Today’s article was triggered by a mail we got from Petja van den Hurk who pointed us towards this blogpost by Peter Velter on the Joost Swarte website.
The article recalled an aborted project from 1975 to unite a number of comics by well known underground authors in one album. But although the project never got realised, Velter did compile the works by Joost Swarte and Bob De Moor in a new book, “Blijf Kalm, Werk In Uitvoering”. The book (rather a magazine) itself is a quite limited edition and was only made available to people close to the project and the artists themselves (or their family in the case of Bob De Moor).
You can preview the book right here.
One drawing stood out and that’s an alternative cover for the Barelli album “Bonne mine à la mer”. There are a few things to say about the cover. First of all you will notice that De Moor already made a previous version on the same page and then placed a newer version on top – you can see the border right under the heading. A detail is also that De Moor had no idea yet what number the album would be in the Collection Vedette. And significant is that the artwork was immediately in French (many people still think erroneously that De Moor first wrote his scripts etc. in Dutch).
In 1975 Bob De Moor would see the “Bonne mine à la mer” album released via Le Lombard. It would be the only full album released so quickly after being published in the Tintin journal (n°6-14 1974). It was the follow-up album to the 1972 story “Barelli et le Bouddha boudant” and through 32 pages Barelli discovers the world of the radio pirates which often broadcasted from boats in the late seventies.
The alternative cover is based on page 17 of the album, more precisely case 7 and 8 as you can see below.
It shows Barelli’s yellow Alpine Renault almost falling off a cliff. The composition of this alternative cover looks quite dynamic with falling rocks etc. but perhaps it didn’t really represent enough the red line of the album, namely radio pirates. So in the end De Moor would go for the rubber boat heading towards a radio pirate boat.
The album was most recently re-issued by BD Must editions and is an absolute must for Tintin fans as you will recognise many scenes which will immediately show you what drawings Bob De Moor worked on for the Tintin albums around that time.
