Tintin Forums

Hi there. Tintin was my absolute favorite growing up in the East. However, once I moved to the US I lost touch. Now an adult, I am interested in collecting all the titles. I went to the Tintin store's website in UK and noted that there is a choice between English Facsimile and English Hardback. I am not sure what the difference is. Can anyone help explain the difference? I understand that the Facsimile version has better paper/color...but were all original Tintin's in color? I like the idea of buying the better quality, but still want color if the original comes in black/white. Is there a place to find out which titles in facsimile version are in black/white vs color? PLEASE HELP!!!! Thanks

Hmmm... Hi, JyotiGif, sounds like there is some confusion here!

The regular albums, from “Tintin in America” to “Tintin and the Picaros” are all available in hardback or paperback, and all are in colour.

Additionally, the first ever album, “Tintin in the Land of the Soviets” is available in either a facsimile edition, which mimics the way it was released way back when, with a matt cover and a cloth spine, or one which makes it uniform with the regular albums, with a glossy cover and red, square card-board spine (this also got a very limited special brown cloth covered edition at the time of its launch in 1989). It is only available in B&W.

“Tintin and Alph-Art” is the last volume in the series, and comprises sketches for an unfinished tale, with the text set out in print (Hergé’s hand-written text re-formatted like a play-script. This has been available as a large-format book, with the graphics set out on pages and the script in a booklet; this has recently been replaced by a smaller version, which again is the same size as the regular run, and includes some further discovered pages of sketches not found in the previous book. It too is largely in B&W, if a few patches of rudimentary felt-pen colour are discounted!

Furthermore the book “Tintin in the Congo” is available in English only as a facsimile, reproducing the early B&W version of the story. The later re-done colour version is not (yet) available in English. The B&W book has been available in two editions - one has a white cover with a painting of Tintin on the front, wearing a pith helmet, replaced by a recent yellow-coloured book, with a drawing of Tintin in a Model T Ford in a rectangle in the lower-middle of the front.

This is a part of a series which aims to bring the B&W albums to an English readership, in facsimile editions (although strictly speaking they aren’t true facsimiles, as there never were earlier English editions to copy) and which has now had a version of “Tintin in America” added to it.

Hope that this goes some way to answering your questions!