And the color came to her cheeks of Tintin in the land of the Soviets – The Figaro

This could be seen as a betrayal. Yet it is nothing. The color of the very first adventure of the famous reporter to now the powder, born in January 1929, promises to be an exciting rediscovery of the work of Hergé

Definitely, the month of September 2016 looks like a back to school Tintin. Not only Hergé appears in the Great Palace, in an exhibition organized by the RMN, which opens on September 28. But the boom also coincides with the 70th anniversary of the birth of the weekly Tintin in 1946.

Casterman, the publisher’s history refer to the briefs of golf could not sit idly by. Nearly 86 years after his birth, the very first adventure of Tintin will finally take color. Tintin in the land of the Soviets created on 10 January 1929 in the children’s supplement of the belgian daily newspaper ” The Twentieth century has long been regarded as “an error of youth” by the great Hergé.

However, the announcement of a color of the first album, considered by specialists and other tintinophiles as a kind of archeo-Tintin in black and white, will delight the greatest number. Of course, it is not one of the masterpieces of maturity (The treasure of Rackham the red, the temple of the sun or destination moon) , but the album Soviets is all the same the birth of Tintin. It is full of freshness, and is akin to a Charlie Chaplin movie, an adventure of Harold Lloyd, or episode of Laurel and Hardy…

the origin of this important decision, we find Fanny Rodwell, residuary legatee of the work of Hergé, Benoit Mouchart, Charlotte Gallimard and Casterman.

Attention, bring in color without distorting the only adventure of Tintin only available in black and white has not been an easy task.

Remained unavailable until 1973, this first story marks the introduction of the style of Hergé. It is with a pleasure almost infantile, guided by the spirit of the game and the desire for speed that Hergé address to the reader in this pursuit race where planes, cars, trains, speedboats and motorbikes whizz by at full speed. If the drawing is not yet in the perfection of the style “clear line”, the young author of 21 year-old already demonstrates his skill of a novelist in the images.

The dynamic sense of movement, the mastery of the sequence of plans and the construction of the pages express this talent to tell by the image that will be that Hergé was a great master of the comic strip. The serious subject matter commissioned by abbot Wallez, the patron saint of the everyday life of the Twentieth century, also allows the comedian to be a visionary, out of season, of his time.

This is probably why the color, a delicate operation if it is, has been entrusted, within the framework of Studios Hergé, Michel Bareau, assisted by Nadège Rombaux. This colorization enhances the readability of the narrative, the clarity of the drawings, and surprises by its modernity, as if it were a new album. Most importantly, we can discover that this first album is a sort of precipitate of the adventures to come. The colors laid on the sequences of snow, Tintin in the land of the Soviets are irresistibly think of Tintin in Tibet. Other chase sequences are reminiscent of The calculus Affair, etc

Tintin will be back in bookstores on January 11, 2017, on the eve of the festival of Angoulême, 2017, the day after his 88th birthday, and a few months before the commemorations of the centenary of the October revolution.