HERGÉ - Flight 714 to Sydney, SUNFLOWER and the plaster gag.

Georges RÉMI known as HERGÉ (1907.1983)

Letter signed to a Parisian reader.

One page in-4° on Studios Hergé letterhead.

Brussels. December 4, 1970.

Great letter from Tintin's father retrospectively analyzing, with a reader, certain elements and characters from Flight 714 to Sydney.

Evoking the bad Allan and Rastapopoulos as well as the temporary anger of Professor Tournesol, Hergé also returns to one of the most famous gags of all Tintin's adventures: the plaster gag.

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“Dear Sir, I read with pleasure your letter of November 28. It contained a number of questions, which I will answer as best I can.

1) Flight 714 to Sydney , does not seem to me to have been what you call a “questioning of (myself)” ; it was rather, I would say, a return to “dad’s good old adventure”.

2) The plaster gag, in this same album, was there both as a “humorous note” and – you are right – as a reminder of the same gag in L'Affaire Tournesol.

3) An “aggressive” Sunflower… Not systematically, in any case. Anger leads him to anger, and if this anger then causes victims around him, let us be sure that this gentle and peaceful nature later reproaches himself for the movement to which he gave in!

4) Rastapopoulos, Allan… yes, I have the feeling more and more that the “bad” people are mostly poor people.

5) That I thought of Jacques Bergier for Ezdanitoff is no secret.

6) Casterman's process is offset.

With the hope of having been as complete as it is brief, I ask you, dear Sir, to believe in my cordially devoted feelings. Hergé. »

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Flight 714 to Sydney is the twenty-second Adventures of Tintin album. Initially published from September 27, 1966 to November 28, 1967 in the Journal de Tintin, the adventure appeared as an album, by Casterman, in 1968.