Tintin Forums

Whilst hunting on the Web for info and any history pertaining to the Adventures of Tintin, I’ve found examples of the many wonderful covers to ‘Le Petit Vingtieme’ magazine. Most, if not all, have been in colour. It occurs to me what an essential addition to any enthusiast’s collection a volume of this cover-art would make. Perhaps there are enough covers for more than one volume? Does such a collection exist already?

I envisage a book of cover-art, each reproduced to original size and in chronological sequence. A brief history of each adventure could be included as one ends and the next begins.

The covers I’ve seen so far are usually, and understandably, showing signs of age. I imagine issues such as the yellowing of newsprint over time can be addressed with the use of digital magic and modern know-how. I’d like to see these drawings looking as they did back in the 1930’s.

I’m curious to know the page dimensions of ‘Le Petit Vingtieme’ magazine. Does anyone know? Also, how many pages made up an issue and what percentage was devoted to Tintin?

Finally, I was interested to see in ‘Tintin and the World of Herge’ by Bonoit Peeters (pg. 40), a picture of the cover to ‘Les Cigares du Pharaon’. This cover clearly dates from Tintin’s black and white book period but it is not the same cover I’ve seen on the facsimiles. I’d love to see a nice example of this cover and I’m now wondering if any of the other b & w books had more than one type of cover-art featured during those early years.

Look here to see the various Tintin editions in French (Editions du Petit Vingtième, Casterman b/w small picture, Casterman b/w big picture, Casterman Color):
Link broken - site no longer works (click first on "Belgium").On the same site, you can also see the covers of most of the Tintin books in various languages.

The Petit vingtième covers were printed with one or two colors

Hi again,

It seems that my idea for a volume of ‘Collected Cover-Art’ would probably entail a serious and lengthy restoration effort - but hey, I can dream can’t I?

I could find no sign there, however, of the mysterious ‘Les Cigares du Pharaon’ alternate cover. Can anyone shed any light on that one?

I could find no sign there, however, of the mysterious ‘Les Cigares du Pharaon’ alternate cover. Can anyone shed any light on that one?



Both previous cover artworks to the modern one are there. Here
Link no longer works

and here
Link no longer works

Unless you know of a fourth?

Thanks Frankymole. I guess there’s not much of a mystery after all.

I’d only ever seen the cover-version in question whilst reading ‘Tintin and the world of Herge’ – and that example was not captioned.

The more I see of this version the more I’m charmed by it! I guess my search begins for a 1942 B & W facsimile.

If I do ever come across a fourth cover-version for ‘Les Cigares du Pharaon’, I’ll let you know ;-}

derdup enquired:
I’m curious to know the page dimensions of ‘Le Petit Vingtieme’ magazine. Does anyone know? Also, how many pages made up an issue and what percentage was devoted to Tintin?

Sorry to take so long to get back to you on this, but better late than never…!

I only have a very small sample to which I can refer, but the layout etc. seems to be roughly the same.
For a start, the whole thing is printed on what would originally have been four full-sized newspaper pages, so I guess it came as the centre spread in the paper. You then had to take this out, fold it in half, and fold it in half again; once you slit the edges, you had a mini newspaper 22.5cm wide, and 31cm tall, running to 16 pages.

Inside, four pages were given over to the strips:
Tintin was the centre two pages, facing each other, with the content being roughly equivalent to a single page in an album (the 18/09/1937 edition has what became page 32 of “Black Island” in it).

The other two pages were a subsidiary strip - J,Z&J in “The Mysterious Ray” in the 18/09/37 one, with Jocko on the barrel-organ and at the seance - he also gets the cover, being chased by a policeman. Another one I have has what I think is a Quick & Flupke bit called “Nocturne”, about a blond boy who can’t sleep, but as Q&F names don’t appear I am not certain.

The rest is a variety of features and ads for toys. The ads take up about four pages, although I have one with the back page given over to single panel gag cartoons, so I guess the advertising content was variable to demand - and the approaching Christmas season might have increased the advertising.

There is a piece on the museum at Tervueren written by someone called Dédé, on the same page as a competition to win one of four free trips to Lourdes; an autographed (!) photo of St. Nicholas sending best wishes to the readers; another page is given over to a list of competition winners, and another is a puzzle page.

It seems a bit dry by current standards, but it is not far from the sort of thing that still might have been put out when I was at school in the 70s (I recall a sort of children’s newspaper being handed round in French which was similar, just lacking the Tintin!).

Hope this helps!

Hello jock123,

So it would seem the cover dimensions of a folded-up Le Petit Vingtieme were almost identical to those of a modern Tintin album. Interesting.

Thanks so much for taking the time to research all that, and for answering my question :-)