Trivia / Tintin - Tintin and Alph Art

• Accidental Downer Ending: Since Hergé Died During Production and the last panels he ever drew prior depicted Tintin being marched away to be covered in liquid polyester and sold as a statue, this means that the album, and by extension the entirety of Tintin (in its official form, that is), ends on the hero being taken towards his execution. Various fan artists (such as Yves Rodier), however, have "finished" the unfinished storyline in the years after Hergé's death.
• Creator Breakdown: Hergé wrote Tintin in Tibet largely as a sort of therapy, to resolve the emotional issues he had following his divorce from Germaine Kieckens and the distressing dreams he'd been having that involved vast white landscapes. It is widely considered to be his masterpiece. However, it caused Hergé to undergo another Creator Breakdown — after the book was released, he decided that there was no way he would ever write such a good Tintin story again, and effectively gave up trying to do so. The remaining three Tintin stories were released at a far slower rate than the previous ones, and took the form of experimental character pieces which did radically different things with the premise and characters Hergé had been writing over the previous decades. (The Castafiore Emerald is a mystery ultimately revealed to be nothing, Flight 714 is almost a parody of the "classic" Tintin adventure mode, and Picaros is a surprisingly bitter and political story where Tintin is tired of adventuring.) The notes to Tintin and Alph-Art hint at Hergé having worked out how to combine an old-fashioned adventure storyline with his new, more experimental approach, but we'll never know since he sadly Died During Production.
• Died During Production: Hergé died partway through his work on Tintin and Alph-Art; the unfinished draft has been published as part of the regular series of Tintin albums.
• Fan Edit: At least three major attempts were made by fan artists to finish the story:
  • The first version, by Serge Brouillet, effectively just finishes up the work that was already done on the story, and adds in an abrupt Downer Ending where Haddock and the Thom(p)sons break into the villains' workshop, but are too late to prevent Tintin from being turned into a statue.
  • The second version, by "Ramo Nash," expands the story out to the full length of a Tintin album, and reveals that Akass is indeed Rastapopoulos, with Allan also briefly showing up. While a more complete story, it suffers from Wall of Text dialogue, and the entire last third of the book essentially just being Tintin and Haddock making their way home to Marlinspike, with Rastapopoulos being foiled off-page by the Thom(p)sons.
  • The third version, by Yves Rodier, is the most well-known edition and nearly became Ascended Fanon, though this ultimately fell apart due to legal issues. This version is treated as a Grand Finale to the whole series, with Rastapopoulos appearing again — though in this version Allan only appears in a one-page cameo, having pulled a Screw This, I'm Outta Here — and finally meeting his end at the story's climax.
• Unfinished Episode: The album was never finished due to Hergé's death.

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