Dimensions of new colorized editions?

Firstly, it is weird that they skipped releasing physical copies of the newly colorized editions of the original B&W for Soviets and Congo, and went straight to America.

But, does anyone know why the dimensions for America is different from Cigars and Blue Lotus?

I think it was done to promote the use of the digital editions app, and (in the case of Soviets) to avoid stepping on the toes of the regular English-language publisher.


Differences in dimensions of some of the facsimiles was noted in the past, and I had a go at doing some comparative measurements of them in this thread here.

When you are talking about the books not being the same size, is that just the dimensions of the volumes changing, or has the interior atwork changed size too...?

jock123

The books themselves are significantly different in dimensions and styling. America is an entire inch shorter in both length and height. The spine is different too.

I am guessing it's because of the different publishers.
America was exclusively a "Moulinsart edition", and the back cover weirdly goes on and on about how Casterman was not involved.
Cigars and Blue Lotus appear to be a joint effort with Casterman.

I just picked up the three colorized books in English myself finally (Tintin in America, Cigars of the Pharaoh, and The Blue Lotus), and the first thing I noticed was this very inconsistency: Cigars and Lotus are both large glossy hardbacks that are noticeably bigger than America...but also, they each contain intro sections with pages and pages of info about the making of the books with photos of the source materials, and America has nothing at all of the sort.

As pk27 mentioned, America was exclusively an "éditions moulinsart", whereas the other two are moulinsart/Casterman, and this is the only reason I was able to come up with as to why the marked difference in size/content exists. Maybe they couldn't agree on the format they each wanted. As someone with a bit of the OCD, I am fairly irritated by it.

I haven't seen them in person yet, but from the photos I've seen it appears the French colorized editions of Soviets and Congo are both glossy and the same size as Pharaoh and Lotus. And they're both moulinsart/Casterman as well. Still hoping we see these two books published in English editions, but at this point it seems pretty unlikely.

Will they continue with this colorization? Will we see The Broken Ear, The Black Island, King Ottokar's Sceptre, and The Crab with the Golden Claws in their original b&w editions, colorized? It also seems not too likely. And none of these got a b&w facsimile edition in English to begin with, so having them come out in a colorized version first would be odd.

--SKot

There's a listing for the French language colourisation of The Broken Ear on FNAC, a French retailer, which cites the publication date as 6th January 2027. It's the basic metadata attached to the ISBN issued for the book; the publication date could still change. That's almost exactly two years since the release of the colourised Blue Lotus, which would be in line with the rate these editions have been published at. There's so far no mention of an English language edition, but there's equally nothing to suggest yet there won't be one. We'll have to wait until the official announcement. (Lotus was announced about a month before publication date.)

As for the format difference, I would assume it's because it wasn't settled until Cigars of the Pharaoh, which is what they've used for the last two books, and retrospectively applied to Soviets, Congo and America in French. Those books haven't been printed or reprinted in English (yet), hence the lack of uniformity. In a way it's sort of fitting, as the design of the original black and white books didn't settle into a regular format until Casterman took over from Le Petit Vingtième...

It seems that colourised editions of the rest of the black and white books are prepared, too.

I have a handful of the books from the "Les coulisses d'une oeuvre" series,
including those for L'Ile Noire, Sceptre d'Ottokar and Crabe aux pinces d'or.
All of these include samples of "colourised black and white" pages.
So I would think that all those books will get these colourised editions - at least in French
(provided these kind of books sell well enough).

If the French colorized edition of The Broken Ear comes out, and the others follow (assumedly), then I expect we're very likely to see English editions follow for all those...while still skipping over Soviets and Congo. If those two get published at all in book form, it will be at the very last. Or when the world ends, whichever comes first!

--SKot