Auction in November 2024
The first two strips of L’Etoile Mystérieuse featured in this catalog were published in Le Soir on October 20 and 21, 1941. These strips are among the few intact original drawings from this Tintin adventure, as they were not reworked, cut, pasted or cropped for the 1942 color album. Here’s their story:
When Hergé produced these two strips, little did he know that he was drawing the beginning of the first episode of The Adventures of Tintin to appear in color. For him, this mysterious starry adventure would be published later, like all his previous stories, in the form of a large album of over 100 pages in black and white, with, no doubt, four large color hors-texte. Working for Casterman for almost ten years, he knew how to lay out this kind of album, reorganizing the strips pre-published in the press, first in Le Petit Vingtième, then in Le Soir (he would only realize four months later, that this way of working was absolutely inadequate to produce a color album with four instead of three strips per page, and with some forty pages less).
In early February 1942, Hergé learned that his publisher, Louis Casterman, had decided to change the format of the Tintin albums. As paper was scarce in wartime, the head of the publishing house proposed to publish thinner albums, but also, and above all, that would also be more attractive, printed in four-color process on the brand-new press at his Tournai printing works. And the publisher announced that he wanted to start right away, with L’Etoile Mystérieuse, which would be published, as usual, at the end of the year for the festive season. Louis Casterman asked Hergé to immediately send a first page to the photoengraver for a color test based on the new layout.
So Hergé found himself at his drawing table with the two strips we’re interested in, and wondering how to fit these nine panels into the new format imposed by the technique. And that’s when he decided to completely redesign this first page. Because he was in such a hurry, he produced only three strips based on the original nine panels, but he changed the format of the panels, both in height and width, according to the needs of the layout. This simple but effective reassembly was colored on the spot and sent to the photoengraver in early March 1942.
The publisher was very enthusiastic, and on March 20 Hergé announced that a new test, this time an eight-page booklet, was in the works. But Tintin’s creator realized that it was impossible for him to redraw all the strips already published, so he continued to draw new ones for the magazine. He needed help, but he couldn’t immediately find a draftsman to assist him, at least not one with sufficient talent or time.
So another solution had to be found quickly, as the publishing house was putting on the pressure. It was at this point that Hergé began cutting out his existing strips, cropping them, adapting them and finally pasting them back onto the drawing boards to fit the new layout of the sixty-two-page color albums, each with four strips. But as he was above all a man of the press, he wanted to save these original strips so that he could publish them later in other dailies.
This is how the famous “back-up” copies came into being. Hergé made copies of his black-and-white strips by hand on a “bac à lumière” (light table) before “mutilating” them for the good cause of color publishing. A tedious task, but ultimately easier and therefore quicker to accomplish than redesigning everything. Hergé “saved” more than sixty strips in this way, before discovering, a few months later, the means of making photographic copies (bromides, a sort of photocopy before their time). Saved!
These strips from L’Etoile Mystérieuse, saved by their creator, have become legendary in auction rooms. But the two strips presented here are even more so, as they are in fact even more authentic than the first plate published in color. They’re the original of the original!
Marcel Wilmet – Tintin expert
©Marcel Wilmet 2024
©Hergé/TintinImaginatio 2024
Auction Information
“Comics & Illustration”
November 6, 2024
Tajan, 37 rue des Mathurins, 75008 Paris 8
Contacts
Louise de Causans – Judicial Auctioneer
+33 1 53 30 30 32 – [email protected]
Ariane de Miramon – Communication Director
+33 1 53 30 30 68 – [email protected]