jock123 Moderator
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#2 · Posted: 19 Sep 2018 16:55
Yes, it seems to have been a mistake which was introduced when the book was redrawn in 1945. Originally he's shown behind Tintin's legs at the hotel, when the "detective" asks Tintin to accompany them to the police station, as that frame has full length figures (rather than the three-quarter length views in the colour version; then in the next frame there's no sign of him in the car the black-and-white version - it's a much bigger vehicle, with three rows of seats, prisoner and escort in the back, then the detective and Tintin a middle row of seats, and the driver up front. For the 1945 edition, this becomes a more standard car, with a back seat, containing the prisoner, escort and detective, and Tintin and Snowy next to the driver (who is driving British fashion, sitting on the right). I wonder if the problem might have been that Tintin is partly obscured by the steering wheel and the pillar of the windscreen on the driver's side? Putting Snowy in fills out the space, and makes it clearer that it is Tintin next to him. However, it does create a conundrum, as he suddenly evaporates from the scene.
The redrawing of this sequence isn't great, but then again the original isn't that great - the fifth frame on page 11 had had a view through the rear window showing three figures apparently on the back seat, and they appear to be (right to left) the escort, the prisoner and the detective. This was the final frame of the episode, and I think it was meant to lull the reader into the belief that justice was being done (although why is the detective suddenly on the back seat?).
The 1945 version removes the confusion of where people are by blacking out the rear window, but really just makes it a wholly uninteresting frame in which nothing is happening... It actually makes me as a reader feel that something must be happening to Tintin that we can't see - being knocked out, perhaps, as there are some seeming "alarm" lines above the car which might be a fight happening out of our sight (although they are probably "zip" lines, denoting speed).
The 1945 version adds Tintin to the sixth frame (he's not shown in the black-and-white version) which immediately deflates the fifth frame's potential for peril, as obviously nothing did happen to him on the journey.
It's not a graphic triumph, art-wise! :-)
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