Tintin Forums

Hi. I've looked some stuff up on Alph-Art, when I noticed something interesting.

In some of the re-discovered pages, Haddock is given a new life-style as a "hippie".

He grows long hair, changes around everything at Marlinespike (in a hippie way), and even takes drugs since he can't drink alcohol anymore (see Picaros).

I think these original ideas were pretty stupid. It dosen't seem like the Captain to be a hippie.

I'm glad Hergé didn't use these ideas in the original collection of skeches for Alph-Art.

I'm not overly fond of those new changes either but realistically, let's remember that a writer generally goes through a great number of good and bad ideas before they find one they love. Tintin and Alph-Art was a very dynamic adventure in that much of it was written without forward planning.

The Captain as a hippie doesn't appeal to me. However, I can see poor Archie trying out something new to take the place of the alcohol that he can no longer drink. I bet he would have decided that it was a bad idea after several misadventures.

Jelsemium
You're not suggesting that he would have tried LSD or marijuana or cocaine, are you??????

Even a desperate alcoholic like him would know better than that!!!!!!!!

No, he dosn't take any of that stuff, but he do's take Hashish and a few other things.

I've never seen these re-discovered pages! Which version are they in? I have Alph-Art in my 3-in-1 Tintin volume, with the last 4 stories including Alph-art. My volume was published in 2007, I think.

Calculite Are you shure you don't have them? The re-discovered pages are in the standard edition.

Was it that Haddock was meant to be a hippy, or just falling in with the art crowd?

My view on this is that it shows, sadly, how out-of-touch Hergé was with the fashions of the day.
In many of those 'rediscovered' pages for Alph-Art the sketches Hergé drew of those arty types look far too hippy-ish for me.

I mean, this was the late 70s and hippies were pretty passé, or certainly would have been in amongst the art crowd.

Wouldn't it have been more fitting to have seen people around that time dressed slightly punky maybe, some with spiky or dyed hair?

Hippies would have been passeé in Britain or the States from the early 70s onwards, but probably not in Europe proper until the early 80s.

Punk, though fashionable in Britain from the late 70s, only really caught on in the early 80s in Europe, if at all.

Do bear in mind that the late 70s was a very transitional era. As far as music is concerned, Genesis and Emerson, Lake and Palmer would have had greater appeal to the European arty crowd rather than punk, while spikey hair might have been seen as a quasi fascist attribute at the time.

That's not true, there were punk bands in Belgium from the mid 70s onwards, as well as other European countries such as Germany and France. Lots of British punk bands used to go there to play.

Of course, there were still hippies about, but punk was a rejection of the long hair, flares and 20-minute guitar solos and the fashions quickly caught on in Europe. Anyone remember Plastic Bertrand and "Ça plane pour moi"?

Hergé was still working on the book up until he died in 1983, or so it is said. I just thought that if he'd drawn the art crowd looking like in those sketches it would have looked rather out of date in the mid 1980s. Of course we'll never know what the final book would have looked like. Perhaps he might have given Tintin a mohican? ;-)

As far as Haddock goes, I think Hergé was floating several ideas; that Haddock would hang out with arty types; change all the decor in Marlinspike to a contemporary style; experiment with his outward appearance and persona, etc. I think one of them was for Haddock to smoke dope. I really don't believe any of them was intended to make the final book, rather they were a list of spontaneous ideas from brainstorming. It gives you something of an insight to Hergé's working methods.