Talk:Destination Moon (comics)

Picture / Cover Art (is Bad)
The colour of the cover art is distorted. The sky isn't green but blue in the book. This is possibly due to a scan of an old book. It needs to be changed.
 * Done. Prhartcom (talk) 20:13, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Calendar considerations
"Some of the details are very accurate, however: The June 3 1:34 a.m. launch takes place while the Moon's phase (new moon) is the same as it was in 1952 when the comic strip depicting the launch was written."

This is not in the least true. June 3, 1952 was a waxing gibbous moon. In the book, the moon's phase during the launch is never mentioned. There is also no indication of whether the story is meant to take place in 1952. (June 3 is a Tuesday in the book, which it was in 1952, but 12 May is a Wednesday, which is impossible if June 3 is a Tuesday, suggesting that Herge was not concerned about following the real calendar.) 2.25.142.8 (talk) 13:03, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Minor problems

 * Tintin magazine wasn't "newsly established" in 1950, it was four years old (started in 1946) and had already published two complete Tintin stories before this one started. This will also need to be changed in the upcoming DYK hoook.


 * The story wasn't serialised from 30 March 1950 until 7 September 1950: the starting date is correct, but the September date is when Hergé interrupted the publication because of (IIRC) a nervous breakdown. Publication continued somewhere in 1952, and then contiued uninterrupted until the end of the second part at the end of 1952. This is also the reason why the story only appeared in album in 1953, more than two years after the final prepublication date according to this article, but less than a year after the actual final prepublication date. See e.g. this book. The 5 months given in the article here are not enough to publish 62 pages (with a publication rhythm of either 1 or 2 pages per week, as usual).
 * "The secret of the Swordfish" (1950-1953); these are the dates the albums were published: much more important for Hergé and the Journal de Tintin is (1946-1949), the years the stories were published in the Journal. In general, the use of years of album publication in the "background" section is very confusing. "Hergé first devised the idea of sending Tintin on a mission to the Moon while he was working on Prisoners of the Sun (1949)" does not mean that he first got the idea in 1949, but in 1947 or thereabouts; otherwise the sentence a bit further "In autumn 1947, Heuvelmans and Jacques Van Melkebeke developed a script for the story, which they gave to Hergé. " makes no sense.


 * "He and his then used the model from which to accurately sketch when producing the comic." He and his what?
 * "using him as the basis for a scientist that appears" should be "a scientist who appears". That sentence (rest of it) also again indicates the trouble with years in this section: Hergé included a cameo of Jacobs in 1950 as a nod to a cameo of Hergé in Jacobs' work in 1954? This is obviously impossible.
 * The start of serialization on 30 March was both in French (Tintin) and Dutch (Kuifje), all major series appeared simultaneously in both languages from the very start of the magazine.
 * "directed by Ray Goossens and written by..." any reason that Ray Goossens isn't linked here (yes, it's the same person; I know, I wrote that article :-)). Fram (talk) 12:32, 29 September 2015 (UTC)