The other night I was paging through a book on how the creator of Tintin, George Remi alias Herge, worked. I came across something that really surprised me.

I got my first Tintin book in 1966 and have been a fan ever since. I have read and re-read all the Tintin books through the years, and most are on my shelf. Herge is probably the artist who influence my own paltry efforts the most.

I don’t have Tintin in America, although I did read it a few years ago. So imagine my utter surprise when I came across the cover picture. Here it is, on a Dutch version of the book-

Now here is the final panel of Igi nor Amos nr 14. I supposedly drew that panel from my own imagination, but now I’m not so sure. It’s uncanny if you compare the various items in the two pictures – the figure at the stake, the chief, the teepees. Even the colours are similar.

It seems my brain filed the Tintin image away, and when I tried to imagine the Igi nor Amos scene, my subconscious dredged up the Tintin image from my visual memory archives.

And I suppose it’s now only fair to include the whole cartoon.