Exhibition review: Tintin – Hergé’s Masterpiece, London

This is an exhibition I stumbled upon by accident: until January 31, Somerset House hosts a small Tintin show. It focuses on the black-and-white era and features some original drawings – or, more precisely, facsimiles thereof. While I don’t see the point of going to an exhibition to see facsimiles, I guess they can still be interesting if you’re interested in Hergé’s production process.

There is one exhibit I found fascinating though: the sports page of the Le Soir newspaper from April 15, 1944, which contains a 4-panel strip from the Tintin story Les Sept Boules de Cristal. The diminutive format of this strip – approximately 20 by 5 cm -, which might be due to wartime paper shortage, is amazing. Even if French-speaking readers were able to read Tintin comics in a much larger format after the war in its own magazine, the tiny Le Soir version was the original one that was read by probably hundreds of thousands of people.

If you happen to be in London anyway, it can’t hurt stopping by Somerset House to see the exhibition – admission is free, after all. For everyone else, getting the exhibition catalogue (authored by Pierre Sterckx and translated by Michael Farr) might be the better alternative.

Rating: ● ● ○ ○ ○

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