Tintin Forums

In the Tintin/Hergé book by Benoit Peeters there is a sample of a Lake of Sharks strip made for some newspaper (perhaps Le Soir?), and drawn by Hergé or at least someone from the Studio.

Were these strips complete and collected into a book?

I just remember the strip, don't have the book on hand, sorry if the answer is in the Peeters book, but I can't check.

I’m sure that there is someone here who knows more about this than me, but the short answer is, yes, the strip was done to cover the complete film and by members of the studio, not Hergé, and no, they were not compiled into a book.
However, my hesitation is such, because whenever I have seen examples of the paper strip (and there are examples in a few places), and compared it to the volume available in the shops, it always looks to me as if the newspaper strip’s content has been placed over backgrounds lifted from the film. I don’t know what the real story is, because the information available always seems to suggest that the newspaper version was passed over for the one which was used in the book, but they are really similar, if not the same.

Seems to be some confusion here. The black/white newspaper strip I asked about is NOT the same as the widely obtainable color book, which have the art-work lifted from the film.

I have never seen a compilation of the strip so that was the reason for my question. Perhaps it is this that is displayed on this site, my french is too non-existent to be sure, but Le Soir is mentioned.
http://www.pressibus.org/bd/bdbric/div/tintin.html

When was the newspaper strip published by the way, and for how long? Was it ever published in another newspaper? Was it a Monday to Saturday strip?

And why is not the strip published instead as a book, as it look way more canon than the film book?

Thanks for that very interesting weblink, labrador. My French isn't good either, but I could just about get the gist. Also, I found that if you put the web address into a Google search box, it brings it up as a search result, so that you can then click on Google's "translate this page" option to open the page in English - or at least a computer translator's version of English!

What seems to be the case is that a black-and-white ligne claire version of the film's plot was drawn by Bob de Moor and published daily in Le Soir, during December 1972 and January 1973, at a rate of two strips per day, presumeably to tie in with and promote the original release of the film.

Whether Bob de Moor drew all this especially for the newspaper run, or whether he'd already drawn this black-and-white version as a storyboard for the film's production isn't made clear. The latter possibility is just a guess on my part, because drawing all this (apparently the equivalent of a 44 page Tintin book) seems like a lot of work just for a one-off newspaper run.

The clear line drawing style of this newspaper strip looks much more like a proper Tintin book than the subsequent book-of-the-film version, yet it wasn't coloured or put into book form - at least not officially.

My own guess would be that Hergé may have been happier for the book based on film stills to come out, because no one could mistake it for a "real" Tintin book; whereas if this newspaper strip had been turned into a colour book, it could easily have been mistaken for his own work, which it wasn't. But that's just guesswork on my part.

I don’t think anyone has said that they are the same - I just think that the film book and the newspaper strips are too similar for them to be treated as if one varies wildly from the other - they actually run frame for frame, image for image. The only major difference is the decor - the book uses the movie-backgrounds, the strip version used settings drawn in clear-line style, and not necessarily the same as the films.
If you look at the comparison images on the site you link to, the “Dépêchons-nous!” ones for example, everything from the ripples of the waves to the sweat-beads around Tintin’s head (which are a feature of the image on the page, and not present in the film) are exactly the same, as is the relationship between the position of the characters to the over-head pipe on the left.
To my eye, one is taken from the other (although I wouldn’t hazard a guess as to which one is the source), or they have both been created from some common source, perhaps itself made from an assemblage of movie material or storyboards, as Balthazar suggests above.

If the daily strip were done by Bob De Moor, does anyone know if it was titled “Tintin and the Lake of Sharks by Bob De Moor”, instead of “Based on Characters created By Hergé”?

According to IMDb Bob was graphics advisor on the film, but if I remember correctly he is not credited in the film at all.

Perhaps one day Casterman could release some Studio Hergé collections with Tintin illustrations, artwork and other stuff made by the other members of the Studio. A Lake of Sharks book by De Moor would sit nicely in such a collection, and we all know who was the father of Tintin, so that won't diminish Hergé's role.

No, the daily strip wasn’t credited to Bob de Moor, anymore than was the book.

He does get a credit on the movie as “Conseiller Graphique” (which seems to be pretty much as per IMDB) on the same slide as Claude Lambert and Philippe Wallet – who sadly is a back-ground artist, rather than a financial advisor.


I don’t think I am going to be able to convince you, but it would look little different to the one we have; however I would love to have a volume which contained far more of the art and back-ground “making of” stuff.

Perhaps a book based on the strip would not be that different from the film book, but I would like it all the same. Just as all those other facsimiles which sometimes look very much like the regular books.

I though think it is a bit sad that Hergé's team-mates don't have credits in the books where they did some material. Stan Lee is not in anyway a lesser man because he opted for shared credits, on the contrary I would say. Sorry this last bit might be for some other discussion though.

An interesting example, given that others might say he takes too much credit: Steve Ditko didn't get a co-credit for Spider-Man's creation, and seems to have had to fight to get one; Jack Kirby never seems to have got one (although he and Ditko had worked up a character called The Silver Spiderwhom an earlier editor (not Lee) suggested should be renamed "Spider-Man", and Kirby had worked on a published strip about a scientist who through experimenting with a chemical ended up with the proportionate strength of an ant - all predating any association with Stan Lee) and Lee has never done anything about it, while reaping in millions himself, although it is commonly held that Kirby and Ditko created both the look of the character, and gimmicks such as the wrist-mounted web-shooters. Kirby still doesn't get any co-credit for The Avengers or The Fantastic Four either...