Tintin and Alph-Art [Paperback]

Being a big fan of Tintin when I was growing up, I wanted to check out everything. Thought I'd read all the stories, but I'd heard about "Tintin and Alph-Art", which at the time was in a blue hardcover with a rough picture of Tintin on a ladder. This particular edition (gold) was published in 2004, as part of Tintin's 75th anniversary. Both editions are a collection of sketches Herge was preparing for the 24th Tintin adventure, but he died in 1983 before he could finish the story or colour and ink it in. It's presented like a script, with pictures of the pencil drawings along side, some significant details blown up. Was put off by the fact it was incomplete and rough, but I gave it a go, and I quite like it. Very personal, I thought.

Tintin has a lot of contacts, so does his friend Captain Haddock. Bianca Castafiore wants to visit Marlinspike Hall again, and so does Prince Abdullah the trickster. Haddock almost runs into Bianca on the street, so he hides in an art gallery, and ends up being cornered by Bianca. He buys a "H" made by a famous artist there, "H" for Haddock. It's Alph-Art, PersonALph-Art to be exact. Many don't understand it, Haddock is frustrated all the more by it. Meanwhile, a man at the gallery is killed, and Tintin gets on the case...

What happens? It doesn't end, though there are some sketches in the back where Herge considers what he wants to do. God bless you, Georges "Herge" Remi.

A fascinating and adult Tintin book, well worth reading for Tintin fans. Tintin takes on art forgers, and Herge takes on fake art lovers. As other commenters have said it's very interesting to see the process behind the making of a Tintin book.

Herge spends the first 10 pages re-introducing all the main characters from past books and having them interact with each other. These introductory pages, despite being mostly plot-less, are great fun to read. I think this is because as you get older the things most interesting from childhood books like Tintin, Asterix, and The Lord of the Rings, are not the plots but how the characters act. How Rastopopulous will always return to being evil for example, or the shamelessness of Alcazar.

If you're into Tintin because of its action, this book might not be fun. Castafiore again is central to what annoys Herge, and generally this book is about fakes. Here fakes are people who like the idea of themselves being into art rather than liking art itself. It's funny and interesting, and more like watching the TV show Absolutely Fabulous than reading other Tintin books.

The book continues the cynicism of Picaros and Castafiore, and the way he mocks some of the characters is more obvious than in the other books. This is probably the sort of thing that would have been removed over rewrites and editing, which he unfortunately wasn't able to do.

Everyone is taken in with the Alph-Art, including the Captain who buys one. When Tintin is in trouble, it's either Snowy or luck that saves him. It's not a very hopeful book, but a funny and interesting one.

Tintin and Alph-Art is in many ways one of the most challenging Tintin adventures, but in many ways it is also the most rewarding. As any Tintin fan who has flipped through the pages will realise, it's very different from the rest - Herge, the creator and continuous author and illustrator of Tintin died on March 3rd 1983, leaving this, his last work, in an unfinished draft form. This means that you get rough sketches of approximately 42 pages of a new story (Tintin adventures would typically have 62 pages of story). From the notes and introduction, it seems that Herge had wandered 42 pages into the story, not quite knowing where he was going with it; looking at the drafts, you can see how he's crossed out the page numbers many times, switching their order, or moving them later in the procession so that he could add elements after the fact. It demonstrates an amazing creative process. There are also notes of what he could have done with the story but didn't. The first three pages are the most complete, and Herge has added a lot of pencil detail to the sketches, making them look nearly like finished pages, minus the colour, but later the drawings are mere scribbles of mock-ups, sometimes redrawn (the book on occasion shows us the original discarded draft with the one that Herge retained. Amazing to think that each of the Tintin adventures would have such a library of drafts. Another interesting thing for me is to see the original drafts presented in French, a language that I've studied but not made much use of. Navigating Herge's cursive, as well as the French language itself, was a fun challenge for me.

The tale has many elements of the typical Tintin adventure. It starts off at Marlinspike, where Captain Haddock is having a nightmare about Bianca Castafiore - who is, naturally, just around the corner, much to Haddock's fright. Jolyon Wagg and Cutts the butcher also feature into these early pages, Cuthbert Calculus wanders in, and Thomson and Thompson make an appearance at some point as well. After a while, though, we get down to the plot: there are two art experts who get in touch with Tintin, but both die mysterious deaths. Tintin becomes suspicious and begins to investigate. He is targeted to be rubbed out for being too nosey, the whole while engaging in his adventures solo, making this plot more similar to something like "The Black Island" than the penultimate adventure "Tintin and the Picaros," where Tintin works closely with Haddock and other friends. How odd. Tintin eventually meets mysterious art world people, as well as new religion people. When he finds transmitters that record his every word he get suspicious, eventually heading off to Italy where Castafiore, coincedentally, has become involved with art world new religion counterfeiting gangs. Of course! Tintin receives a warning to butt out, he investigates, he enters the lions den, he snoops around, he is caught, he is jailed, he tries to think of a way out of his predicament. In many ways it was a return to form for Herge, or maybe he was going back to his old tricks.

There is great satire in the book. Herge seems to have targeted pretentious art world people, as well as new religion people, in this particular work. Several characters from old TIntin adventures show up, including Emir Ben Kalish Ezab and his son Abdullah (in a TV appearance only), Sakharine (from "The Secret Of The Unicorn"), Gibbons (from "The Blue Lotus") and trickler (from "The Broken Ear"). One of the nine pages of notes that are in this edition show how he planned a whole succession of "in the art gallery" frames to show how pretentious these arty types can be, heh heh.

In fact, the after-notes offer strange revelations about the plot, and about Herge's creative process. It seems that Calculus, feeling guilty that he had poisoned the Captain with medicine that makes whiskey disgusting, discovers an antidote that makes the captain lose his hair and gives him red splotches all over his face - he can take whisky again, but he looks like a bashi-bazouk! Then there are the concepts that Haddock becomes enamoured with the beatnicks and changes everything about his way of life and appearance. There are also sketches that reveal that one of the villains is Rastapopoulos in disguise (yet again), as well as other thoughts about potential plot twists, and other dreams and fantasies. We can only wonder what it might have become.

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