It was an event awaited by all “tintinophiles”: The Blue Lotusan album which marked a turning point in the adventures of Tintinwill reappear in January 2025 in its original version, longer but colored, this time, Casterman editions announced Monday, December 2, 2024.
From 64 to 124 pages
Today's readers are familiar with the 64-page color version, revised by Hergé in 1946, after Casterman's decision in 1942 to reduce the pagination and switch to four-color printing.
However, this famous adventure of the Belgian reporter in China first appeared, in full, “in the form of a 124-page black and white album published by Casterman in 1936”, recalls the publisher. It had been pre-published in the newspaper Le Petit Vingtième between August 1934 and October 1935.
The Blue Lotus is the fifth album of Tintin. It's only from the tenth, The Mysterious Starthat Hergé will limit himself to 62 or 64 pages.
New colors
“Fifth title in the colorized collection of original albums published in the 1930s, this edition allows you to rediscover this iconic album in a palette of new colors, the nuances of which particularly enhance the night scenes, thus revealing the intensity of the action and the beauty of the vignettes,” says Casterman in a press release.
The Blue Lotus is considered one of Hergé's masterpieces. The Belgian designer then begins to establish more of a romantic mystery, rather than depicting a succession of adventures, and he makes his protagonist less of a picaresque hero than an investigator, here endowed with a political conscience.
Chang's influence
In this case, Hergé was strongly influenced by a friend who was a Chinese student at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels, Tchang Tchong-Jen, who described to him the harmful effects of foreign struggles for influence in China, in addition to giving him artistic advice.
Our “Tintin” file
A biography, Tchang Tchong-Jen artist travelersigned by the daughter of this designer, Tchang Yifei, and a specialist in TintinDominique Maricq, will also be published by Casterman and Moulinsart on the same day as this new edition of Blue LotusJanuary 8, 2025.
