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Cigars of the Pharaoh: Which do you prefer, black-and-white or colour?

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jock123
Moderator
#11 · Posted: 8 Oct 2021 14:21
Rhods1989:
My apologies jock123!

No problem! :-)
Rhods1989:
If there are any at all, I imagine they're in tiny quantities!

Well, the positive is, that if any are out there, then someone might now come forward with one to let us know!
We once had a declaration that someone had a copy of the highly elusive Tintin and the Broken Ear cover, but if so, it seems to be a one off! (Perhaps they meant the title on the spine?)
Rhods1989
Member
#12 · Posted: 9 Oct 2021 10:30
Fingers crossed they do! It's always nice to see that even more versions are hiding out there!
Bukowski
Member
#13 · Posted: 10 Oct 2021 06:54
Rhods1989
Colour.
Bukowski
Member
#14 · Posted: 25 Nov 2021 12:30
ajamalabad
If it's a black and white facsimile, why does it have colour plates? Just askin'.
Balthazar
Moderator
#15 · Posted: 25 Nov 2021 22:28
Bukowski:
If it's a black and white facsimile, why does it have colour plates?

I believe that some of the original black and white book Tintin books (in common with many other books of this era) had a handful of full-colour, full-page illustrations of scenes interspersed through the otherwise black and white pages (printed separately and added at the bookbinding stage, I think, with "tipped in" being the technical term for this, if I'm understanding it correctly!) so the colour plates in the facsimiles are accurately replicating this.

From what I've seen of them, these colour plates in the b/w Tintin books are great pieces of artwork, as ajamalabad says, and give an interesting look at Hergé's early colouring style in the period before he and his studio colourists developed the familiar full-colour style for the adventures themselves.

My own copy of the B/W Cigars in English translation doesn't have these colour plates though. I think they weren't a feature of the original B/W book when first published, but an idea Hergé's publisher had for subsequent editions of some of his earliest books (these added-colour-plates editions of Cigars and America being brought out around 1936, I think, from a mention of this I've just found in one of the Art of Hergé books). So it looks like some modern facsimiles have the colour plates and some don't, depending on which B/W version they're replicating.
Bukowski
Member
#16 · Posted: 27 Nov 2021 20:26
quote=Balthazar]I believe that some of the original black and white book Tintin books (in common with many other books of this era) had a handful of full-colour, full-page illustrations of scenes interspersed through the otherwise black and white pages ...[/quote]

I get it now. Thank you. Bonus colour plates. Sounds great!
superjm9
Member
#17 · Posted: 28 Nov 2021 02:01
Message below, unneeded
superjm9
Member
#18 · Posted: 28 Nov 2021 02:02
Balthazar
It is correct that the colour plates were added later. Cigars of the Pharaoh was first published in 1934 without the plates. They were added in the 1938 publication from what I can tell.

You say you have an English-language facsimile of the original 1934 edition, without the plates? I've never heard that such a version existed. I thought that only the 1984 French facsimile edition omitted the plates.
Balthazar
Moderator
#19 · Posted: 28 Nov 2021 03:02
superjm9:
You say you have an English-language facsimile of the original 1934 edition, without the plates? I've never heard that such a version existed. I thought that only the 1984 French facsimile edition omitted the plates.

If it helps to identify it, my copy is published by Casterman, with a general copyright date of 1984, and a copyright date beneath that, specifically for the text, of 2006, by which I assume they mean the translation, which is by Michael Turner and Tessa Harrow. I think it was most readily available (maybe only?) English version of the black and white version of Cigares, though I could be wrong, and if they ever published an English version of the 1938 B/W edition with the colour plates, that'd be nice to have.

But this English edition may not be have been marketed as a facsimile at all. Maybe it was, but I can't remember if so. Certainly, the Casterman logo on the title page, in its modern Helvetica-ish font, doesn't look like a facsimile of what I'd guess their logo would have looked like in 1934. And in any case it would be something of a stretch on the definition of facsimile to apply the term to an English translation of a book didn't exist in English at the time (and which wouldn't have been typeset in Comic Sans, as this book is, even if it had been!) Not that that's stopped publishers and bookselling sites applying the facsimile term rather freely and loosely to other English translations of other facsimiles of early Tintin book versions that pre-date the actual first English translations.
superjm9
Member
#20 · Posted: 28 Nov 2021 11:55
Balthazar
Yes, indeed! None of these are technically facsimiles, not when they're in English with digital lettering anyway! That's very interesting. My copy of Cigars of the Pharaoh, which I got form the online Tintinshop in 2013, is a facsimile of the 1938 edition with the colour plates. It also has a publication date of 2006, with the same translators. That is certainly very unusual.

So there are two versions in existence then. Aside from the plates, the only difference between the two I can think of is that the 1934 edition had 'Tintin en Orient' over the title. This was removed in the 1938 edition. Does your copy have anything similar?

Also, there are actually three black-and-white facsimiles of Cigars of the Pharaoh in French. The 1934 original, the 1938 one with the colour plates, and, most recently, a facsimile of the 1942 edition with its unique cover, published in 2009.

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