“Tintin and Alph-Art” is the absolutely last Tintin
adventure, and was unfinished when Hergé passed away in 1983. It's essentially
a collection of rough sketches and drafts (some of them peculiar). It ends with
a cliffhanger, as Tintin is led away at gun-point by the bad guys.
The story is vintage Hergé, and was probably intended as a “legacy” of sorts, since the author knew that he was dying. A virtual who's who of characters from other Tintin albums show up in this detective story set in the world of modern art, and it's strongly implied that the main villain may be Rastapopoulos. If so, I wonder how Hergé was going to explain his return, since Tintin's old nemesis was abducted by aliens in “Flight 714”!
Rastapopoulos (if it really is him) uses the alias Endaddine Akass and claims to be a guru with supernatural powers of “magnetism”. Apparently, Akass is loosely based on Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. In the drafts, Hergé claims that Captain Haddock has become a hippie with a taste for modern art (!!), but in the more developed sketches he is his old self again. Scared me there for a while…
Apparently, several “completed” pirate editions of “Tintin and Alph-Art” exists, but these are strictly underground and not sold by, say, Amazon.
It's difficult to rate an unfinished story, but since I sense something magnetic and, you know, artistic in it, I will give its Alpha-Idea four stars. Dig it?
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