Tintin Forums

When Hergé made small revisions to albums, such as the removal of black characters from some albums for the America publishers, or the redrawing of the rhino scene in Congo for the Scandinavian publishers, do all future editions in other countries contain these?

I'm just curious. I know that major revisions do, like The Land of Black Gold, but I've always wondered about small revisions.

-Gustav

I attended a talk by Michael Farr (author of the Tintin Companion, and leading English Tintin expert) given at the NMM last Saturday. At the end I asked why the changes made to Crab (removing of blacks and toning down Haddock's drinking) meant that it changed in ALL of the editions. As I suspected, he said it was to do with printing and that the master plate was changed. This didn't quite explain why the rhino scene in Congo doesn't follow that rule. (It's still blown to pieces in the French version, last time I checked!)

My theory is that the master plates for Crab were changed so that it would save confusion and make it easier if any other publisher were to complain later. Kind of self-censorship on Hergé's part if you like. He was quite sensitive to offending people and was always happy to make the changes.

That explains it! I recently got the French edition, saw the rhino explode, and had to rack my brains as to what it had been changed from! I didn't have anything to hand to check, and forgot to look it up later.

It never occurred to me that it was in fact the original, which I should have known, because I was assuming the change was in all the editions... D'oh! The old what'ch'm'call it... ... ... memory! ...is starting to go...

It seems a bit of a strange one to leave in, because it would be much easier to adjust the master plates and forget about it, than to have to reset the presses and make sure you never got the pages confused. However, I suppose the Francophone market is big enough to make the extra cost insignificant.