The original drawings of the last two pages of a 1930s Tintin comic book “King Ottokar’s Sceptre” sold for a total of €1.046 million ($1.2 million) at auction in Paris on Saturday. “This is only the second time a Tintin plate has exceeded a million euros,” Eric Leroy, comic book expert at French auction house Artcurial, explained. The two pages include the punch line—an extremely rare wink from Tintin to his readers – of the album “King Ottokar’s Sceptre,” made by the late Belgian artist Georges Rémi, better known as Hergé, in the late 1930s.
The book is cherished by fans, as it told in 1939 the story of a small, fictitious Central European country threatened by an invasion from an aggressive neighboring country. The adventure of the Belgian reporter referred to the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Nazi Germany that happened at the same time.
The price isn’t a record for a Tintin original – that remains held by a double-page that sold for €2.66 million ($3 million) in 2014.