TINTIN COVERS 3 – Weird Science

 

This is the third of a series of four posts about the fannish Tintin phenomena and the predilection of artistic fans to put their own spin on the famous Hergé series.

In the last Tintin post, The Lovecraft Connection, I showed a few fan-made Lovecraft-Tintin mashups, which placed Tintin in contact with Cthulhu mythos creatures and situations.  In this post I want to show a few clever science fiction covers produced by fans.

We know that Hergé had an interest in science fiction with the publication of The Shooting Star and the two-part lunar story, Destination Moon & Explorers on the Moon.

See if you can guess what famous books and movies these covers are referring to:  some are obvious, and a couple are more esoteric, but all are made with respect to Tintin and the works of Hergé.

The Magneto Affair not an overtly Tintin mashup cover, but the style is unmistakable.

TINTIN COVERS 1 – The Reality

TINTIN COVERS 2 – The Lovecraft Connection

TINTIN COVERS 3 – Weird Science

TINTIN COVERS 4 - Politics, Parody, Pastiches, and Irony

TINTIN COVERS 5 -  Great Snakes! - More Tintin Covers

 

UPDATE 2014:  A few more weird science covers

 

                                                                                          CoastConFan

TINTIN COVERS 2 – The Lovecraft Connection

Previously, I posted Tintin Covers 1 – The Realty, about the sale of original Hergé artwork in Paris.  Now I want to show you some fan-made covers that are strictly non-canon.  I have been a fan of H. P. Lovecraft since I was young, although not as long as having been a TinTin fan.  But my enjoyment of both goes way back, nonetheless.

Fans have produced their own covers for nonexistent books, supposing a Lovecraft – Hergé connection that never was.  Fan art is a mainstay of fandom and no less than in Tintin and Lovecraft fandom, so mashups were inevitable.

  

 

These covers don’t undermine either genre, but rather show support for existing works.  Enjoy these covers in the playful spirit they were created.  It’s a pity that the complete books never really existed, but it’s nice to think they might in a parallel universe. 

We no long have H. P. Lovecraft or Hergé producing stories, but their corpus of works have been influential for a good portion of the 20^th century and into the 21^st.  I hope that in presenting these fan-made covers that people will be influenced to read the original works of both H. P. Lovecraft and Georges Remi a.k.a. Hergé.

 

One of the most prolific of the fan Tintin/Lovecraft mashup artists is Muzski, who is actually Murray Groat.  You can see more of his works at DeviantArt.

 

 

This post is a follow up to the one I made previously about the same subject, Lovecraft Tintin Books – Two Great Tastes That Taste Great Together, February 25, 2011, and I felt there was so much good material out there, that I had to expand on the idea.

 

TINTIN COVERS 1 – The Reality

TINTIN COVERS 2 – The Lovecraft Connection

TINTIN COVERS 3 – Weird Science  

TINTIN COVERS 4 – Politics, Parody, Pastiches, and Irony 

TINTIN COVERS 5 --  GREAT SNAKES!  MORE TINTIN COVERS  

I had to post this Peanuts/Lovecraft cover, although it is dangerously close to Cutethulu.  I always thought there was something eldritch about the Great Pumpkin. 

UPDATE 2014:  a few more Tintin Cthonian covers below for you to ponder:

TINTIN COVERS 1 – The Reality

I previously posted a few ersatz TinTin covers here on the blog that had Lovecraftian and themes.  Nearly as interesting as fan art is the fact that an early original cover recently at auction at $1.6 million at a Paris auction.  Now fans are typically broke, but the anonymous and anomalous buyer of this work clearly was not the typical Tintin fan.

 

This is the cover to Tintin in America (Tintin en Amerique) for the original 1932 non-English edition and was painted by Hergé himself.   

Subsequent and English editions had a variety of different cover art.  Over the span of years Hergé refreshed his books to keep the style and context up to date, so collecting Tintin books don’t just stop with having one of each book since there are a number of variations for each title in each language.

Other rare Hergé originals were on sale like this Red Rackham’s Treasure battle scene, above.

And this wide-angle work from Flight 714, above.

Three variant covers on the English language version
of Tintin in America

This is the first of a four part series about Tintin covers and how fans’ love of Hergé's creation spawned (and I do mean spawned) a plethora of faux covers from pastiches to mashups, but most generally done with love and admiration. 

                                                                                           CoastConFan

TINTIN COVERS 1 – The Reality   The first a four part series, posted here.

TINTIN COVERS 2 – The Lovecraft Connection 

TINTIN COVERS 3 – Weird Science

TINTIN COVERS 4 – Politics, Parody, Pastiches, and Irony

Update  GREAT SNAKES!  MORE TINTIN COVERS 

Pith Helmets, Sun Helmets, and Sola Topees – No Explorer Should Be Without One

Sun helmets are typically associated with explorers and high adventure, the military, colonial expansion and Victorian wars.  No early to middle 20^th century B movie about “The Dark Continent” or India was complete without kaki clad explorers or adventurers with pistol belt and sun helmet (jodhpurs and elephant gun optional).

The pith helmet holds a special place in the imagination; just put one on and you are transported to a world of high adventure in obscure and dangerous places.  The strong association of this piece of vintage headgear is so powerful that it has become a shorthand iconic image of the adventurer, explorer or colonial military soldier.

Sun helmets tentatively appear about the 1840s, originating in India but by the 1870s they have become so popular most major military powers had a sun helmet for issue to troops in tropical or desert climates.  Supporting civilian colonial employees also had sun helmets as well as common clerks, merchants, factors, and hangers-on.  Sun helmets continued to be common issue for the military from the middle Victorian era through WWII for most armies.  Sun helmets didn’t entirely end with WWII however, some countries continued to issue them such as US forces in Vietnam and interestingly enough, the North Vietnamese.

These sun helmets were made to protect the wearer from the heat and had another advantage:  when the helmet was doused with water, evaporation caused a cooling sensation.  Additional customizations were the use of neck curtains, to keep the neck from dangerous sunburn and a puggaree, which is a cloth wrapping that could be used to indentify the owner or military unit and other military insignia.  Grommet holes let out accumulated heat from the side and the top buttons often had side ventilation holes.  Generally, the helmets were covered with a white, off white or khaki colored material as darker colors tended to defeat the purpose of the sun helmet.  Inside they might be lined in the same colors or a dark color and they had a suspended sweat band and generally a chin strap.

The secret of the sun helmet’s success and popularity was its lightness and broad head coverage.  This was achieved by having a core of heat resistant insulation, which might be cork or a type of plant pith.  The common name for sun helmets in India is sola topee, later corrupted to solar topee.   Sola is an Indian swamp plant and sholapith is the Indian name for the easily formed, spongy material in the core of the plant, placed in the helmet as insulation.  It’s sometimes called Indian cork. 

Civilians took to sun helmets as quickly as the military.  The punishing sun of tropical and desert climates required a headgear that cut the sun’s rays and yet remained light.  As times changed, the sun helmet became simpler, later being made of a sheet pressed fiber or plastic, which left out the insulation for the consideration of cheapness of manufacture.  The fancy spikes on military helmets often also had ventilation holes.  Comfort, ease of manufacture and cheapness made sun helmets the best way to keep out heat stroke and sunburn. 

BlondeSwanHatBotique

You still occasionally see sun helmets in use other than for ceremonial guards; for example the polo players sun helmet, sun helmets worn by life guards, gardeners, and some outdoor workers.  The resurgence in historical reenacting and costuming has seen a boom in making original and historical sun helmets, so costuming is far easier than is was decades ago when you had to use fragile, original and expensive sun helmets as part of your costume.  Victorian RPGs and Call of Cthulhu are two types of role playing games where pith helmets are de rigor headgear, and of course Steampunk.

A hunter from the darkest wild

Sun helmets are de rigor for tropical or desert bound characters, heroes, and villains from popular matinee movie shorts like Jungle Jim, Rama of the Jungle and Republic serials. The sun helmet in graphic novels, movies and literature is still used commonly.  Consider the science fiction artist Mobius’ Major Gurbert with his French colonial sun helmet with the spike that is a radio antenna.  Consider also the mustachioed Victorian character Hunter Van Pelt from the film Jumanji waiving his steampunk gun around, and my favorite sola topee’d bad guy, Renee Belloq from Raiders of the Lost Ark, sporting his “Bombay bowler” – “Doctor Jones; again we see there is nothing you can possess which I cannot take away”.

UPDATE 2 May 2017: I have a new hat/helmet post -- Mr. Pratt’s Gun Hat or How to Be Fashionable But Deadly in the Trenches   http://coastconfan.blogspot.com/2017/05/mr-pratts-gun-hat-or-how-to-be.html

So hat up, adventurers and investigators, the sun’s up and the chase is on!

                                                                CoastConFan

Here are some additional links that you might enjoy:

A blog about hats and headgear: 

http://thefedorachronicles.com/vintagethreads/pith/index.html

US military sun helmets  http://www.nyc-techwriters.com/militaria/american_helmets3.htm

An excellent source of information on sun helmets and helmets in general try http://www.nyc-techwriters.com/militaria/helmets.htm

New blog entry added 28 April 2013:  Slouch Hats, Bush Hats, Big Game Hunters, and Explorers 

The Thoroughly Modern Lovecraftian Investigator’s Lab Circa 1925

Investigators need a place to gather for meetings and pass information.  Its all the better if they have a fully private place to meet where they can also store both information and equipment.  Less well-funded investigators might have to make do with a single room to dump their stuff and have a folding card table and chairs to same money and space.  But if they have plenty of cash, they can rent an entire floor of a building if not a whole building.  If you are RPGing Call of Cthulhu or the like in the mid 1920s, it might be difficult for modern players to imagine a real laboratory and office from that era so these period images might help.

I found these first four photos of an actual circa 1926 investigator’s lab in an old publication.  It is the lab of Harry Price, a famous and controversial paranormal investigator of the 20s and 30s.  His use of scientific standards and instruments in his investigations set a new level of professionalism for investigators.  I’m not sure how much Lovecraft knew about Harry Price’s investigations, but Price’s work was followed in the mainstream press and he became a bit of a grandstander, so I presume Lovecraft was at least aware of Price’s and his investigations.

These four photos are helpful but I suggest another room in the headquarters which would be a library reference room, which might also have communication equipment such as telephone, standard radio, ham radio, and if you are rich, a telegraph.  If you have a medical doctor or psychiatrist in your group, an examining room would be useful, with attendant lab for specimens.

A storage room is useful too.  That’s where you can put expedition gear and other equipment such as weapons, flashlights & etc.   If you are getting a basement or ground floor headquarters, a drive-in garage works great for loading and unloading, especially when you don’t want the neighbors seeing what you are hauling in or out.

The investigators headquarters/lab is limited by budget constraints and the game master needs to set realistic limits for the players for both a lair and equipment.  The above photos are for a full-blown investigators' lab that is fully funded and should be consider the absolute acme of a mid-20s lab and headquarters.

This period of role playing is challenging because you have to think and plan out your moves much more carefully due to slower communication, fairly good but slower transportation (aircraft are rare, especially commercial), and the basic information system was a book in a library.  You just can’t Google an item on your computer, call for help on your cell phone, use your GPS or night vision goggles or easily fly out to a remote location to check on a site.  You’ll simply have to use your head more.  The 1920s, in fact, was a technologically, communicatively, and transportation-wise much more advanced than just 30 years before, but it can be a little difficult for players and game masters who haven’t done their period research.  It’s a rich time of change and upheaval that I find fascinating which can be challenging and rewarding.  Happy gaming.                                CoastConFan