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Tintin books: Colours of album spines...?

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jockosjungle
Member
#1 · Posted: 22 Sep 2004 19:40
Just looking through my collection and have been wondering about this a while...

In the modern prints of the boooks in the UK, the spines of the books are either yellow, red or green.

Does this follow any pattern at all?

Rik
OJG
Member
#2 · Posted: 22 Sep 2004 21:30
Call me an anorak, but Cigars, Lotus and Sceptre all have blue spines. And has anyone else noticed that Red Sea Sharks used to have a red spine but in more recent times has been given a yellow one?

I don't think there is any pattern, though I notice that the blue spines are all earlier stories, and that there are not too many green spines. Most seem to be red or yellow.
jockosjungle
Member
#3 · Posted: 22 Sep 2004 22:11
I think it'd be cool if they did one of those picture spines, where all the books together produce a nice picture or something.

I'd buy them all for that! At the moment I have a mix of the normal sizes and the 3 in 1s.

Rik
jockosjungle
Member
#4 · Posted: 22 Sep 2004 22:12
It's not as if the spines in any way match the front covers. I wonder how they picked them

Rik
Richard
UK Correspondent
#5 · Posted: 23 Sep 2004 16:53
It's not as if the spines in any way match the front covers. I wonder how they picked them

Aesthetic appeal, I'm guessing - the spines often contrast with the dominant colours of the cover itself (a blue spine for the red "Blue Lotus" cover; blue for the very desert-themed "Cigars of the Pharaoh" cover).

And most of the books had their spine colours changed at some point or other - with regard to the French editions, all of the early ones were originally red, then yellow was introduced - "The Shooting Star" was bluey-grey at some point, I think - during the period they were made from material / cloth. When the printed spines were introduced, the colours were all changed to the ones we have now.

And I'm not sure what happened with "The Red Sea Sharks" ... the hardback English edition has a red spine, the paperback has that murky yellow colour.

And to throw another spanner into the works regarding differing spine colours, the new Spanish editions of "The Blue Lotus" ("El Loto Azul") have a red spine, so the cover seems to wrap itself around the spine, instead of having the clearly-defined end.
finlay
Member
#6 · Posted: 25 Sep 2004 19:08
The French ones are the same as ours, and on the back of them the "gallery" of books has the spine colours on it. The German ones, afaik, are all red, or at least they colour it differently.
Martine
Member
#7 · Posted: 9 Oct 2004 22:23
All the spanish ones have yellow spines only. Just my 2 cents.
yamilah
Member
#8 · Posted: 4 Apr 2005 20:22
In the original and British hard-cover editions, whom do you think really decided these four mysterious book spines' colours?
Herge,? the publisher? somebody else?
jock123
Moderator
#9 · Posted: 5 Apr 2005 10:12
Richard
I'm not sure what happened with "The Red Sea Sharks" ...

It may not have any bearing on the matter, but I seem to remember that Red Sea Sharks may have been the first book to appear in paper-back in English (I distinctly remember it being advertised in 1974/ 75 in my “Whizzer and Chips”, and it was the first of the books I ever bought, on my first trip to London early in ’75 - a whole 30p at the time!), so perhaps it was something of an experiment?
Harrock n roll
Moderator
#10 · Posted: 5 Apr 2005 15:52
yamilah In the original and British hard-cover editions, whom do you think really decided these four mysterious book spines' colours? Herge,? the publisher? somebody else?

My guess would be Casterman decided it for the French/Dutch editions. And I'd say it's highly probable that they got the idea from Golden Press, the first US publisher.

The pre-1968 French/Dutch Casterman colour editions had a yellow or red cloth spine with no printing on (the pre-68 British Methuen editions all had a red). Golden Press in the meantime had given their books printed spines from 1959 and these were on a colour background (reddish-pink for Rackham, light green for Explorers, etc.)

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