And yes, they are hardback
Thanks Ed. Following George's post, I ordered the first three from amazon.co.uk, and pre-rdered the coming 3 to guarantee the price. @8.99 (~11.5 Euros) they are cheaper than they sell in France or Belgium!!
The back cover text reads: The Tintin Classic Collection by Hergé. Published in English for the first time, this is the original colour edition that first appeared over 50 years ago.
That's the bad thing about English facsimiles. They -of course- change text and titles, so they take the liberty to change/add more stuff that weren't there in the original. This is why I LOVE French facsimiles, they are carbon copies of the orignals. My French fax of the B/W Cigars is so accurate the image on the cover is actually a
separate print that is
glued on the cream coloured cover, just like the original. In the English B/W fax released couple of years ago, the image is simply printed as an integral part of the front cover.
Those who don't like the glossy paper
Who does? This is another bit of good news.
I thought that in the first edition Snowy was present in frame c1, though was deleted from all subsequent versions - see (broken link removed). However in this facsimile he does not appear. Can anyone shed any light?
I'm glad someone else pays attention to these small details. I thought I was over-obsessed for doing so!!
This is a puzzle for me. I have never seen the one with snowy in that frame or heard of it. I checked copies I have in 4 languages, and there is no Snowy in any. I would not give that site you linked to much credibility anyhow. I spotted several misinformation there at my first glance, sure would find many more when I look at them all. Examples, on the bottom of that very same page you link to, the book he calles "1934 Original B" is in fact the
1938 release. The wording above the title in the 1934 book is
LES AVENTURES DE TINTIN
REPORTER
EN ORIENTLater in the 1938 version changed to
LES AVENTURES DE
TINTIN
REPORTERAlso, the book he calls "1934 Faksimil" is in reality the 1993 fax of the
1941 edition, when they simply wrote "Casterman" under the image.
Check it out in this much more accurate site.
http://users.skynet.be/tintinpassion/LIVRES/Livres-pages/04_CIGARES.htmlAnother error on your site here (broken link removed) - The version he calls 1931 Faksimil is in fact a fax of the
1937 Casterman B/W print which had different back and four colour plates inside. You can see it on my site, or read about it here in footnote #2
https://www.tintinologist.org/guides/books/pubdates.html There are several more I've found so far, but you got my point. The site is not reliable, although I can't imagine where did they get that frame with snowy from?? If someone has the French Fax of that colored version, maybe he can take a look and tell us. I do expect there will be no snowy there too, and those French faxs are the most accurate as discussed earlier.
and the text on the title page of Sceptre is red.
I though again that no one cares for these details, thanks for that.
(For those who do not know what is that:They used to print the titles on the third page in different colours, but at some point they decided to make them all black so that when someone is translating the book, they will only need to replace one colour. And some cover titles were put in frames to make translating the cover easier, as in this examle)Original cover
and Framed
A slight surprise, then, to see that in places the modern translation has been used. For example, on page 16 of Sceptre Thomson explains that their bowler hats cost £3.95
This is silly! We are buying facsimilies for a reason!! Hopefully they did not put a website address on the back cover too....
To sum up, these are really beautiful editions, well made and largely well-prepared.
Agree. And better, we get to have 6 of them in 1 year. They could have teased us with 1 album every two years or something!
One question, are they printed in Spain? I got an informed tip that French books are still printed in Belgium, while ALL English editions have been moved to spain. Need to confirm this.
Cheers.