Hello,

I have *extensively* researched TinTin and the Blue Oranges and TinTin
and the Golden Fleece - among the first TinTin comics by Herge. From
what I am hearing from specialists in the US is that Blue Oranges was
never published in the English language and that Golden Fleece is not
available in the US. But I can PERSONALLY vouch that growing up as a
kid in Calcutta, India I myself read the comic in English format. So
it has to be available SOMEWHERE in some other part of the world. And
I am obviously looking to buy BOTH in English language format in
decent condition. Any pointers as to a store or individual(s) who
might be
selling it in this specific format would be great! I reiterate, I am
NOT interested in the French version - only English. I reside in WA
state in the US and would be willing to pay for overseas shipping and
a reasonable price for the comics.

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Request for Question Clarification by justaskscott-ga on 22 Jun 2002 22:25 PDT

I have some ideas about obtaining "Tintin and the Golden Fleece", but
after an exhaustive search, I only have suggestions on libraries that
have "Tintin and the Blue Oranges".  I searched every way I could
think of -- through Tintin fan sites, online bookstores, Google
Directories and Yahoo Groups, and auction sites -- all to no avail for
an English version of "Blue Oranges".  If the English version exists
outside of libraries, it must be very rare.

However, I have also found a web site, which seems to be fairly
current, which promises to post the entire "Blue Orange" book's text.

So would you accept an answer listing sellers of "Golden Fleece" and
libraries and the aforementioned website with respect to "Blue
Oranges"?

---

Clarification of Question by wayrad-ga on 23 Jun 2002 04:00 PDT

Hello!

Sure I would be interested in TinTin and Golden Fleece but the real
winner would be of course the Blue Oranges. Those site recommendations
would be great!
I have found search engines such as alibris and abebooks do come back
with sellers selling golden fleece but they usually ask for exorbitant
amounts. A friend of mine in India, for instance, claims he's ordered
TinTin in the Congo (in English) and TinTin in the Land of the Soviets
(English) for me and the prices are dirt cheap compared to what the
asking rate for such comics are in this country. So in other words, I
would be conducive to purchase Golden Fleece from some reliable site
but preferably international site coz it'll most likely be a lot
cheaper than here in the US.

As for Blue Oranges, it is a big bummer. If you experts are coming up
with nothnig then there's nothing much I can do but yes - the new
web-site and library suggestions would be great! I will try and get
our local King County Library System do an Inter-Library Loan if at
all possible from here in King County, WA.

Thank you!

Dear wayrad,

I am very sorry to say that all efforts to find Hergé’s comics "Tintin
and the Golden Fleece" and "Tintin and the Blue Oranges" will remain
fruitless. The reason is that these stories do not exist in the form
of graphic novels, drawn by Hergé. This is not speculation or a mere
assertion; I am an admirer of Hergés art myself, owning most of what
he has drawn in decades. I also have the German edition Benoît
Peeter’s highly recommendable, comprehensive biography of this
extraordinary artist, "Le Monde d’Hergé", in which the "Blue Oranges"
are mentioned as well as the "Golden Fleece".
Both of these titles refer to live-action feature films, made with
real actors. The scripts for these movies were written exclusively for
the films, there were no comics serving as models. "Tintin et le
mystère de la toison d’or" (‘Tintin and the Secret of the Golden
Fleece’) was shot in 1960, after a script by Rémo Forlani. "Tintin et
les oranges bleues" (‘Tintin and the Blue Oranges’) dates from 1964,
the script was written by André Barret.
Casterman, Hergé’s Belgian publisher, made accompanying books for both
movies. However, these books featured pictures and still-shots taken
from the movies; they have not been drawn by Hergé. Thence, the
Belgian editions were marked as "Un album-film" (‘A movie album’) on
the front covers. It is a fact that Hergé has never made a graphic
novel after the scripts of these two movies. Books in public libraries
or offered by private collectors brearing these titles are necissarily
the movie albums. Thanks to the comment of j_philip-ga, we know that
these books have been published in English in 1965 and 1967
respectively. They are regarded, by the way, as highly collectable.
This, of course, leads to a kind of mystery. You remember having read
these stories in the form of comic books. I assume that your memories
do not play tricks on you; so where did these two comics come from?
Now I beg your pardon for doing a bit of speculation, but here is the
only logical solution for this problem I can think of: The books were
no works of Hergé. As an extremely famous comic artist, whose graphic
novels enjoyed worldwide popularity, he was also a victim of copyists
and forgers, as all great artists. Especially in countries with rather
lackadaisical copyright laws, other (mostly worse than second-rate)
illustrators used his characters and tried to copy his style of
drawing, often enough with really horrible results. Three very nasty
examples of these fake Tintin versions from Turkey are shown in
Peeter’s biography of Hergé mentioned above. So it might well be that
the books you have read as a child in Calcutta were, in fact, drawn by
some Indian artist who has used the movie albums as archetypes.
Evidence for this assumption comes from the fact that you supposed
these comics to be amongst Hergé’s earliest works. I think this means
that the drawings appeared much less sophisticated to you than those
of his later works, so you had to believe these to be early stories.
But now it seems more likely, that the lacks in style and drawing
techniques are pointing not to the first days of the slowly evolving
genius Hergé but to a simply not very talented, nameless Indian
artist.
This is, I confess, only guesswork. But since there are no drawn "Blue
Oranges" and "Golden Fleece" by Hergé, and you nevertheless remember
having read these as graphic novels, someone else must have drawn
them. This is the best solution I can offer.
However, I know that this is not the answer you expected because it
reveals you will never succeed in finding these comics; at least not
as original works of Hergé. All you could do is trying to get the
English versions of the film albums - which are expensive and not what
you wanted to get -, or to find the fake comics from India, which
might be, alas, undetectable. But since they are only falsifications,
it should not be a real loss.

To find out more about the two movies and its books, please visit
these websites:

Discover Tintin - Tintin on the Big Screen, by Nicolas Sabourin, 2002
http://www.tintin.qc.ca/english/cinema.htm

Tintin et le mystère de la toison d’or, by Mikael Uhlin, 2002 (in
English, Swedish and French)
http://w1.660.telia.com/~u66002771/toison.htm

Tintin et les oranges bleues, by Mikael Uhlin, 2002 (in English,
Swedish and French)
http://w1.660.telia.com/~u66002771/oranges.htm

Le Petit Monde des Films Francais - Review of the film Tintin et les
oranges bleues, by James Travers
http://members.netscapeonline.co.uk/jameswtravers/nf_Tintin_et_les_oranges_bleus_rev.html

Le Petit Monde des Films Francais - Review of the film Review of the
film Tintin et le mystère de la toison d'or, by James Travers
http://members.netscapeonline.co.uk/jameswtravers/nf_Tintin_et_le_mystere_de_la_toison_d_or_rev.html

Hergé and Tintin: History of English Editions, by T.F. Mills, 1996
http://www.regiments.org/special/bd/tbibeng.htm

Tintin.com - please see the complete list of Tintin adventures ever
published under ‘The Adventures Of Tintin’ on this official website.
http://www.tintin.com/uk/

Additional source:

Benoît Peeters: Hergé - Ein Leben für die Comics. 1st edition, Carlsen
Verlag 1983; ISBN 3-551-02819-2 (German edition of ‘Le Monde d’Hergé’)

Search terms used:
tintin "blue oranges":
://www.google.de/search?hl=de&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF8&newwindow=1&q=tintin+%22blue+oranges%22&meta=
tintin "golden fleece":
://www.google.de/search?hl=de&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF8&newwindow=1&q=tintin+%22golden+fleece%22&meta=
tintin "oranges bleues":
://www.google.de/search?hl=de&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF8&newwindow=1&q=tintin+%22oranges+bleues%22&meta=
tintin "toison d'or":
://www.google.de/search?hl=de&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF8&newwindow=1&q=tintin+%22toison+d%27or%22&meta=

Hope this helps!
Regards,
Scriptor

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Request for Answer Clarification by wayrad-ga on 23 Jun 2002 21:00 PDT

Respected scriptor-ga!

Wow - you have provided some great information and I am familiar with
the general idea of what you're conveying. I wanted to clarify that
the Blue Oranges i had read was indeed not in the graphic format like
we're familiar with (for instance Tintin in Tibet, etc), but instead
was in a story-book format with occassional over-sized (compared to
the common comics) caricatures of some characters. So yes - it is not
in the same format at all - not even close and that's why I remember
it all the more! Moreover, having said that, I would be surprised if
it was a falsification of Herge's intended film format in paper-form
by some other individual.

I will have to reluctantly give in to the reality that I might never
see that "comic" ever again regardless of whether it was a Herge
original or not.

Thank you for your detailed information!

Peace,

Wayad.

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Clarification of Answer by scriptor-ga on 24 Jun 2002 09:09 PDT

Dear wayrad,

Thank you very much for the really positive words you have for the
results of my research although it must have been kind of
dissapointing for you. I strongly hope you will be able to at least
obtain the two movie albums for a reasonable price some day.

Good Luck!
Scriptor

I like the fact that you give the opportunity between the client and
the expert(s) to continue the process of honing the question and thus
the needed answer by an exchange of dialog between the parties. That
definitely increases the odds of the questioner to get the answer they
are looking for.

Wayrad,

The following site reveals that the titles you're interested in are
books derived from films:

Tintin: History of English Editions
http://www.regiments.org/special/bd/tbibeng.htm

And the Frequently Asked Questions for TinTin says those are out of
print:

The Cult of TinTin FAQ - Movies
http://www.daimi.aau.dk/~jjuhne/COT/faq.html#Movies
"Tintin and the Golden Fleece and Tintin and the Blue Oranges are both
out of print"

Sorry, and good luck -- maybe another researcher can dig up a way to
order them.

Search terms:
    "tintin and the blue oranges" order comic

Heh, I read both of those in spanish, growing up in Colombia.

I don't want to denigrate scriptor-ga's research, but I must say I
could have provided the unsatisfying answer that Golden Fleece and
Blue Oranges were not published officially as graphic comics by Hergé
but as photographic film books.  I didn't think it was appropriate to
answer the question and take the $5 by saying that they aren't comics
or that Blue Oranges wasn't available for sale.  I presumed
(correctly, it turns out) that wayrad-ga knew that they weren't comics
from his extensive prior research, but was nevertheless interested in
buying these books.

Perhaps wayrad-ga would like to repost the question, to see if anyone
out there (perhaps me, or perhaps someone with more Tintin
connections) has an insight on how to purchase Golden Fleece
inexpensively or Blue Oranges anywhere.

And now I'll be selfless and post some free information.  The site I
mentioned in my comment which promises to post the Blue Oranges film
book text, as well as information about Golden Fleece, is called
Labrador Road ( http://www.labradorroad.cjb.net/ or
http://www.geocities.com/labradorroadontheweb/) -- move your mouse
over the blue strip on the left side of the page to pull up the site's
menu.

I would like to officially thank all of you who have provided great
info and practically beaten the subject to resurrection (I had beaten
it to death myself before) :-)

But not to worry - I have a number of other great challenges - some in
thecomic world and a number of others in many other diverse fileds of
interest. I seem to be a popular "hub" for a gradually growing number
of members of my family and friends for finding the "impossible"
through the WWW.

I wanted to do a litmus test of this "Beta" site of Google (my
favorite search engine BTW) and I think you guys have done great! I
will go on a hiatus as far as scouring for Blue Oranges is concerned.

I think it's actually worthwhile to mention (I might have mentioned
this before) - I have managed to locate TinTin in Congo and
"...Soviets" for dirt-cheap compared to what you'd have to pay for it
in the US. Apparently the order will take a while to be processed and
I'm already excited! I loved TinTin growing up and find it amusing
that after browsing thru TinTin in America a couple of months ago, I
wasn't cognizant of a few colloquialisms in that comic! Heh
heh....truly amusing!

Anyhow, Carpe Diem folks and I hope you guys make this a fabulous
Answer Portal well rivaled to allexperts.com and ioffer.com.

Cheers,

Wayrad.