otherwise it looks the same as Tintin to me.
jock123
Moderator
#6 · Posted: 24 May 2022 09:46
midnightblueowl:
In 1969, the magazine Paris-Match (a French Life) - which Hergé later lampooned as Paris-Flash in The Castafiore Emerald

I think I may have finally unravelled what was going on with this bizarre statement...
It's just plain wrong to say that The Castafiore Emerald follows the Apollo XII strip, but why might they have made the claim?
Well, I have found that there was a Paris-Match issue (N°489, 23 August 1958), covering the subject of the U.S. manned space programme, that had the headline Objectif Lune (Destination Moon) on the cover - first Tintin connection! - and for which Hergé drew a little editorial cartoon - second connection! - of Tintin walking towards the reader across the Moon's surface with Snowy, Calcuclus's rocket standing in the background.
Unlike the later "Bienvenue, Mr Armstrong!" cartoon commemorating the Apollo XI landing, Tintin and Snowy are not in their space-suits, so it is to be hoped that they survived!
As this was pre-Castafiore Emerald, I feel that this may have been the issue they were talking about, and confused it with the later one.
Literalman
Member
#7 · Posted: 29 May 2022 15:31
I think that lampooned is the wrong word. To me it implies criticism and ridicule, whereas Paris Flash seems to have been just a name substitution. That's my two cents, anyway.
jock123
Moderator
#8 · Posted: 29 May 2022 23:25
Literalman:
To me it implies criticism and ridicule,

Hergé was setting out to make fun of them, and said so in an interview; when he talked to Numa Sadoul, Sadoul asked him about the incident. From p.183 of Tintin et Moi, Entretiens avec Hergé (2000 edition):
Sadould: Ses rédacteurs ne vous en ont pas voulu?
Hergé: Je ne crois pas. Je crois même savoir qu'ils en ont bien ri. Ils ont le sens de l'humour, à Paris... euh, Flash!
Je pensais évidemment à un célèbre hebdomadaire coutumier de l'erreur, au point de croire qu'il y avait, au sein de la rédaction, un membre spécialement payé pour introduire des fautes!

Which roughly translates as:
Sadoul: Its editors didn't hold it against you?
Hergé: I don't think so. I even believe that they had a good laugh about it. They have a sense of humor in Paris... err, Flash!
Obviously, I was thinking of a famous weekly that was accustomed to errors, to the point of believing that there was, within their editorial staff, a member especially paid to introduce mistakes!

He related an incident where he'd been interviewed by journalists about Tintin, and they had (for some reason) got him to provide the accurate dimensions of the Tintin & Snowy sign on top of the Le Lombard building in Brussels, which he got for them for their notes - and when the article came out, they had garbled the stats so that, "everything was changed, inverted: 25m had become 2m50, 3m50 had become 35m...! So I played at putting a bunch of disconnections in the same style in my story, and I had a lot of fun doing it!" (p.185).
Literalman
Member
#9 · Posted: 5 Jun 2022 18:49
Thanks for that, Jock.

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