The principal character in one of them will be familiar to most readers, I imagine. Tintin is seen in an illustration by Hergé (Georges Remi) for Le Sceptre d’Ottokar that sold in Paris for €306,600 (£279,005) including buyer’s premium and other charges.
Originally serialised in the years 1938-39 in Le Petit Vingtième, the children’s supplement to the Belgian newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle, this was a story with a political message.
Hergé saw it as a satire on the expansionist policies of Nazi Germany, and in particular the recent annexation of Austria.
As King Ottokar’s Sceptre this tale also became the first Tintin adventure to be published in Britain, but that was not until 1951, when it was serialised in the Eagle comic.
‘La Pirogue’, an example of the work of André Franquin, sold at €337,600 (£307,215).
Maybe less familiar to UK readers will be the work of André Franquin, a Belgian comic artist whose work is seen here in one of his many creations for the magazine Spirou. Reproduced is the signed and dated cover artwork for a story – named after the type of canoe in the picture, ‘La Pirogue’ – published in Receuil Spirou No 49 in 1954.
It sold a little below estimate at €337,600 (£307,215) including all charges.
