Tintin Forums

Hi.
I have a question about Tintin in the Land of the Soviets.

I was looking at an article about this album on a French-language Tintin website (I don't speak or read French – I just make guesses about what they are saying). It showed a photo of one of the pages, and I wanted to know what they were talking about, so I went to my library and got a copy.

I looked through it very closely, but I couldn't find that page, so I must assume that it was deleted from the book.

Does anybody know if there really is a deleted page from Soviets? And if it is now missing, why was it deleted?

Yes, there is indeed a missing page. It came between the pages which were numbered pages 97 and 98 when the book was prepared; it has since been known as "page 97A".
I think it was a printing error in the original French release of the album.

It was once available to read from the official English Tintin site before they "redecorated" in 2009.
Some English versions of the books have it, though, so keep searching. Try an Egmont hardcover copy, which I don't have, but know someone who does. It reads:

FRAME 1
Tintin: No mistake about it, I've stumbled on a haunted house... and because of the storm I'll have to stay!
Snowy: Tintin, let's get out of here!
FRAME 2
Tintin: Perhaps we can find something to eat.
Snowy: Tintin, for pity's sake... let's go!

...The rest doesn't need translating.

What was the error in that page?

It wasn’t that there was an error in the page, the error appears to be that it was, for reasons we may never know, left out of the album in the first place. If there had been an error with the page itself, it wouldn’t have been possible for it to be published in Le Petit Vingtième (which it was), or re-inserted when the book was published in English.

The missing page was noticed at least in 1975 by the Dutch publisher Hans Matla, who included the page in his Dutch release of 'Kuifje in de Sovjet-Unie' as part of the 'Archieven van Hergé'. There is a note in the introduction that says as much.

The 'missing page' is necessary for continuity, because it explains why Tintin in the first frame of the subsequent page suddenly has a bloody nose.

The Dutch edition is only reproducing what was already included in the 1973 Archives Hergé by Casterman, which was the first authorized reprinting of the first adventure since the thirties.
It has never actually been missing, it was simply left out. However, as you have effectively raised the same subject in two places simultaneously, I'll post my comments on that over on the other thread, to save further duplication.

I believe that the mentioned missing page is the same one which is given on tintin.com in the albums section.
I was wondering about what Tintin and Snowy were talking about as the speech bubbles were not readable. But now I finally know what they were talking about. The translation was really helpful.

The missing page is included as page 97a in the facsimile of the 1930 edition, which was originally printed in English by Sundancer in 1989 and then reprinted in America by Last Gasp in 2003. It is not included in the standard edition, first published in English by Methuen in 1999. This includes both hardback and paperback versions.

Hello all. One thing that bothers me - although that missing page fits a gap in the narrative it does alter the flow of the spreads. Herge's signature appears at the bottom left hand page instead of the right and there are an odd number of pages. Has anyone seen how it was in Le Petit Vingtieme? Was it also left out of there too or was there an issue with three story pages instead of two?

Harrock n roll
Hergé's signature appears on page 97 in the facsimile (the numbering starts on page 2, so this is actually the 98th page of the story and is on the right). Then there's page 97a, 98, 99 and 100 with no signature. His signature appears again on page 101, which is on the left (page 97a puts the odd pages on the left as they should be).

Looking at the Le Petit Vingtième version, pages 98 and 99 are in colour. This suggests that they were part of the same issue (I believe that they were especially coloured for the Christmas 1929 issue). Page 97a does appear in the Le Petit Vingtième version, and Hergé's signature appears on the same pages. So, if we assume that pages 100 and 101 appeared in the same issue (as they are in black-and-white and Hergé's signature appears at the bottom of page 101) that leaves page 97a as the odd one out.
So we are left with three options:

1. It appeared in its own issue. This is unlikely as Hergé's signature does not appear on it.
2. It appeared in the same issue as pages 96 and 97. Possible but then why isn't Hergé's signature on it instead of page 97? Perhaps he wanted to keep his signature on the bottom-right as it always was.
3. It appeared in the Christmas issue. Why then is it not in colour like pages 98 and 99? Now that I think of it, why doesn't Hergé's signature appear on page 99 either? Perhaps the Christmas issue spanned five pages (97a to 101) with two of them being in colour? That would explain the lack of his signature.