Out July 30, 2013.
Hergé is known worldwide for his plucky, globetrotting, strikingly
quiffed hero Tintin. But before the runaway success of this character,
the struggling Belgian cartoonist created a number of shorter-lived and
less well-known series and characters. By far the loopiest were 1934’s
Peppy and Virginny (“Popol” and “Virginie” in the original), a couple of
haberdashers who journeyed to the Wild West in search of new clientele,
accompanied by their trusty horse Bluebell— where they ran into savage
Indian tribes, evil bandits, and much more. They experienced only one
adventure, but it was a doozy! The crisp, “clear line” drawing style of
the earliest vintage Tintin albums combines with a freewheeling,
farcical storyline and engaging funny-animal characters (the leads are
bears, the Indians are rabbits with ears for feathers, and the main
villain is a bulldog) and gorgeous Euro-album coloring to make this a
genuine oddball classic of Franco-Belgian comics, and Fantagraphics is
proud to present its first American release (and its first
English-language release in two decades). With the Spielberg/Jackson
Tintin adaptations and a steady flow of new books about Tintin and his
creator (such as last year’s Adventures of Hergé graphic-novel
biography), work by Hergé remains in high demand and this book shows a
fascinatingly idiosyncratic facet of his career. And it’s a rollicking,
hilarious, kid-friendly (if you can give the non-PC 1930s “Injuns” a
pass) read to boot.
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