Tim and the Alpha Art

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Tim und die Alpha-Kunst (French original title: Tintin et l'Alph-Art ) is the last and unfinished comic album from the Tintin series , on which the Belgian author Hergé worked until his death in 1983. The black and white sketches were first published by Casterman in 1986 in collaboration with the Hergé Foundation .

action

Captain Haddock is plagued by a nightmare in which he is attacked by the opera singer Bianca Castafiore in bird form because he no longer wants to drink Loch Lomond whiskey . Tim wakes the screaming Haddock from his dream . Shortly afterwards, Castafiore actually calls Mühlenhof Castle and explains that she has just arrived in Belgium and would like to meet the captain. She also raves about her new spiritual teacher, the "magician" Endaddin Akass. A little later in the morning, Haddock strolls through Brussels , but then takes refuge in the art gallery Fourcart from the Castafiore, which appears by chance . Since the singer enters here too, he has to retreat to an adjoining room, where he becomes acquainted with Ramo Nash, the inventor of the "alpha art". Soon Castafiore and the art expert Fourcart also arrive to talk to Nash and Haddock. Eventually, Haddock is urged to buy one of Nash's Plexiglas artwork that depicts the letter H. In a bad mood, Haddock returns to Schloss Mühlenhof that evening, where he meets Professor Bienlein and the detectives Schulze and Schultze , who apparently do not appreciate his new work of art. In the meantime, Tim is called by the art expert Fourcart, who makes an appointment for the following day.

The next morning, Tim and Haddock read in the newspaper that Fourcart was killed in a car accident, the second unexpected death of an international art expert in a short time. Tim begins to investigate and is the first to ask Fourcarts assistant Martina Vandersand. He does not notice that the conversation is being secretly recorded with a tape recorder . Subsequently in the garage that Fourcart had visited, there was no evidence of a possible defect in his car. Tim now drives to the scene of the accident on his motorcycle , initially followed unnoticed by a black Mercedes . The burned-out car wreck Fourcarts is still lying in a stream bed . A close examination leads Tim to conclude that it was not an accident and that the art expert was probably murdered. His pursuers fail to run over him, whereupon they flee.

One day later, Tim accused Martina Vandersand of being an accomplice in the art gallery, as she was the only one who knew about Tim's visit to the scene of the accident. But her outbreak of tears convinces him of her innocence. He questions other suspects in the gallery with no clear result. In the evening he and Haddock attended an event by the spiritual “magician” Endaddin Akass, because he noticed an unusual piece of jewelry on it, like the one Martina Vandersand wears. Also present are Schulze and Schultze, Martina Vandersand and an old friend from the story The Secret of the Unicorn , Mr. Sakharin. Akass begins a ceremony with the proclamation of the sacred syllable Om , healing through "magnetic energy" and the laying on of hands . Tim is strangely familiar with his voice. After the event, Tim and Haddock drop Martina off at home. However, Tim tells her that he wants to meet an informant in an old factory near Mühlenhof. The meeting that night ends with another attack on Tim's life, who is knocked unconscious and does not come to until the next day in the hospital . He explains to Haddock that Akass probably spied on his plans through a bugging microphone in Martina's jewel. After further research in the Fourcart Gallery, another murder attempt on Tim by the driver of the black Mercedes fails. Thereupon he and Haddock decide to travel to Ischia , where Akass, whom they suspect, owns a villa.

Soon after their arrival on Ischia, Bianca Castafiore invited them to the villa of Akass, who was staying in Rome. In the villa they meet the artist Ramo Nash and some friends from previous adventures, such as the Emir Ben Kalisch Ezab , the corrupt industrialists Mr. Gibbons ( The Blue Lotus ) and Mr. Chicklet ( The Arumbaya Fetish ). At Castafiore's request, they stay the night. Tim wakes up in the middle of the night to noises. He watches men loading pictures into a van. In a large room of the building he discovers many paintings by famous painters, including Modigliani , Léger , Renoir , Picasso , Gauguin and Monet , all of which are forgeries, as the fresh color in some shows. He is caught by Endaddin Akass, who tells him that he is only using Ramo Nash's alpha art as a cover for the art world to bring his large-scale forgeries to market. The elimination of the two art experts Monastir and Fourcart was necessary because they had found out about him. Since Tim already knows too much, he has to die too. Akass plans to cast it in polyester to transform it into a statue signed by the artist Caesar and sell it to a wealthy collector. First, Tim is locked in a cell, but can throw a message for Haddock through the window to Struppi. The next morning he is led out of the cell by a guard with the words: “Come on, get up! Forward! Now you are being transformed into a work of art by Caesar! ”This concludes Hergé's sketch scenario on page 42.

background

Since the 1960s, Hergé became increasingly interested in modern art . He often visited art galleries, liked to collect art himself and finally wanted to process this inclination in Tim and Alpha Art . An inspiration for the story was the art forgery scandal to Elmyr de Hory and Fernand Legros . The motif of the art forgery, which is carried out with a kind of 3D printer , can already be found in Tim and the Shark Lake (1972) . Hergé planned that the New Age guru Endaddin Akass would eventually turn out to be Tim's old adversary of Rastapopoulos.

After Hergé's death in March 1983, his colleague Bob de Moor showed an interest in completing the story and was initially supported by Hergé's wife Fanny. Since Hergé had decreed that no other illustrator should continue his work as a comic artist, his biographer Benoît Peeters , among others, spoke out against it. Eventually Fanny Remi changed her mind and the completion of Tim and Alpha Art was abandoned.

Despite its incompleteness, Tim and his friends' 24th adventure is noteworthy. In contrast to the previous volumes, the drawings are clearly more vivid and the story has become more exciting. While the draftsman had denied in the last volume that it would be a farewell performance for Tim and his friends, it was now unavoidable. Hergé knew that it would be the last adventure - one way or another. So now as many of the characters as possible should actually appear who had accompanied Tim over the past 50 years. It stands to reason that the villain of this story, Endaddin Akass, is really none other than Tim's archenemy Rastapopoulos from The Blue Lotus , Flight 714 to Sydney , and coal on board , but the ultimate answer to this guess will remain Hergé's secret forever . When he died, Hergé himself did not yet know how his story should have ended; he continued to develop it from side to side, as he had done at the beginning of his work at Le Petit Vingtième .

Release history

In 1986 the first French edition, Tintin et l'Alph-Art, was published by Casterman , comprising 42 consecutively numbered pages of Hergé's pencil sketches. However, only three pages are detailed enough to allow the drawing of real album pages. This version was published by Carlsen in 1989 with a separate German translation of the dialogues. The English edition Tintin and Alph-Art and other language versions follow the same scheme. In 2004, Casterman brought out an expanded new edition with nine additional pages, which further illuminate the background and progress of the story. The corresponding German version published by Carlsen Verlag in 2004 contains the consecutive original pages and the additional pages, with the German translation being printed alongside. The same layout is used in the English version, for example.

Unauthorized versions

A number of cartoonists have tried to complete Tim and the alpha art . In 1988 a first unauthorized version was published under the pseudonym Ramo Nash, which was followed in 1991 by the version by the Canadian draftsman Yves Rodier , who is known for numerous pastiches by Tintin . This story was originally only drawn in black and white, but is now also available as a color version in German and English translations. With the exception of the first pages, which were created by Hergé's studio, Rodier's drawings rarely achieve the usual quality of other Tintin adventures, and the last twenty pages of the album are largely invented by Rodier.

Literature and Sources

  • Hergé: Tim and the alpha art. Sketches for the last, unfinished Tintin adventure. Carlsen, Hamburg 1989, ISBN 3551028133
  • Hergé: Tim und die Alpha-Kunst , Carlsen, Hamburg 2004, ISBN 978-3551732446
  • Michael Farr: In the footsteps of Tim and Struppi , Carlsen Verlag, Hamburg 2006, ISBN 978-3-551-77110-0 , pages 188ff.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Allusion to the artist César Baldaccini , who became famous under his stage name "César"
  2. ↑ Pierre Sterckx & André Soupart, Hergé collectionneur d'art , p. 147 (Publisher: La Renaissance du Livre, 2006)
  3. ↑ Hergé's last will and the conflict about Bob de Moors continuing to work at naufrageur.com
  4. ^ Farr, p. 200
  5. ^ Farr, 203
  6. ↑ Review at deconstructingcomics (en)
  7. ↑ Various looted versions of Tim and the alpha art at bedetheque.com , accessed on July 3, 2013 (fr)
  8. ↑ History of the versions of Tim and the alpha art at naufrageur.com (fr)
  9. ↑ English color version of Rodier's Tintin and Alph-Art

Web links