jock123 Moderator
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#3 · Posted: 28 Mar 2018 20:19
As I have just been making some notes on the differences between the versions, which covers the question stuart raised at the start of this thread, all those years ago, I thought I might as well fill in a few blanks on the subject - albeit a little tardily - and try and address what went on "between" the adventures (you'll soon see why I have to use inverted commas)!
Firstly, it must be remembered that the story we now think of as two separate-but-joined books actually had quite a bumpy genesis, and the lines between them are not easily drawn.
The strip started out on the 16th December 1943 in the Le Soir newspaper, where it ran three or four frames at a time for about three-quarters of the next year, until September the 5th
The newspaper and album versions finally diverge at the end of the 149th strip in the paper (published on Thursday 30th August 1944) on what is page 48 in the book, when Haddock and Tintin finish their investigations, and decide to take their information to the police. When the newspaper strip moves on to "The following morning" (strip 150, 31/08/1944), it isn't to a relaxed Tintin sitting having tea, boiled egg and toast and croissants at his breakfast table in Labrador Road, while reading the morning paper (as the book shows us), it is to a slightly agitated Tintin, walking briskly in a city street, reading the same article he finds when at home in the book.
So caught up in his reading aloud to Snowy from La Depeche is our boy reporter, that he fails to notice an oncoming figure, equally caught up in reading the paper (although given that we can see the mast-head on the page coming towards us, it's a nice detail that the other person is reading the back page, possibly the sports results?). Snowy's attention being directed elsewhere, it's inevitable that the two readers slam into each other in the last frame.
Strip 151 (01/09/1944) reveals that Tintin has literally bumped into General Alcazar, who tells Tintin that, far from doing well, he has lost his job at the music-hall and is unable to continue the act, because Chiquito has left him without warning - although, he adds, Chiquito had told him on the boat over to Europe that he would one day disappear, and that when he did, Alcazar was not to try and find him. He also reveals that his erstwhile partner in show-business was in fact one of the last descendants of the King of the Inca people (we do get this information in the book, but more on that anon).
In Strip 152 (02/09/1944), Tintin makes the connection between Chiquito and the "thin man" the gendarmes had seen in the car they believed had been used to kidnap Calculus. He then questions Alcazar, who identifies the driver from the description given as being Fernando Ramirez, a Peruvian exporter of guano (used in agriculture as a fertilizer), who "often came to see Chiquito". Armed with this knowledge, Tintin takes Alcazar to see the police.
And it is at this point the black-and-white episodes of the story end, at least as far as the newspaper reading public were concerned.
The liberation of Brussels by the Allies swiftly brought down the curtain on the "stolen" Le Soir, and with it much of Hergé's luck ran out. He was rendered unemployed, and unemployable, having been designated unfit to hold a job, and investigated as a possible German collaborator by the authorities, for having worked for a German sanctioned institution. This state of affairs wouldn't be resolved for another couple of years, and even after that it cast a shadow over him: the post-occupation Le Soir washed its hands of him, and would not even mention his name in their pages until at least the end of the Nineteen Sixties.
We will get to Hergé's return to grace, and Tintin returning to finish his adventure, in just a moment.
Back at the newspaper version, even if the readers would not see any more of the story, we do now know what would have happened for at least the next few days, as the archives hold at least another four consecutive strips (153-156), which never ran in the paper.
These cover much of the same ground as the events of pages 50-51, and the start of page 54, albeit in a far more compact fashion.
I'll momentarily double-back, to point out a major divergence between the book and the newspaper versions, to say that the sequence of the Thom(p)sons ringing Tinin, and his then visiting the hospital are completely absent in the newspaper version, although found in the book.
Likewise, Tintin didn't then go to Marlinspike on the following day - that particular incident first appeared in the Tintin magazine.
Because now we have yet another thread to follow.
With the help of Raymond Leblanc, who, having been an active member of the Belgian Resistance with a distinguished war record, was able to provide the support needed, Hergé's status was normalized again, and he could return to work, this time for Leblanc's newly established Le Lombard publishing house, which presented the Belgian public with a new, colour comic magazine, under the Tintin banner.
With the launch came a return to the story which had been running in Le Soir, but rather than rewind to the very beginning, the first episode (now under the title of Le Temple du Soliel, a.k.a. Prisoners of the Sun chose to restart with Tintin mid-adventure, inserting a scene to recap information, which means it runs a similar, but subtly different, course to the later book, and forms the overlap between the end of the first volume, and the start of the second.
But - back once again to the unpublished newspaper strips!
Strip 153 begins the day after Alcazar and Tintin's meeting. The first panel shows the readers that a "Wanted" poster has been issued, with a 20,000 BFr reward for Chiquito and Ramirez (someone has managed to procure photos of the wanted men overnight - in Chiquito's case, it may be an advertising photo from his music-hall engagement, but do guano merchants have a need for having glossy 8 x 10 publicity images in their line of work?).
The second shows an interview between a gendarme and a petrol-pump attendant, who identifies the men as people he served in his garage, having seen the poster (it doesn't mention if he gets the reward money).
We then cut to Tintin calling Marlinspike, either from his flat or the police station, and Nestor answers before handing over the 'phone to Haddock.
Strip 154 has Tintin telling Haddock the developments, and revealing that the garage attendant had said the car was last seen heading for the coast, the passengers presumably intending to embark on a ship; this news sends Haddock into a slump, letting the receiver down, causing Tintin at the other end to become concerned, and Nestor to ask the Captain if he is unwell.
Strip 155 then continues the Captain's reverie; he sits, repeating the word "embark", until, suddenly, an idea grabs him (depicted as a ship's steam whistle tooting!), and, with new resolve, he stalks off, leaving Nestor to finish the call with Tintin.
This entire incident is reworked in the magazine and the book, and, just to complicate matters further, while they are obviously similar at firt glance, they both have slightly different versions of events.
Common to both is that we - as readers - no longer see Tintin encounter Alcazar, and are not told of Chiquito's defection (until a new, later, encounter at the docks fills us in); we know of no reward poster, or the police interview. These are only in the newspaper strip.
Tintin instead visits Marlinspike.
In the magazine, we actually see the journey, which is undertaken by bus, allowing Tintin to catch up on events in his newspaper. This provides the magazine readers with the "the story so far" recap needed to get them up to speed, and disguises what would otherwise be a massive, possibly boring, info dump very neatly.
A walk to the hall from the nearby village followed (with an interlude of slapstick, as first Snowy has an encounter with a hedgehog, and then Tintin falls in a stream) before Tintin reaches the front garden.
It is only after the end of this pastoral interlude that the book once again picks up the story.
It should also be mentioned that this new pastoral scene is clearly a call-back to events found at the very start of The Seven Crystal Balls, where Tintin and Snowy undertake a similar country ramble. It even provides Hergé with the opportunity to pay-off a gag he had seeded in the black-and-white version, as Snowy comes a cropper in the stream first time around, Tintin on the second occasion. It's beautifully balanced, Hergé at his best, and wonderfully funny, but sadly neither incident is included in the version of the story found in the standard books.
Continued below...
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