Page from Tintin may cost the moon (Rs 6.6 crore) in Paris auction

Comic page from Explorers on the Moon is considered Herge’s best piece of work.

A page of original comic strip drawings from one of the best Tintin adventures, “Explorers on the Moon”, is expected to sell for up to $1 million when it goes under the hammer later this month.

The page, entitled “We walk on the moon”, has the boy reporter, his dog Snowy and blundering sidekick Captain Haddock making their first moon walk from their red and white rocket.

With the 1954 book regarded as one of the artist Herge’s very best, the Paris auction house Artcurial said it could make up to 900,000 euros.

The late Belgium artist already holds the world record price for a comic strip.

A double-page ink drawing that served as the inside cover of all the Tintin adventures published between 1937 and 1958, sold for $3.7 million to an American fan two years ago.

“‘Explorers on the Moon’ has become mythic for many lovers and collectors of comic strips,” said Eric Leroy, Artcurial’s comics expert.

“It is one of the most important from Herge’s post-war period, on the same level as ‘Tintin in Tibet’ and ‘The Castafiore Emerald’,” he added.

“It is a key moment in the history of comic book art.”

The story completes the lunar adventure started in “Destination Moon” (1953) and features several hilarious episodes including Haddock getting drunk on whisky and floating off into space to briefly become a satellite of the asteroid Adonis.

It turns on Tintin foiling a plot by a mysterious foreign power to hijack the rocket by the evil stowaway spy Colonel Jorgen.

‘Tintinmania’ Leroy said Herge strips from this period “very rarely come to market”.

The moon drawings are being sold alongside 20 ink sketches he created for a series of New Year’s greeting cards known as his “snow cards”.

The cards are expected to go from between 60,000 and 120,000 euros each, Artcurial estimate.

But all eyes will be watching to see if the price rockets on the moon strip when it goes under the gavel on November 19, as has happened at other recent Tintin auctions.

Prices for cartoon art have multiplied tenfold in the last decade, according to gallery owner Daniel Maghen, who also works with comic art.

Herge’s British biographer Harry Thompson has called “Explorers on the Moon” a “technical masterpiece” widely regarded as Herge’s “greatest artistic achievement”.

Drawn more than a decade before the first moon landings, Thompson said it was “uncannily accurate” in its depiction of the moon’s surface.

It has also been praised for its “meticulous attention to scientific facts”.

Its cover with Tintin, Snowy and Captain Haddock in their space suits and their ship in the background has become iconic, with reproductions of the chequered red and white rocket among the bestselling selling Tintin figurines.

The sale comes at a time when ‘Tintinmania’ has gripped the French capital.