The Tintin album Les Bijoux de la Castafiore will reappear in October with the original drawings, those published in the Tintin newspaper. A version which arrives in bookstores on October 4, embellished with a file which sheds light on the work of Hergé and the context of the time, according to a program of publications by Casterman.
“The boards of the original version, initially published in the journal Tintin, had been dormant in its archives for 60 years. Restored with care and meticulousness, these unpublished documents allow us today to give a new shine to the story”, indicates Casterman in his presentation of the work.
Les Bijoux de Castafiore, Tintin’s 21st album, was published in the Tintin journal between July 1961 and September 1962, at the rate of one page per week.
The version published in volume, in 1963, is slightly different. Hergé modifies or simplifies the decor of certain boxes, to bring out the action taking place in the foreground. The colorization is also redone.
Sales of the album were estimated, all languages combined, at 10 million copies in 2021, the year in which a pencil sketch of page 54 was sold at auction (for 143,000 euros).
The album is prized by fans for its iconoclastic character, with action confined to the Château de Moulinsart and its surroundings, humor pushed to the point of the absurd, a very modern critique of the society of the spectacle, and the exploration of personality of Captain Haddock.
For another album, Les Cigares de pharaon, Casterman published a new version in October 2022, where the black and white originals from 1932-1934 were restored and colorized. Readers are more familiar with the edited, color version of 1955.
