“Tintin in the Land of the Soviets” is Hergé’s first album analyzed in the collection “Behind the scenes of a work”
CARTOON – A thousand million thousand billion thousand thunder ports of Brest. TintinSnowy, Captain Haddock and Professor Tournesol are back in bookstores this Wednesday, October 16. Not in a new country for a new mysterious and risky investigation but to return to their origins in the first volume of the collection Behind the scenes of a work. This first part of a saga which will include around twenty looks back on the genesis of the very first adventure of the reporter with the famous powder puff imagined by Herge.
Released in 1930, Tintin among the Soviets is the very first album in the collection. Originally published in The Little Twentieththe boards, then in black and white, follow the young journalist who leaves to do a report in the USSR. As stated in the Tintin official websitethe collection Behind the scenes of a work from Moulinsart Editions aims to decipher the creation of an album through original plates, photographs, and analyzes by the specialist in Hergé’s work, Philippe Goddin.
Moulinsart editions
It seemed logical to start with this Tintin adventure which was the very first, but also one of the most discussed. It actually contains a virulent criticism of communism and the Bolshevik regime. An album that the Belgian author, real name Georges Rémi, himself described as “a youthful error” and to which he returned in an interview with Michel Drucker in 1978, saying “ but at the time, everyone was anti-Bolshevik too “.
A collection for fans
In total, the collection Behind the scenes of a work will include 23 volumes which will be released regularly between 2024 and 2028, each dedicated to a specific album. All of Tintin’s adventures and the most iconic albums (which are sometimes also the most “problematic” due to accusations of racism, sexism or anti-Semitism) will therefore be deciphered: Tintin in the Congo, The Blue Lotus, Ottokar’s Scepter, The Mysterious Star, We Walked on the Moonor even Tintin in Tibet. The first volume of 112 pages is therefore on sale at the price of 19.95 euros since Wednesday October 16.
A way for Moulinsart editions to continue to keep the legend of the zealous young reporter alive, 38 years after the latter retired with Tintin and Alpha-Arta posthumous and unfinished album published in 1986. Tintin will in fact never be entitled to new adventures, because, as we recall The ParisianHergé’s rights holders undertook never to offer a follow-up to his work after his death in 1983.
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