Tintin in the Congo - The Adventures of Tintin 2 by Hergé

In one regard Tintin in the Congo is clearly a vast improvement on its predecessor, having been redrawn in the post-war years to match the settled format and style of the Adventures as a whole. Otherwise this is the deeply controversial book with a long history of restrictions, particularly in the English language. For most of the series's history this book has been unavailable in the regular English-language collection. In the early 1990s the original black and white version was released in a special collectors' edition along with other early versions. But the colour version didn't appear until the mid-2000s and even then it was only available in hardback and meant to be shelved alongside graphic novels and not children's books, though some stores ignored this despite the wrapper warning. The publication reawakened the controversy over the book and this may be the reason why in recent years Egmont have ceased publishing it and removed it from the gallery of titles on the back of every Tintin book. The most recent edition is published by Casterman, thus detaching it from the rest of the Adventures and as a result the book is now accumulating a new rareness and the inevitable aura of mystique that comes with that.

The Adventures of Tintin in the Land of the Soviets - The Adventures of Tintin 1 by Hergé

I've only just begun these reviews and I'm immediately faced with the first question, namely what is the English language title of this book? This post's title follows the spine of the current (Egmont) paperback but both the cover and the inside front-page present it as the rather lengthy 'The Adventures of Tintin reporter for "Le Petit Vingtième" in the Land of the Soviets'. (That's not absolutely exact but it's extremely hard to reproduce the Belgian quote marks on my keyboard.) The official website gives this one as "Tintin in the Land of the Soviets", which is shorter. Whatever name gets used is a pain.

Introduction

Welcome to yet another review blog. Comics have a mixed reputation around the world but in some places they're considered the Ninth Art, hence the title of this blog.

I'll be reviewing various comics, strips, collected editions and graphic albums - basically whatever takes my fancy. To start with, I'll be looking at the full run of The Adventures of Tintin by Hergé, plus a few of his other works along the way. Look out for the first post on Thursday. Beyond that we'll see.