When I saw this article on CNN.com about “winged luxury submarines,” the first thing I thought of was that awesome shark submarine from the Tintin book, Red Rackham’s Treasure:
I was surprised to note that the article did in fact mention Tintin. I was really surprised, though, to note that the Tintin book mentioned was one I’d never heard of: Tintin and the Lake of Sharks. This is because apparently this Tintin book is not one penned by Hergé, but rather a book made to look like stills from an animated Tintin movie written by Belgian cartoonist “Greg” (Michel Regnier), a friend of Hergé. Out of curiosity, I tracked down some sample pages from Lake of Sharks and although I was disappointed to find that the submarine in question is actually just the same shark sub from Red Rackham, it’s kind of interesting to see Tintn art done in a style designed to ape the look of animation:
The Hergé-drawn Tintin exhibits a differential between the way the figures and the way the background are drawn (much discussed in Understanding Comics), but stylistically they cohere quite well. In the animation-style page above though, this disconnect is, to my eye, just too great and produces an odd effect.
I gotta wonder about the reference to Lake of Sharks in the original article. Was the author a hardcore Tintin fan who used this opportunity to show off his knowledge of obscure Tintin books… of maybe someone who knew nothing at all about Tintin and just maybe got Lake of Sharks from an errant google search?
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The book is made up from stills from the animated feature.
Author
Ah, well that makes sense. Thanks for the info.
Author
It clearly wasn’t a regular Herge book, but I’d not heard of the film.
The film Tintin and the Lake of Sharks was made in 1972, and like all the animated versions of the Tintin stories, it isn’t anywhere as good as the books. Ironically, though, the book version of the film does read quite well in its own right. The background artwork is particularly beautiful – though you’re right, it is in a completely different style from the “ligne claire” (clear line) that Hergé brought to perfection. Overall it’s 18 pages shorter than the “normal” Tintin story as well, so as a boy when I bought it, I was mildly disappointed! However, as translated by Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper and Michael Turner (Hergé’s regular English translators), it is a pleasing addition to the catalogue.
The film was directed by Raymond Leblanc, Herge’s publisher, who also created the film studio, Belvision, and this studio had made a number of animations based on Hergé’s stories up to this point. Leblanc even used a film-strip like cover for the book which results in quite an ingenious motif.
Author
Thanks so much for the info. I think I’ll maybe pick up a copy of the book to check out.