Tintin Forums

Hi Everyone,

I grew up reading Tintin books and I used to own all of the 24 books. But when we moved to US, I lost them. Last week I ordered about 10 hard-covered books from Amazon and I received them today, but the books that I received today are nothing like the ones that I used to have. The ones that I used to have had a nice "blue wallpaper-like picture wall". These new ones have just blank first and last pages and the front cover is a sticker! Where can I buy the original ones again? I'm in Los Angeles. I appreciate all your help.

Thanks,

Drew

Hi Drew,
It sounds like you may have bought the 'facsimile editions', versions that attempt to be like the first versions published in Belgium, but with English text. Well worth having, in addition to the regular editions.
Strangely Amazon.com do not seem to be a good source for the regular hardbacks, you may have to resort to importing from Amazon.co.uk, unless one of our US based members can suggest a US source. Or, if you can wait until the new movie is released, the LA bookstores will surely be flooded with Tintin books come January 2012!

I’ve never heard of this before! Do you mean that the entire front cover can be peeled off, and stuck somewhere else?

I also wonder if you have perhaps bought the Little Brown Young Reader books? Do they have additional pages in them, with back-ground material, and simplified cover art?

jock123, some of the facsimile editions have a picture glued to the front cover, I guessed (perhaps wrongly) that this is what kutchar called a sticker.

I’m not so certain, to be honest, Rocky! You could be right, but I think that the general tone of Kutchar’s complaint would have been that the books were in black and white! ;-)


Apart from the limited brown cloth-covered version of Soviets, which had a small inset of the regular cover on the front, the facsimile editions have the appearance of a stuck on image, but they are just printed on like a regular cover. They also have dark-blue coloured end-papers, covered in little pictures, rather than the gallery portraits, but they aren’t (or shouldn’t be!) blank.

Thanks for responding to my post. I did a little research and unfortunately I don't think the books that I got from Amazon are the facsimile editions. They just don't have a cloth-like hard cover. But I think I take your advice and just return them and wait until after the movie to buy them from a bookstore.

BTW, where do you guys get your books from?

Thanks,

Drew

No problem!


There are two sets of facsimiles: the B&W volumes which have a cloth spine, and the colour ones, which have a red paper (or some similar material) spine (simulating the cloth of the original); the covers themselves are printed cardboard, like the regular books.

It still doesn’t answer the problem of what it is you do have – could you please describe them? I posed a few questions above which might help us find out, but the size, the publisher and a bit more information on the odd sticker cover would be useful, if only to forewarn other future buyers.

The where to get the books is a vast subject: I got mine in bookshops, toyshops, comic-shops, and online, over many years!

Sure, here's some specs of one of the books (The Secret of the Unicorn) :

Publisher: French & European Publications, Inc.
ISBN: 0416925308
Language: English
Print Type: Color
Cover Type: Hard Cover
Size: 8.5"x 11.5" (21.5mm x 29.5mm)

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