Tintin Forums

The funny thing is that at the time that the "Calculus Affair" was being published in Tintin magazine from 1954 to 1956, there were no covers showing scenes from the story.

When the magazine published the previous adventure, "Destination Moon" and "Explorers", there were several covers illustrating the fact. An early cover showed the technician about to strike Calculus' helmet, but seen from another angle than that shown in the story itself (see ebay). There was also another showing Haddock struggling in his space suit.

The Tintin magazine covers from the "Calculus Affair" period would primarily feature scenes from other stories by various artists, such as Graton, Macherot, or Reding. Covers drawn by Herge would only show Tintin, Haddock, Snowy, Calculus and the Thompsons for special occasions such as Easter and Christmas. They also appeared when the issue was about cars.

For example, the cover for the 42nd issue of 1955 has Tintin and the others unveiling a Fiat 1100 which was to be the first prize in a competition. Inside the issue, we have the scenes from page 42 of "Affair", from Wagg interrupting Haddock's conversation with Nestor to Snowy snatching a man's umbrella.

You would have thought that, given the fact that Tintin was the titular star of the magazine, they would have had some covers advertising the adventure, a scene of the spy running out of Calculus' laboratory (book page 15), for example. When "Tintin in Tibet" started publication in issue 38 of 1958, the cover had Haddock and Tintin finding the Yeti footprints in the snow.

Strange that the magazine's editors did not have covers publicising "Calculus Affair". I suppose that it was fairer for the other contributors but it's curious all the same.

Thanks for that link, mct16. I don't think I've seen that illustration before. I like the way the outline of the Plexiglas helmet has been rendered so faintly, adding to the impression (as misapprehended by Tintin and Haddock) that Calculus is being violently attacked!


From what I've read about ongoing tensions between an overworked and crisis-riven Hergé and the frequently exasperated magazine publisher, I wonder if the lack of Hergé covers at this point might have had more to do with a difficulty of getting Hergé to produce extra cover illustrations on top of his existing workload, rather than the magazine editor not wanting more covers from him had he produced them. (But that's just a guess from reading about general problems of that sort at the magazine, rather than any specific knowledge of the situation during this particular story's run.)

The final cover is featured in this article on Tintin.com. The artwork has been restored: from the preview, it looks to be the same high standard as the recent Les Bijoux de la Castafiore volume.

Alas no plexi-glass cover...

BD Addik is showing some additional pages. The landscape strips look to be running as spreads across the page, not sideways as we'd hoped. And there are no running heads, at least not on the pages shown.

These albums are only published in French, right?

John Snow

My guess is that it will be released in multiple languages and I know there will be a Swedish version

Cool! I somehow assumed they would only be available in original French. Will have a good search what other languages are available.

This has caused the release to be postponed to 2026, as it has caused some of the speech bubbles to fall into the central fold, making them unreadable. BD Addik have sent out emails with this link to show the issue.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PnIoejPCw85kfNgODNQfA-qmGkjo-4PQ/view?usp=sharing
Anyone who's ordered from them is being given the options of waiting for the new prints, scheduled for 2026 (they don't say which month), cancelling, changing their order to something else, or receiving the defective first print, which they say is sure to become a collector's item.

Thanks for the update, LeLotusBleu. I wondered why my dispatch time had been altered to January-May 2026! Unfortunately, Amazon hasn't given the options you mention.


I would have thought this was obvious. I find it quite ludicrous that they printed a batch before they realised this.

Not sure what I prefer now. Having the strip sideways but at half the size without the text slightly obscured, or having it twice as big but with the text lost in the middle...

My (defective) copy showed up recently, so I'm adding a few thoughts.

The main issue: the binding problem does need resolving, and Tintinimaginatio and Casterman were right to recall the book. It's very tight and there is quite a bit lost in the gutter on the landscape spreads, moreso than the BD Addik photo shows. That said, if they bind the book differently, I would switch my preference and favour having the landscape pages across a spread. I was really impressed with the size of the panels – they're almost the same height as the strips in the early black and white editions – which allows the artwork to breathe. I'd love to see large format editions of the original pencil and ink pages of some of the books (although that's a discussion/dream for another thread).

Binding issue aside, it's a fantastic book. The artwork has been restored using the original colouring sheets, using the same technique as for the Castafiore Emerald volume. The preface mentions that three pages were missing from the archives, so those have been restored from printed copies of the Journal Tintin. You'd be hard pressed to identify them as the graphic artists have done a marvellous job, and the image quality is consistently high throughout. Unfortunately the only running heads included are on the first page of the story, and the first landscape page; otherwise the recaps are typeset in the same way as Emerald. The ones that are integrated into the landscape spreads with the magazine-only vignettes remain.

Generally, I find it quite extraordinary that after all this time – seventy years on from The Calculus Affair's serialisation – there's still unseen material in the archives. I was fascinated to see some of Hergé's own research photos from Geneva, and just how accurately the Studios rendered them in the story.