International influences
International influences |
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Page 3 of 17  Cover, Verre D'eau (Last Gasp, 1993). Art: Robert Crumb. In fact, a Weirdo 'International Special'. On a creative level, what was remarkable about the Tintin strips was their quality. The narratives were carefully researched, usually by a team of creators who would often travel to the location to make accurate sketches. The chosen style for the final artwork came to be known as 'clear line', owing to its precision and lack of shadow (the opposite in many ways of the sensationalist American approach). This attention to detail was accentuated when individual stories were collected into albums (in the form of what would become known as 'graphic novels' in Britain and America), and found their way on to bookshelves. These were typically around 48 pages long, in full colour, and in hardback. In this form, they were collectable, and had a value as 'objects', as well as being entertaining. Moreover, these books found a market among adults as well as children: they were advertised as suitable for anyone between seven and seventy. These Tintin albums started to go on sale in Britain from 1958, reprinted by a mainstream book publisher, Methuen. As such, they were not sold from newsagents like ordinary comics, but automatically became shelved in bookshops and public libraries. It was in this form that they became best known, although there were attempts to serialize strips in conventional comics (notably in The Eagle). Unlike in Europe, Tintin was always assumed to be for a juvenile audience, and was not marketed to adults (at least, not in this period). A similar pattern of sales was later established in America (the first album was published by The Golden Press in 1959), though relatively speaking Tintin never really took off here.  Detail from Tintin: Prisoners of the Sun (Methuen, 1962). |