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British agents behind bars

yamilah
Member
#1 · Posted: 27 Feb 2007 02:19
In another thread, it was mentioned that in old Au Pays de l'Or Noir i.e. The Black Gold, Palestine version, one Mac O'Connor of Scotland Yard -later of the Intelligence Service- was crossing 'la Manche' (a dorade vent) while pursued by Snowy, then a tattooed sailor was crossing 'la Manche' with his iron fist as if he were folding a sleeve, and finally soldiers in kilts were crossing a street with Tintin, maybe Channel Street, at Haifa.

For unexplained reasons, all these people on the Speedol Star -Tintin included- and in Haifa are intermittently behind bars in the B&W unfinished 'Palestine' version(see mainly p.17, p.24 & p.30).

Those bars feature kind of a grid made of regular squares, partly erased when over the speech bubbles, but appearing as such in the Petit Vingtieme magazine in 1939-1940 [-snip-].

Could the author thus hint at fantastic connections between some image writing, the British Isles, and characters constrained* into a reading grid?
Does someone have an idea about it?

--
[Moderator action: removed reference to site offering unauthorized reproductions of copyrighted works.]
Balthazar
Moderator
#2 · Posted: 27 Feb 2007 10:20
These grid lines don't only cover panels featuring characters from the British Isles (and the tattooed sailor whom you believe to be from the British Isles). On page 30, for instance, the grid lines also cover a panel featuring only the two Jewish activists. And on pages 21 and 22, the grid lines cover quite a few panels featuring only Tintin, yet interestingly don't cover many of the nearby panels featuring the tattooed sailor. There may be other examples, but I don't have time to search through the whole book. Here's the link to the site yamilah is refering to, for anyone who wants to search through, or to see what we're on about:

[-snip-]

So, if we take on board the full data about the occurences of these grid lines (rather than partial data selected to fit a theory), I don't think that these grid lines can have anything especially to do with the characters you've identified, yamilah, nor with their real or supposed British Isles origins.

In any case, these pencilled grid lines look more like a relatively mundane graphic device - to check characters' proprtions maybe (though they don't quite look like lines used for that purpose), or added by someone wanting to copy or enlarge the pictures using the square-by-square method - rather than any subtle visual metaphor for being behind bars. Even if Hergé was adding a visual metaphor, and even if the lines only covered the panels and characters you've identified for us, I can't help thinking he'd have done it more subtley than a ruled pencil grid.

[-snip-]

Edit Sorry, moderators, if that link was to an illegal site. Quite right to remove it if so.
yamilah
Member
#3 · Posted: 28 Feb 2007 13:33
Balthazar
even if the lines only covered the panels and characters you've identified for us, I can't help thinking he'd have done it more subtley than a ruled pencil grid.

Maybe there're much more subtle reading grids in Tintin, and this one is just an avatar of them?
Richard
UK Correspondent
#4 · Posted: 28 Feb 2007 14:41
Logically if this grid has a real and profound meaning that Hergé wanted to convey something, why would he have put it on these specific pages, abandoned in 1940 and never published again during his lifetime (and even now not officially republished in their entirety)?

I think it's more likely a printing error, since would Hergé have left such marks marring his artwork?
Ranko
Member
#5 · Posted: 28 Feb 2007 15:42
You're not thinking uniquely enough, Richard!
:-)

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