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Le Sifflet: Have Hergé's strips been reprinted?

Jon God
Member
#1 · Posted: 11 Feb 2017 02:52
I've seen 2 or three strips which Hergé drew for this publication show up via Google Images, but it appears there were 7 in total?

Were they ever reprinted anywhere? I don't speak French, so Googling it would be harder for me.
So far in English I haven't found any confirmation either way.

Any help on this would be lovely, thanks!
jock123
Moderator
#2 · Posted: 12 Feb 2017 00:40
Two of the Le Sifflet pages were reproduced (together with a selection of single editorial illustrations for various articles for the same publication) in volume one of Hergé: Chronologie d'une œuvre.
They are the pages published on the 30th December 1928, and constitute his first two comic strips in the modern style of using speech bubbles to carry the dialog, rather than using text boxes below the pictures.

One is the slightly infamous La Noël du petit enfant sage, in which a child (who looks quite like the Tintin of the Soviets era) gets left an unexpected «Christmas present» by his dog (who is a prototype Snowy).

The other is Réveillon, in which an unscrupulous restaurateur tries to boost sales of oysters in his restaurant by inserting an imitation pearl in a diner's dish, and comedy ensues...!

These unfortunately are probably the best known of the pages; along with the other Le Sifflet pages, Hergé seems to have kept them pretty much out of the record of his work.
They were finally rediscovered (or at least reintroduced to readers) by Huib van Opstal, a Dutch writer who discussed them in his 1994 biography of Hergé.

Unfortunately I've not read the book; given that they haven't reappeared in the intervening years, it seems possible that they are indeed lost works.
Jon God
Member
#3 · Posted: 12 Feb 2017 08:46
Those sound like the two I came across searching the internet. Shame, I'd love to see more of them. Thanks all the same!
snowybella
Member
#4 · Posted: 28 Mar 2017 01:58
I've seen the page of the La Noël du petit enfant sage, and I would like to know what «borms» means. Tintin says that at the end, and Snowy has a «?» while looking at the plate which has a strange steaming pile...
jock123
Moderator
#5 · Posted: 28 Mar 2017 17:21
snowybella:
I would like to know what «borms» means

It's said to be a reference to Auguste Borms, who was a militant Flemish activist, who collaborated with the Germans during the occupation of Belgium during the First World War.
The implication is that the "steaming pile" and the traitorous Borms have something in common.
Borms was also born in a place called Saint-Nicolas, so - connecting the dots between someone getting something unpleasant from St Nicolas - there may be more to this in terms of satire, now lost to us who are not more aware of the politics of the times.

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