Q39: A shorter Tintin album

There was an black and white album that was redrawn to the 62 page colour format in the 1940s.
When it was finished Herge discovered it was several pages too short. He enlarged several of the frames to fill 62 pages.

Name the album. The year it was published and each scene depicted in the enlarged frames.
Good luck!

The Crab with the Golden Claws, black and white edition published in 1941, and colour edition published in 1943.

The scenes are:
· The seaplane swooping down over the lifeboat
· Tintin, Snowy and Haddock walking in the desert
· Tintin and Snowy running down a Moroccan street
· Omar Ben Salaad on the back of a donkey, being tailed by the Thompsons

Correct! Well done Richard!
Your turn to do the next quiz question.

Well done Richard!

It's worth pointing out that Harry Thompson was incorrect in saying that The Crab with the Golden Claws was "the only Tintin adventure too short for the current 62-page format" (Tintin: Hergé and his Creation, p.102).

The story we know now as Destination Moon was originally serialised with 56 pages. Explorers on the Moon had 62, but a few pages were later cut from the book version. Hergé filled the gaps with the large frames that take up several rows on a page.

Ed

"The story we know now as Destination Moon was originally serialised with 56 pages. Explorers on the Moon had 62."

I do not totally agree with that. "On a marché sur la lune" was the title of the publication in "Tintin". This publication was interrupted two or three times. A few pages, frames from some pages, were suppressed for the publication in two books(mainly in the second part of the story). The first book had to finish on a question mark. To finish the book at the right moment, it is possible that Hergé and his team had to add some frames for Destination Moon.
Originally Explorers on the Moon was certainly not 62 pages. Changes were also made for the book publication.

Changes were also made for the book publication.
We know exactly how the adventures were published in the Tintin magazine.

In total, "On a marché sur la lune" consisted of 117 pages. After the first 24 pages (which in the final form became the first 26 pages of "Objectif Lune"), the story was suspended for several months due to Hergé being ill.

Thus, page 25 in "Tintin" is an update of what has happened, then the story continues as "part 2".

To fit in two albums with 62 pages each and to have a "cliff hanger"-ending of the first album, Hergé had to extend the first album with 3 or 4 pages and to remove roughly as many in the second.

Compared with the publication in the magazine, the albums are split between pages 55 and 56.

"On a marché sur la lune" was the title of the publication in "Tintin".

Agreed. The point at which the break between the two books was later added occurs at the end of the 54th page on the site you referred to, which is the 53rd page of the actual story (since the 25th was a resumé of the previous action, as Mikael says).

To finish the book at the right moment, it is possible that Hergé and his team had to add some frames for Destination Moon.

Yes, that was my point. The Tintin magazine version of the first part didn't have enough images to fill a 62-page book and end at the convenient point. In fact, I actually underestimated quite how much had been added later (nine pages' worth instead of six).

Originally Explorers on the Moon was certainly not 62 pages.

I'm sorry but I beg to differ: the pages which became Explorers on the Moon run from pages 55 to 117, giving 62 in total.

Of course this became much less once Hergé had removed several sequences, which explains the addition of the large images that I previously mentioned (for example, on pages 13, 21, 23 and 25 of the book).

Ed

edcharlesadams
the pages which became Explorers on the Moon run from pages 55 to 117 on the site you referred to giving 62 in total.

Errr... If p.55 stands for p.1, (55-1 =54 1st pages belonging to 'Destination Moon) then p.117 minus those 54 1st pages = 63 pages!

yamilah
63 pages!

Pages 55 to 117 inclusive does indeed make a total of 63 pages, not 62.

Still, it doesn't change Ed's original point that the part of the story which became the Destination Moon book was originally much shorter (8 pages, 9 when you include the resumé on page 25 of the magazine version).

The shortfall was made up partly by some larger frames and partly from a few extra sequences. For instance, the Thom(p)son's arrest of Dr Patella's skeleton doesn't appear in the original magazine. Nor does Haddock's attempt to arouse Calculus by dressing as a guardsman, using a pop-up snake, water pistol and banger under the chair!

(The extended amnesia sequence appears in the French version of the magazine but was left out of the Belgian edition in error).

can we agree (...) that both stories originally ran shorter than they became in book form (...)?

1st story: 54 pages = shorter than book's 62 pages
2nd story: 63 pages = longer than book's 62 pages
Both.......117 pages