Before finding himself tied to a torture pole on the first plate of Tintin in America from 1942, the tuft reporter successively staged two different cover drawings for this same adventure.

The first cover was in October 1932, the year of publication of the album Tintin in America. Hergé had chosen the moment when his young hero, sitting on a large stone, feeds on the contents of a pan, while Indians watch him in the background. First published under the label «Les éditions du Petit Vingtième», Tintin in America was taken over by Casterman, still under the same cover, from 1934. The original of this drawing is a Chinese ink painted with gouache. It belonged for several years to Jean-Louis Carette, then manager of the Brussels bookstore La Bande des six nez, which he co-founded in 1980, and president of the Belgian Chamber of Comic Strip Experts. He kept this treasure in a safe at the bank. Asked about the value of this coin by a team from Capital (M6 TV Show) issue in 1997, he recalled that «when we talk about 1 million French francs, it is a common quote for an original of this quality». 1 million francs, the equivalent of around 220,000 euros, taking inflation into account. In 2008, the design changed hands : it was acquired by another individual for 764,000 euros. The latter sold it quite quickly : the work reached more than 1.3 million euros at Artcurial in 2012. Owned by an art collector, it has not yet reappeared on the market.

At the end of 1936, Charles Lesne, Hergé’s correspondent at Casterman, asked the cartoonist to design four color hors-texte for a reprint of Tintin in America (always in black and white). And while we are at it, it would be good to imagine a new cover, for, he wrote to her, "these Redskins are already seen." Hergé executed himself and, in June 1937, he gave Casterman an unpublished drawing: Tintin, accompanied by his faithful Milou, handling a lasso on the back of a galloping horse. The new edition of Tintin in America appeared in November of the same year. There is no trace of the original of this drawing. It is not in the archives of Hergé Studios, and the eventual possessor of this Chinese ink has never come forward. If it hasn’t been destroyed, maybe it will come back on the market one day, through an estate…