(Angoulême) The comic book magazine of Tintin will be reborn for a special issue after a 35-year break, Le Lombard editions announced Thursday during the Angoulême Festival.
” The newspaper Tintin is back ! “, Said this comic book publisher in a press release, announcing this publication on September 8.
This special issue, for the 77th anniversary of Le Lombard editions, will include “nearly 400 pages of short stories created especially to celebrate the history of this periodical”, by some 80 authors.
But it will not have a sequel for the moment, Le Lombard not reconstituting an editorial staff dedicated to a revival of the magazine.
This publisher belongs to Média Participations, a different group than the one that publishes the albums of Tintinnamely Casterman, a subsidiary of Madrigall.
The name and figure of Tintin are the property of a company owned by the heirs of its creator Hergé, Tintinimaginatio (formerly Moulinsart SA).
These beneficiaries, and in particular the Briton Nick Rodwell, husband of the widow of Hergé Fanny Vlamynck, gave their agreement for this exceptional number.
“I got a curious and interested welcome from Nick Rodwell. Barely thirty minutes will have been enough to decide it, ”explained to the daily Le Figaro the editorial director of Lombard, Gauthier Van Meerbeeck.
However, the content of the special issue illustrates the very strict policy of Tintinimaginatio concerning the characters of Tintin : they must not be drawn by anyone other than Hergé.
Formerly known for print runs in the hundreds of thousands of copies, the comic book press today suffers, like the rest of the magazine press, the effects of changes in readers’ habits, with minimal newsstand sales and a subscriber base difficult to expand.
The weekly Tintinlaunched in 1946, had paid the price in 1988. Competition with a rival launched by Moulinsart SA, tintin reporterhad then precipitated the disappearance of the two titles.
After a compilation of the best of the Belgian version of the newspaper in 2016, Le Lombard will publish, also in September, a volume 2 with nearly 800 pages taken from the archives of the French version of the weekly.