A week ago or so, I stumbled on a small website for local sales and much to my surprise I saw someone offering a selfmade scrapbook of  Bob De Moor‘s “Barelli à Nusa-Penida” (volume & & 2) newspaper clippings in black and white (without the heading unfortunately). The price was so low (8 euro to be exact) I couldn’t believe what I saw. I quickly decided to get hold of it and after a 2 weeks wait the packet arrived this morning.

Sadly enough the seller couldn’t provide more info on when or in what title it had been published (although it’s probably from Le Soir), plus there is no trace this Barelli story was ever announced with a separate drawing. The only thing that is sure is that it is from a french written newspaper and that each issue of the newspaper had 1 page of the Barelli double story (if anyone out there knows more, please let us know). Each story counts 30 pages, which corresponds with the Bédéscope / BD Must version, and not the extended version which Bob De Moor made in the eighties (1982-1983) for Le Lombard to fit the 44 page format Le Lombard requested. Due to the ’80s extension the original end of part 1 of the “Nusa Penida” story was replaced by ending the first volume on page 14 of the 2nd volume. It also doesn’t correspond with the slightly longer Tintin Journal or Rombaldi version (both counting 62 pages).

The “Nusa Penida” story has undergone quite a lot of re-cuttings from the original as Bernard De Gioanni already showed in his defunct Bob De Moor blog. The page as shown on the left was omitted from the versions as we know them. Note that only the last strip was witheld for publication, hence why the drawing is cut off. However, that page does appear in the pre-publication in the Tintin journal and in the Rombaldi album of Barelli (“Collection des meilleures histoires de Tintin” 1983) which you can actually still buy on Amazon. Be fast though, I guess that after reading this article several will want to get hold of it. You can find back a trace of this ‘découpage’ in this newly found version (and in the BD Must and Bédéscope version), namely on the 7th page of volume 2. There you can see that it’s numbered with a 39, whereas it should be 37 if it had followed the re-cut numbering.

To make it even more complicated, this black and white version shows at least one difference with the BD Must version too, and that is the case legend which is on page 1 of volume 2 of “Nusa Penida”. The version in the black and white version is longer and explains how both have been on the ocean for weeks – and not days like in the version from BD Must and Bédéscope.

So in total that results in:

1. The Tintin Journal: 62 pages with 3 special frontcover artworks for announcing the story
2. The Bédéscope version: 60 pages with different covers to the ones used in Tintin (you’ll notice for instance that the one with the sailing boat for Tintin was slightly re-designed from the original with inspector Moreau now watching towards the reader and not towards the boat, plus Barelli’s haircut was ‘upgraded’)
3. The Le Lombard version: 88 pages with new pages, other cover artwork for both volumes and original pages that are not included.
4. The Rombaldi version: 62 pages with 1 cover, namely the Le Lombard one with Barelli doing a Tarzan (yes, it does get complicated)
5. The BD Must version: 60 pages with 2 ex-Libris included and same covers as the Bédéscope ones
6. This black and white version: 60 pages with a different text case on page 1 of the second volume compared to the BD Must version.

You can expect more on this later on.