Tintin Forums

When I was young back in the 80s I founded in a bookstore an Arabic version of the famous Belgian comics magazine Tintin. I loved the magazine & tracked the old copies of the magazine which was already out of business by that time.

I loved the various stories in the Tintin magazines, but mostly I loved the stories of Luc Orient, Blake & Mortimer, Bob Morane, Bruno Brazil & Vincent Larcher. These guys were my childhood heroes.

I was under the impression that the original Tintin magazine was also out of business. That there were no more stories of my heroes. Last week, I found that the stories of Blake & Mortimer are still being published. That I didn’t read the whole Luc Orient series.

So now I’m looking for the English version of the comics. Where I can get it?
Most of the stuff that I found online is in French & I don’t know French.

Does any one know how to get these comics in English?

I think the original Tintin magazine was out of business since the late 1980s (might be 1988). I doubt that an English version will be easy to come by and that these comics are probably local to Francophones (how many people out of the US know "Calvin and Hobbes" or non-Cantonese speakers knowing "Old Master Q"?).

Still, don't give up hope!

I can give you the exact date of the last Tintin magazine: August 26, 1993. It was the 48th volume (jaargang in Dutch). My parents showed me a newspaper clipping that the last surviving weekly that had continuing stories (e.g. 3 or 4 pages of the story for weeks on end) Robbedoes/Spirou is about to throw in the towel as well after 67 years!
Concerning Blake and Mortimer (in my humble opinion nothing can touch this strip in style, detail, atmosphere and tension, although Harry Dickson is quite good, I must admit): Just a week ago a copy of The timetrap went on Ebay for 28 pounds. I know that The yellow M and The Atlantis enigma have been commercially available, but I'm not so sure about the rest. I have a laminated hardcover copy with a linnen spine of part 1 of The secret of the Swordfish in English, but it is such a beautiful book that I doubt it if it was a commercial release. It looks more like a presentation copy or a show-model for publishers. I have never seen another copy for sale, but I saw part 2 on ebay about 6 months ago. I was quite surprised, as you can understand. Unfortunately I was unable to place a bid.
The author, Edgar Piere Jacobs, passed away in 1987. During his lifetime he completed only 9 stories (Sato 2 only in sketch), but what a legacy! Besides his own series, just after the war (while working for Tintin magazine on The swordfish) he worked on the redrawing/re-editing of the pre-war black-and-white Tintin albums. They benefited enormously from his eye for detail. When he started with The secret of the great pyramid in the early fifties, his research and painstakingly accurate style of drawing made it impossible to continue his work on the Tintin albums and another member of the Tintin magazine staff took over: Bob de Moor. He too had his own series: Mr. Barelli (very much in the same style/mood as the Tintin albums) and Cori the shiphand (beautiful and much more detailed drawings than Mr. Barelli). During the fifties he worked mostly on backgrounds, cars and technical stuff. It was Bob de Moor who did the complete rebuild (including the cover) of The black island in 1965/66. For Flight 714 he got an apprentice: Roger Leloup, who was responsible for the design of the Carreidas jet. He took the plunge to start his own series in 1970 in Robbedoes/Spirou with Yoko Tsuno, and never looked back.
The other strips you mentioned (Bob Morane, Vincent Larcher, Luc Orient and Bruno Brazil) I have never seen English books of. As with the Blake and Mortimer strips, Bob Morane and Bruno Brazil continued being published, but straight into the finished book, rather than being published in instalments first.
All these strips are readily available in Dutch and French (except Vincent Larcher, which were never reprinted since the early seventies).

Hope that answers some of the questions...

Keep on reading...Ron

Moderator Note: Just to be clear - the Tintin Magazine was never published in English, so to look for it would be a wild goose chase!