Tintin Forums

Who doesn't love a Tintin book-cover design?

I stumbled across this trial cover-design Hergé made around 1942. It appears this may have been in consideration as a replacement for the earlier (iconic?) "Tintin and Haddock on camels" cover for Crab with the Golden Claws.

I love the sense of urgency in this picture, and I think it would have made a great cover. You'll recognize it as one of the four (beautiful) full page illustrations that are included in the Crab album. It is interesting to compare it with Hergé's cover for Picaros, drawn some 34 years later.

-Harry-

I don't think these are trials, they look like actual book covers. Notice the spine in the middle of the Crab cover and the listing of the previous books by Hergé attached to it. This is the way that the books were published in the 1930s and 40s.

They were probably limited editions before the publishers decided to have the cover we have now.

Hmm. Even though someone's added a cloth binding and back-board, I disagree that the Crab one was ever an actual book cover. The title lettering's far too roughly drawn (and hard to read against the background) for this to look like something Hergé would have actually had published.

Some of the colouring's rough too, particularly the scribbled pencilled shadows on the cobbled streets. And the cobbles have been pencilled, rather than penned, a style Hergé never used for finished Tintin artwork.

Also, the white strip carrying Les aventures de Tintin, and the white box carrying Hergé, are squint and the white areas roughly painted in.

If this is a trial rough by Hergé, then I'd guess that the cloth spine and back were torn off an existing book and glued on to the rough piece to enable him and his publisher to see how it would look in context of the actual book.

However, I suspect that this may simply be a much more recent fake, made by hand-colouring a traced or black-and-white version of that full page plate from the book, and roughly tracing the title lettering from the book's cover.

I think I'm right in saying that the style of carrying Les aventures de Tintin in a horizontal strip like this wasn't used until the later Tintin books of the late 1950s onwards. Of course, Hergé might have been trying out this design device back in 1942, but it seems a bit coincidental that unlike the title lettering on this "trial" cover, this lettering isn't hand-drawn, but seems to have been typeset.

Looking at the backs of the modern French-language editions, the only one where the font for Les aventures de Tintin matches this one (non-bold Gill sans caps, widely spaced) is ç, set on the blue sky rather than on a strip. This is also a 1940s book, of course, but a later one – the next in the series. (Mind you, I'm only looking at the modern French covers; I don't know whether any others of the original 1940s books had this line typeset like that, or none.)

If this is a genuine trial cover, maybe Hergé was trying out this font and styling a book earlier than he ended up using it for real, and trying out the strip idea sixteen years earlier than he use that for real. But if this is a fake, I'd guess that this line of text has simply been lifted from a copy of Les aventures de Tintin and put on this anachronistic strip.

Also, the style of hand-lettering of Casterman at the bottom looks a bit more modern than 1942, with it's curvy strokes on the As, M and N.

I could be wrong, but that's how it looks and feels to me. I'm happy to be corrected, though, if someone recognises it as a genuine Hergé trial cover. If it is, it's very interesting!
Without knowing the source of your images, derdup, it's hard to speculate accurately what they might be.

Hi Balthazar,

You raise many interesting points :)

It is fairly well documented that Hergé would spend time experimenting with different cover designs, and indeed draw and re-draw segments of the books themselves, before settling on a "winner". But, you're quite right to be cautious about declaring anything genuine.

Having said that, I've seen other examples (in books) of some of Hergé's roughs, and my gut feeling (for what it's worth) is that the image in question has an air of authenticity about it.
On the page where I found the image - a French site - the caption adjoining the image translated (roughly) to: 1942 - model simulating the presentation of the future albums.

Thanks for the info, derdup. I agree that in that context, it does look more convincing.

The fact that it was a maquette - a model or mock-up dummy of how future editions would look, rather only a rough cover design for that book - would explain why they'd taken the trouble to add the cloth spine and back cover.

And I notice from the other covers on the web that the typesetting for Les Aventures de Tintin in a single line of Gill sans caps was actually used in many of these early 1940s new editions, and was even set in a white strip just like this one for the Broken Ear cover of that era. So that bit of the design clearly isn't as anachronistic as I'd thought.

So I'm happy to withdraw my suspicions about its authenticity!

That picture does make a nice cover, though I think that the title text overlapping such a busy part of the drawing would have caused legibility problems. If he'd stuck with that drawing for the cover, I think Hergé would have had to put the title in a box (as he did with many of his covers) or give the title text a white outline to separate it from the artwork's pen lines (as he did with the early version of The Broken Ear).

Interesting thread - I believe that the alternative cover design for The Crab with the Golden Claws of 1942 was made at the time Herge was colouring and redrawing earlier black and white albums. Maybe he used this process as an opportunity to try out new ideas for covers.
This mock up cover (for The Crab) is taken directly from one of the existing full page illustrations, which were later updated and redrawn when The Crab was revised in 1949, the cover was changed as well; the colour of the sky to lighter blue and text from white to black.
Herge also redrew the cover of King Ottokar's Sceptre from the original black and white version, upon its release as a colour album in 1947.

mat

To add to what's been said above: The alternate Crab cover is reproduced in the book Chronologie d'une Œuvre, Volume 4, which confirms it is a dummy mock-up for the black and white edition.

From 1942 Casterman asked Hergé to draw full-size colour covers for the black and white albums. In the end they used the well-known "Camels" cover for the later B&W edition of Crab. The B&W books with full colour covers only lasted for a short period longer, but most of them were kept for the books when the interiors went full colour too. The exceptions were Cigars (which showsed Tintin peeking out from behind a pillar) and Ottokar (where Tintin still marches across the drawbridge, but the guards are in their pseudo-Beefeater garb, rather than the later Balkan uniforms), both of which were redrawn again.

Personally I'd have liked to have seen the image of Tintin and Haddock struggling through the desert as the Crab cover, as it's one of my favourites!

Moderator Note: This came to pass! The 80th anniversary edition of Crabe aux pinces d'Or from Casterman was given a previously unused cover design by Hergé, based on the "Sea of Thirst" panel!

Thanks Harrock n roll. It's good to know for sure that the Crab cover in question is not something put together by a despicable pirate in order to fool us all.


I've always found these full-page drawings a delight to see. I don't want to steer this off topic so I've started a new thread here.

Thanks derdup.
I am actually collecting all the French facsimiles and all these colour plates appear beautifully in their original form; the colour Crab facsimile has the earlier plates with more of a painted wash background.

It is interesting to note that the two b/w editions of Crab, as described by Harrock n roll, were only published for one year each, thus making them very rare and collectable items today.

regards,

mat

Regarding the mock-up Crab cover. I have worked with a publisher of kids books on many occasions drawing and designing books. The publisher usually has a rough idea of the story (if there is one) and the contents of the book. Usually I have to come up with some characters for the book. If the character designs are passed he asks me to draw some rough visuals of the cover and one double page spread. If these ideas are passed then I create mock up artwork. By mock up I mean fairly rough artwork (such as the Crab cover). This artwork is pasted onto blank white books. The 'mock ups' are then taken to book fairs by the publisher to see if he can sell the idea to other publishers or book sellers.

With the Crab mock up. It may have been an idea that Herge mocked up to show Casterman of how the book cover could look. This cover may have been rejected by Casterman. I would have thought Casterman had some say. I could be totally wrong of course.