The original artwork for the last two pages of the Tintin comic book King Ottokar’s Sceptre sold for a total of 1.046 million euros (US$1.2 million) at auction on Saturday in Paris.
“This is only the second time a Tintin plate has exceeded 1 million euros,” said Eric Leroy, comic book expert at French auction house Artcurial.
WATERCOLOR
A double page plate also from King Ottokar’s Sceptre sold for more than 1.5 million euros at Sotheby’s in Paris in October last year.
Artcurial had estimated Saturday’s lot would fetch between 600,000 and 800,000 euros, before fees.
“Over 1 million euros, this is an excellent result,” Leroy said. “Herge’s universe still conquers,” Leroy added, referring to the cartoonist behind the famous comic.
The work in blue watercolor, gouache and ink was bought on the telephone “by a European collector, a long-time fan,” Leroy said.
COMMENTARY
Published in 1939, King Ottokar’s Sceptre is the eighth installment of the adventures of the intrepid boy reporter by the Belgian artist Herge.
Intended by Herge as criticism of Nazi Germany, Tintin helps thwart a plot to overthrow the king of a fictional central European country which is threatened by an aggressive neighbor.
Tintin works are becoming increasingly popular with collectors.
An ink drawing for the cover pages of the Tintin books published from 1937 to 1958 was sold for 2.65 million euros by Artcurial in 2014, a world record.
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
‘DISAPPEARED COMPLETELY’: The melting of thousands of glaciers is a major threat to people in the landlocked region that already suffers from a water shortage Near a wooden hut high up in the Kyrgyz mountains, scientist Gulbara Omorova walked to a pile of gray rocks, reminiscing how the same spot was a glacier just a few years ago. At an altitude of 4,000m, the 35-year-old researcher is surrounded by the giant peaks of the towering Tian Shan range that also stretches into China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The area is home to thousands of glaciers that are melting at an alarming rate in Central Asia, already hard-hit by climate change. A glaciologist, Omarova is recording that process — worried about the future. She hiked six hours to get to
The number of people in Japan aged 100 or older has hit a record high of more than 95,000, almost 90 percent of whom are women, government data showed yesterday. The figures further highlight the slow-burning demographic crisis gripping the world’s fourth-biggest economy as its population ages and shrinks. As of Sept. 1, Japan had 95,119 centenarians, up 2,980 year-on-year, with 83,958 of them women and 11,161 men, the Japanese Ministry of Health said in a statement. On Sunday, separate government data showed that the number of over-65s has hit a record high of 36.25 million, accounting for 29.3 percent of