PARIS | An extraordinary edition of the Tintin newspaper hits French and Belgian bookstores on Friday, celebrating the 77th anniversary of its publisher after a long hiatus for this legendary comics magazine.
The Belgian editions Le Lombard are celebrating their anniversary with “almost 400 pages of specially created short stories” by around 80 authors.
This special edition has a circulation of 60,000 copies, as many as the number 1 newspaper of September 26, 1946.
Classic heroes of Franco-Belgian comics such as Blake and Mortimer, Michel Vaillant, Alix and Ric Hochet and many others are reinterpreted by contemporaries. Among them are Fabcaro, François Boucq and Alix Garin.
However, nothing new from Tim and his companions like Snowy, Captain Haddock or Professor Tournesol. The copyright holders of their author Hergé do not authorize anyone to take them back.
We find boxes, entire plates, illustrations or sketches signed by the Belgian designer, who died 40 years ago: some very famous, those from the albums, others a little forgotten, made for other occasions, such as a poster for the exhibition 1979.
This edition should not be followed by any others, as Le Lombard does not have its own editorial team.
At its peak in the 1970s, the weekly newspaper had a circulation of 240,000 copies. Publication ceased in November 1988 when the appearance of a rival named Tintin Reporter caused the disappearance of the two titles.
After compiling the best of the newspaper’s Belgian edition in 2016, Le Lombard is also releasing on Friday “The Great Adventure of Tintin”, Volume 2, with almost 800 pages from the archives of the French edition of the weekly.
The publisher of the albums, the competitor Casterman, published Les Bijoux de la Castafiore on October 4th with the original drawings, those of the newspaper. This adventure was published there with one circulation per week between July 1961 and September 1962, before a slightly different version was released as an album in 1963.