Tintin Forums

I posted a question in a Swedish forum and got the advice to ask you. I hope you can help me!

The French album cover inside has a picture that I cannot recognise. Does anyone know from which album (if any) it is taken?

The picture (The modern-artish thing, with an anchor and a ship) is posted here: http://forum.skalman.nu/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=38677

Thank you in advance!

It was always a bit of a puzzle to me too, when I first saw it; I too searched in vain for a story in which it appeared.

The fact that it was there from at least the earliest Methuen books from the fifties (and earlier in French) rules out the picture being related to Alph-Art (as suggested on the Swedish forum), although it does obviously reflect Hergé's interest in modern art.

Now that I'm a bit older, I'm inclined to think that it is mostly just a cubist/ modernist portrait of the Captain; however, if I was to link it with a book, I'd suggest that the portrait is of Haddock, relating to Crab.

It would explain his rather pained expression, given his circumstances in the story. Aslo the presence of the ship and the bottle seems significant - the ship is apparently sinking beneath the bottle, which is shown leaning at the same angle.

Although his boat didn't actually sink, it was thought to have disappeared, and the Captain was too drunk to notice what was going on; so the Captain metaphorically lost his command (was "sunk") due to drink.