Tintin Forums

For my birthday on February 6, I received about 15 old Tintin magazines. I've been reading them, and there are some comics that I'd like to buy, but don't know if they've been translated into English. Some I specifically want are Les Aventures des 3A, Prudence Petitpas, Rataplan, Michel Valliant, Strapontin, Jari, and Zig and Puce. Does anybody know if any of these are translated, and if so, where I can buy them?

As far as I can make out, apart from "Michel Vaillant", none of these titles are available in English.

Some of them were popular in their time ("Prudence Petitpas" has even been the subject of a cartoon series), but today most of them are out-of-print, even in French.

You could try buying them on eBay and then using the Google Translate app on a phone. I have been reading German comics this way. I know that it is rather slow and tedious, but it did help me understand the plot.

"Michel Vaillant" is available in English, but the focus appears to be on books published since 2012, which have been described as "Michel Vaillant - New Season", a sort of reboot.

You can find a few on Amazon:

Michel Vaillant on Amazon

These include Kindle versions, but be sure to check the samples in order to ensure that you are ordering the English edition, since some of the titles tend to match the original French ones.

Your Tintin magazines appear to be from the 1950s and 60s. Currently, an English Vaillant book from that period is available on eBay, but the price is a bit off-putting :)

Izneo.com is one of the leading online comics websites and offers many translated comics:

"Michel Vaillant" in English

"Michel Vaillant - Legendary Races"

"Michel Vaillant – Legendary Races: Disastrous Season"

Check out Izneo's English Catalogue for more comics, including "Largo Winch", "XIII", "Clifton", "Children of the Resistance", "Lucky Luke" etc.

Those marked with "Abo" in a green button are part of the Abonnement ("subscription") series, which means that you can read dozens if not hundreds of comics for a monthly payment (currently £8.79).

Enjoy.

I think Rantanplan is Lucky Luke's dog (Rin-Tin-Can in English) which, if that's the case, has has a couple of volumes published by Cinebook.

Yes, "Rin-Tin-Can" is also worth looking into.

However, for the record, "Lucky Luke" was never published in Tintin magazine.

Skut is referring to "Rataplan", a series drawn by Berck (pen-name of Arthur Berckmans), that was published in Tintin magazine about a drummer boy serving in Napoleon's army.

Actually, Berck also drew "Strapontin" which Skut has also raised. That was about a taxi driver who gets some very odd and eccentric clients. It was written by Goscinny in the pre-Asterix age.

Ah, thanks, I missed the bit about where it was published (and the spelling!)

To be honest it sounds better than Rin-Tin-Can which is a bit repetitive!

George

Thanks mct16, that's very helpful. I am ordering a copy of "Rataplan et L'ibis D'or" currently.


I think the reason george was getting mixed up is that, a lot of the time, listings for the series Rantanplan are misspelled as Rataplan. Auto-correct probably plays a part in this as Rataplan is in the dictionary and Rantanplan is not!