Wow, suddenly I’ve gotten (almost) all of the Tintin books! I had read them when I was a youngster, often borrowing them from the Mississauga Public Library (Lorne Park branch or the central library) – or even in German from the Friedrich Schiller Schule – and then in the 1990s when I was living in Taiwan I started to buy them for myself. My son loves the books, so nowadays Santa Claus has made sure he has all of them. And so here we go with the Tintin review post:
Tintin in the Land of the Soviets – The first Tintin story as it was published by Hergé (Georges Remi – his pen name comes from his initials, G.R. – inverted to be R.G., whereby the letters are pronounced as “air” “gay” in French – Her-gé) from when he was 21 years old. While his Tintin books have been described as having “vivid humanism, a realistic feel produced by meticulous and wide ranging research”, none of this was yet evident in 1930 when he wrote “Tintin in the Land of the Soviets”, the only Tintin book to be reprinted in its original black and white artwork (the first ten books had also come out in black and white, but books two to nine were redrawn and coloured by Hergé from 1943-1955, with some newly rewritten/edited pages being added as late as 1975… “The Shooting Star” was even redrawn twice; “Meticulous and wide-ranging research” would only really come into the picture in 1934, when he worked on “The Blue Lotus” after long discussions with a Chinese friend).
In “Tintin in the Land of the Soviets” we get our first look at our hero, who is misshaped and friendless, traveling through a hostile Germany into the Soviet Union. On the way his train gets blown up (of course he survives this brutal assassination attempt, as well as a similar incident happens at the end of the book as well), and his car is smashed at a train crossing (he hitches a ride on the train). He is followed by assassins, corrupt officials, mean Soviets, disguised agents, spies and saboteurs, out-foxing them at every turn and usually giving them a good thrashing (or just scaring them out of their wits by covering himself with a sheet – this is very much a silly children’s book). He’s inventive as well – falling off a train doesn’t keep him in one place for long when he builds a cart to help him jet along the tracks (he’s not always MacGuyver – another time he takes a car apart but puts it back together with several parts left over). He exposes fake Soviets who busy themselves with activities like trying to impress foreigners with their Potemkin economy or simply running bogus elections. From a Tintinologist’s point of view, the book is remarkable for one thing – while Tintin is supposedly a reporter, Tintin in the Land of the Soviets carries the only episode in the entire Tintin library where we ever see him actually writing anything (see p. 38), although he refers to his art in Tintin in the Congo as well. There are corny jokes aplenty, bizarre underwater escapes, episodes of torturing Chinese torturers, and one strange episode where Tintin is impressed into the army; don’t know how he could have been confused with a young Russian, but he quickly uses the episode as an opportunity to sabotage a raid on a cossack farm.
There’s plenty of sadism in the book: Tintin is executed (the guns had blanks), frozen stiff (twice), rolled down a hill in a snowball (reminiscent of what happened to Haddock in Prisoners of the Sun), he fights a bear and a tiger, exposes a corrupt soviet hideaway, survives a plane crash and carves a new propellor from a mighty log using a pen knife. It’s a nutty, episodic adventure that has no character development or charm, it’s based on completely fantastical situations and there’s no plot at all. An interesting little story that shows how far Hergé brought Tintin over a full 45 years of publishing.
Tintin in the Congo – Tintin sets sail for Africa, in this case the Belgian Congo. In the first panel we see Thomson and Thompson, although this is not really the first official appearance of the “twins” – the original 1930 version did not have them, what we’re seeing is the redrawn version, which was made in 1946; the “twins” officially appeared the next year in the original Tintin in America of 1931. The book, like Tintin in the Land of the Soviets and Tintin in America, is plotless and episodic, and allows Tintin to converse fully with Snowy (in later adventures, Snowy “speaks” intelligently, but nobody else besides the reader can understand him – this has great comic value in the final pages of Flight 714).
In the story, Snowy starts things off by discovering a nasty stowaway on the boat to the Congo who nearly kills him, but Tintin rescues him from the sea (Tintin and Snowy are always rescuing each other). Tintin spend a lot of time in various misadventures, setting about to bring down a corrupt witch doctor, while he also devotes some time to saving himself and Snowy from alligators, sharks, electric eels, snakes, mosquitos, lions, monkeys, elephants, rhinoceros, leopards, water buffalo and antelope. There’s also plenty of vicious game hunting, with Tintin blasting to bits a herd of antelope, and slaying a chimpanzee for his skin. He survives another train wreck (see also Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, Tintin in America, Prisoners of the Sun, etc), he spends some time teaching kids that 2+2=4, before busting up representatives of Al Capone’s gang… which leads him to his next adventure, “Tintin in America”.
Tintin in America – Tintin sets off for lawless gangland America where he sets about bringing Al Capone and his gangs to justice. The whole story is one episode after another where the gangsters attempt to rub him out, only to fail; sometimes Tintin tries to get the upper hand by cornering the bad guys, only to suffer a setback. Of course, in the end all the bad guys are in jail. Tintin is knocked out, chloroformed, smashed in a car wreck, betrayed, gassed and beaten up by the cops, The story improves the physical action of some of the earlier Tintin tales, and there is a bit more realism than in the first two books (but not much). Tintin careens from the streets of Chicago to the wild west on the trail of gangster Bobby Smiles, who he finds in “Redskin City, a small place near the Indian Reservations.” Bobby Smiles turns the natives against him, and once again it’s Tintin versus an army of enemies – of course he prevails, mainly through luck (oil is discovered on the reservation, and in rolls the army, the carpet-baggers and profiteers, and in the blink of an eye there is civilisation in the middle of the wilderness). There are several other train wrecks, Tintin survives a lynching, a drowning, Snowy is dognapped (enter one inept hotel detective), but in the end nothing can stop our hero from ridding America of organised crime forever. Hooray for Tintin!
Cigars of the Pharaoh – The fourth Tintin book, it is the first “real” Tintin book with a fully-developed plot and strong secondary characters beyond Tintin and Snowy; it is also the first of four of Hergé’s “two-parter” stories as the story doesn’t really conclude at the end of this book (although it is more self-contained than any of the other two-parter books). Of course, it was also re-drawn in 1955, much later than most of the others (which may have come later in the chronology, but were redrawn earlier). Since it was redrawn in 1955, the lines are strong, the colours are good, and the story holds together beautifully. In the story, he meets his first of many absent-minded professors (are there any other kind?), a gentleman named Sophocles Sarcophagus. He also, on page three, meets Roberto Rastapopoulos, a Dr Evil type of guy who is his nemesis in four of the 24 Tintin stories (five if you count the person who looks a lot like him in a frame on page 57 of “Tintin in America”); their interaction is in some ways friendly, or neutral in this book and the next, “The Blue Lotus.” The book also introduces the detectives Thomson and Thompson, who initially want to arrest Tintin because they’ve bought some cooked-up story about our hero from people who want to frame him. Just a day in the life of Tintin, boy reporter.
Tintin meets egyptologist Sarcophagus on a boat cruise, they discover and investigate an ancient Egyptian tomb, they get involved with drug smugglers, gun runners, they survive being cast adrift at sea, they meet corrupt sailor Alan (a later addition – his first chronological appearance is in “The Crab With The Golden Claws”, where he’s Captain Haddock’s first mate). We also meet Senhor Oliviera da Figueira, a salesman from Lisbon who can sell anything to anybody. There’s Rastapopuolos’ film shoot in the desert (which pops up later in a scene in “The Blue Lotus”), Tintin is impressed into an arab army again, he’s lost in the desert, and sentenced to be executed. He escapes in a plane, he’s shot down over India, and he makes friends with a sick elephant. In one of the series’ truly strange moments, he is seen fashioning a trumpet so that he can learn how to speak the language of the elephants. He meets Sarcophogus again, now mad after being poisoned by Rajaijah juice (many go mad from it in this book and the next). More adventures, including train and ambulance wrecks, tiger traps, and plenty of other sub-continental madness. Tintin exposes the international criminal gang, but the mastermind gets away – until the next adventure, anyway.
The Blue Lotus – This book, which was created in 1934 and redrawn in 1946, is visually not quite as together as “Cigars of the Pharaoh”, which had originally been written a year before but redrawn in 1955. It picks up from the end of “Cigars of the Pharaoh,” and Tintin is seen making his way from India to China after getting a message from a mysterious stranger, who only manages to tell him that he is needed in Shanghai before he succumbs to Rajaijah juice, the poison of madness. In Shanghai he meets corrupt Westerners and evil Japanese, Snowy is poisoned, and Tintin is kidnapped by patriarch Wang Chen-yee who enlists him to help fight corruption and foreign invasion. Using the house of a Chinese gentleman and scholar as a base, Tintin seeks to bring terrorists, opium smugglers and anti-government agents to justice. He gives the bad guys a good thrashing, while also witnessing the disgraceful Mukden Incident of 1931, a major military and diplomatic incident between China and Japan that set off Japanese imperial expansion into the rest of Asia. Tintin evades authorities in the international settlement trying to bring guilty parties to justice. He is captured, nearly executed, he saves the life of and befriends a young Chinese called Chang Chong-chen, a character based on Herge’s real-life friend Zhang Chongren (Chang later reappeared in Tintin in Tibet and is mentioned in The Castafiore Emerald). There is a great scene where the two men exchange notes on their various cultures’ mutual prejudices and the generalisations of each’s respective culture towards each other. Of course Thomson and Thompson show up in disguise, where they fool no-one. By the end of the book, they finally make their peace with Tintin, Rastapopoulos is brought to justice, and all ends well.
The Broken Ear – In some ways one of the lightest of the Tintin books, our hero discovers that a South American idol has been stolen from a local museum and he sets about finding out who did it, which ultimately leads him to chase down two unimportant Argentinean hoods. But the story is exciting and well-told, with Tintin encountering mystery, betrayal and dozens of dangerous, life-threatening situations such as various assassination attempts (an encounter with a knife-thrower, a failed hit and run, yet another near-execution – where Tintin, in a very unusual scenario, gets completely drunk). There are funny episodes – the criminals are flabbergasted that they see Tintin wherever they go, and once in South America the tides of power sway back and forth with comic regularity. We hear of the victory of revolutionary general Alcazar (who reappears in “The Seven Crystal Balls”, “The Red Sea Sharks” and “Tintin and the Picaros” – in each of these books he’s a much more fleshed-out character, whereas here he’s a buffoon), and pick up a new political wind; Tintin is swept up with it, and briefly becomes an unwitting part of various plots. In this story, Tintin is saved from danger by a piece of unlikely good luck – he’s about to be shot by an enemy when storm clouds overhead send ball lightning into the cabin they are in and dispatches his enemies; I guess Hergé had run out of ideas here. Pablo, who has a role in Tintin and the Picaros, makes his first appearance here, also as a black-hearted traitor. War erupts between Nuevo-Rico and San Theodoros (fictional countries, of course), Tintin heads deep into the Amazon where he meets white explorer Ridgewell, who has gone off to live with the Arumbaya tribe (both reappear in Tintin and the Picaros, of course), they survive tribe politics and inter-tribe warfare, fight the outlaws, and eventually solve the mystery of the broken ear.
This story is especially interesting, not only for the intricate plot development – many of which are exceptionally clever – but for the long list or recurring characters that make their first appearances here (while Trickler, a corrupt oil representative, resembles Dawson from the earlier The Blue Lotus as well as a later episode, The Red Sea Sharks).
The Black Island – I’ve long considered this my favourite Tintin book, although I must admit that I’m not entirely sure the reason for this. The original appeared in 1937, but it was redrawn in both 1943 and 1966, which might explain the very excellent detail; this was the only book Herge redrew more than once, and if you consider the most recent version it was actually his third-last publication (followed only by Flight 714 in 1968 and Tintin and the Picaros in 1976). Notably, it was also the first appearance of Dr JW Müller, who later has a major role in Land of Black Gold, and a very small role as the local military buffoon “Mull Pasha” in The Red Sea Sharks. Although the high quality of the artwork makes it look like a recent Tintin adventure, the absence of Captain Haddock and Cuthbert Calculus, as well as the unfriendliness of Thomson and Thompson towards Tintin, colour it as an earlier episode that would have appeared around the time of Cigars of the Pharaoh when Thomson and Thompson were not sure whether Tintin was friend or foe; nonetheless, the “Tintin on his own” gives the feel of a clean, unhindered story (i.e. no unnecessary comic relief from Captain Haddock hitting himself on the head, etc.).
In “The Black Island”, Tintin steps into action on page one when he is shot by the crew of a downed aircraft who turn out to be smugglers; by page three he has already been framed and is the quarry of detectives Thomson and Thompson. He chases his attackers, and comes across Dr JW Muller, who considers him a threat and is ready to have him killed. There are great action sequences as Tintin and Müller fight, a fire breaks out, the inept local fire brigade can’t find the key to open the garage door, and then Müller is implicated trying to prevent the fire being put out at his own house (because he wants Tintin to burn inside). Great action sequences follow, including a crazy train chase (another one), an escapade with a tanker of Loch Lomond whisky (hello, Snowy, you lush), a foggy flight to Scotland, and a proper exploration of The Black Island where Tintin meets… Ranko!
King Ottokar’s Sceptre – This is pretty much Tintin’s last “solo” adventure – in the next book The Crab With The Golden Claws he meets Captain Archibald Haddock, and the pair are inseparable forever after. This book also has some unusual aspects – it is here that the cold war re-enters the picture, albeit several years before it officially begins; while Tintin in the Land of the Soviets dealt with the Communist menace, ensuing books dealt with more far-flung matters (India, China, the Congo, America, South America), with a hint of Nazi menace in The Black Island (the title was banned by the Nazis during their 1940-1945 occupation of Belgium); King Ottokar’s Sceptre deals with the possibility of war in the Balkans, and is Herge’s first book to be published under the occupation (he published six titles during these years, each of them trying to be as apolitical as possible: King Ottokar’s Sceptre, The Crab With The Golden Claws, The Shooting Star, The Secret of the Unicorn, Red Rackham’s Treasure and The Seven Crystal Balls).
The story starts off with Tintin befriending another eccentric professor, Hector Alembick, a world-famous sililographist. Somehow, this leads into an adventure where Tintin becomes the quarry of counter-agents from Syldavia (that is, they’re Syldavian but they want to overthrow the government so that neighbouring Borduria can take them over – the referenced countries may be Romania and Bulgaria, respectively). Thompson and Thomson stage a re-appearance (where they detective-like treat Tintin with suspicion, probably the last time they behave with any sort of professionalism), someone gets amnesia (happens a lot in Tintin from this issue onward), Tintin survives a fall from a plane without a parachute, he deals with loyalists and traitors, and Bianca Castofiore makes her first appearance. Wily Tintin survives various attacks and betrayals, finally getting past the corrupt royal aid-de-camp Colonel Jorgen (who is un-named in this book, but is called Jorgen when he re-appears in Explorers on the Moon). He helps the king, he works on the case of the missing sceptre, he does another border run (viz The Broken Ear), he steals another plane (viz The Black Island, sorta), and the story ends happily ever after.
The Crab With The Golden Claws – A beautiful story – the coincidental discovery of an empty can of crab with a missing strip, a criminal case, great physical comedy, villains, traitors, Thomson and Thompson, the appearance of Allan Thompson (he’s only given a family name in the French versions, it is dropped in the English version in order to avoid confusion with detectives Thompson and Thomson; in the French version the detectives are named Dupont and Dupond, in the German version Schultze and Schulze, etc), and ultimately the epiphone of comic and heroic character Captain Archibald Haddock. Tintin’s first meetings with the drunk Haddock, as well as the misadventures on their escape together, are a long episode of comic genius, not to mention the absurd incidents on the airplane. This is quickly followed by Haddock’s first temper tantrum: when bedouin ambushers shoot out his last bottle of whiskey, he launches into a crazed tirade. “Swine! Jellyfish! Tramps! Troglodytes! Toffee-noses! Savages! Aztecs! Toads! Carpet-sellers! Iconoclasts! Rats! Ectoplasms! Freshwater swabs! Bashi-bazouks! Cannibals! Caterpillars! Cowards! Baboons! Parasites! Pockmarks!” There is also the first mention of “Blistering barnacles” on page 42 (twice!). In keeping with Hergé’s tradition of recycling plot devices, we get our second “my dog has rabies, let me have the cab” trick and yet another great underground bunker story (see also Tintin in the Land of the Soviets and Cigars of the Pharaoh, not to mention several of Tintin’s later adventures).
The Shooting Star – While Tintin has provoked some controversy, in particular over Hergé’s naive depiction of overseas areas like Africa and Russia, The Shooting Star seems to be the episode among those published during the Nazi occupation of Belgium that has produced the most discussion and revision. Basically, the story is about a scientific discovery (a meteorite has fallen into the ocean), with scientific teams dispatched by the US and also by Axis-occupied nations to claim it for their own; Hergé and Tintin are part of the latter team. Naturally, the story shows how Hergé and Tintin played fair in this competition, as opposed to enemy teams which were run by underhanded organisers with Jewish names that flew the US flag (although later editions replaced the US flag with that of the fictitious country Sao Rico.)
Again, the story starts out with Tintin out for a stroll that quickly brings him into involvement in a serious adventure: a comet is nearing the earth, so Tintin befriends some academics that are studying it; the comet won’t collide with the earth, but part of it will fall into the ocean, so an expedition sets forth to retrieve samples for scientific study. Tintin has another encounter with eccentric professors, he hires a boat – perfect excuse to bring Captain Haddock into the picture – and off they go; the rest of the book’s adventures are water-based.
Haddock enters the picture by page 15, eventually getting into a few booze-related incidents but not acting as clumsy as he does in later episodes. The rest of the story is full of exciting incidents, but nothing too radical.
The Secret of the Unicorn – The last Tintin book to NOT feature Cuthbert Calculus, we spend the time with Tintin, Haddock and Thompson and Thomson in Belgium. Tintin, on a stroll around town, buys an antique model boat. This sets off a chain of events that quite naturally leads to a two-book adventure: others want to lay their hands on the antique model boat too and will kill to get it because it points to lost pirate booty. For Captain Haddock, the boat happens to be one of three miniature copies of The Unicorn, the boat sailed by his ancestor Sir Francis Haddock, who was boarded and nearly murdered by notorious pirate Red Rackham. Haddock’s re-telling of his ancestor’s tale, and his terrible thirst, is one of the better episodes in the entire Tintin series, and Sir Francis’ curses prove just as amusing as his descendant’s: “Ration my rum! Squawking popinjay! Fancy-dress freebooter! Fresh water pirate! Pithecanthropus!”
There’s an amusing running story about the search for a notorious pick-pocket; finally Tintin is kidnapped and held captive in a castle cellar full of antiques; this is our first view of Marlinspike Hall, owned by the Bird brothers, but staffed by the loyal, long-suffering butler Nestor, who will appear in nearly every Tintin episode to follow. The long back-and-forth chase and battle between these adversaries is inventive and exciting, and ends with… a lead-in to part two of the story, “Red Rackham’s Treasure”!
Red Rackham’s Treasure – With the introduction of Cuthbert Calculus, there is plenty of comedy around his deafness, as well as physical comedy involved with the bumbling of Haddock and the detectives, who are quite literally beaten up by Calculus’ laboratory inventions. The team doesn’t take to Calculus immediately, considering him a pest or a quack trying to sell them something they don’t need – an exploratory sub – but when they get onto the ocean they find that they need it after all; luckily he’s stowed away, and they discover the site of The Unicorn, but are only able to recover some trinkets but no treasure.
One of the more amusing passages is when they find the island where Sir Francis Haddock lived after the sinking of the Unicorn, it’s clear that the natives interacted with him due to statues of an angry yelling white man that are on the island, as well as parrots that still repeat his crazy curses, clearly descendants of the parrots that shared the island with him so many years ago. Besides some episodes of underwater danger, there is little real action in the story, but a really great mystery with a cool twist ending.
The Seven Crystal Balls – From 1942 to 1954, Hergé published three tales that are told in two parts: the treasure hunt, the South America adventure, and the moon mission; The Seven Crystal Balls is the first book of the middle series. The mystery picks up slowly, with scenes of life in Marlinspike, and Captain Haddock working hard at transitioning from salty sea dog to sophisticated landowner. At the theatre, Tintin and Haddock run into old friends like General Alcazar and Bianca Castafiore (both making their second appearances in the world of Tintin; there will be two more appearances for each of them). The detectives re-enter the picture as they are investigating mysterious attacks on a group of explorers who have returned from South America with an Inca mummy and a collection of artifacts. One by one, these explorers pass into a coma, and it appears that the expedition is cursed. Tintin becomes involved with saving the last of them, an old friend of Cuthbert Calculus’. Once again there’s an episode of St Elmo’s Fire, or ball lightning, coming down the chimney to inject the situation with action (it happened once before in Tintin In America). There’s a chase as Cuthbert Calculus is kidnapped, and off our heroes go to find him in South America.
Prisoners of the Sun – Picking up where “The Seven Crystal Balls” left off, Tintin and Haddock arrive in Peru, where they nearly recover the kidnapped Cuthbert Calculus but are thrown off the trail. They nearly die when their train into the mountains is sabotaged. Deep in the mountains, they get no help from local authorities, who fear the Inca more than they care about helping strangers from distant lands, but they do make friends with a young man who agrees to defy local customs and help outsiders against the Inca. They hike inland, encountering hungry condor who have a taste for little wire fox terriers – watch out, Snowy. They survive an avalanche, more hostile natives, bears, anaconda and alligator attacks, the charge of a tapir, and the embrace of an anteater – in fact, for five pages, it feels like Tintin in the Congo (being a mountain journey, it also feels a lot like Tintin in Tibet, which was still a few years off). The story leads to a grand finale in the Temple of the Sun, a hidden Inca temple, where Tintin and our friends await certain death. Of course, a couple of coincidences help them to cheat death yet another time, but that’s all right. Interesting sequence when Thompson and Thomson are seen wandering the earth with a pendulum that is telling them where their friends are – except they misinterpret all of the messages.
Land of Black Gold – The classic Tintin tale that has a bit of a James Bond-like international conspiracy at its heart. Car fuel has become dangerously combustive and is blowing up cars all over the world; in Belgium, Thompson and Thomson are hit first, of course. Tintin goes on the case to help out the oil company, and is soon with the detectives on a tanker sailing to the Middle East; it is full of corrupt individuals, and they are quickly framed at their first port of call and thrown into a local jail (sounds a lot like Cigars of the Pharaoh here). Tintin is kidnapped and taken into the desert; he’s soon discovered who’s behind the plot and reunited with the detectives, he meets Müller from The Black Island, then befriends the local emir. When the emir’s son is kidnapped, Tintin goes on the case; naturally, it’s Müller and the final pages of the book depict the exciting rescue, as well as a great deal of hijinx at the hand of the emir’s mischievous son, who may not be so happy to be rescued after all. Finally, we get to the story behind the cover of the book, which shows an unhappy Müller, his face dirtied with ink, and the detectives looking green and fuzzy – the closing pages of the tale are pure inspired lunacy. Definitely one of the better Tintin adventures.
One of the unusual features of the book is the absence of Captain Haddock, who makes an entrance at page 54; in fact, the detectives are in the book much more than he is. This is probably explained by the fact that Hergé started the book in 1939, after the detectives had been introduced (in 1937, in The Black Island), but before we met Haddock (who we saw in 1940’s The Crab With The Golden Claws). Hergé probably re-drew his 1939 pages, which he had abandoned mid-publication in 1940 because of the political nature of the tales which would find disapproval from Belgium’s new Nazi master, and then finished off the story, finally figuring out a way to bring Haddock into the picture late in the tale.
Destination Moon – Cuthbert Calculus disappears; no, he has not been kidnapped as you might have thought (this is a Tintin book, after all, and Calculus is easy prey to kidnappers – see The Seven Crystal Balls and The Calculus Affair), he has gone off to Syldavia to help the scientists there build a rocket to explore the moon. The notion that the scientific genius can invite his friends to join him on a space crew, and they will all function in scientific roles, is of course preposterous, but it makes for a fun story. To spice up a relatively dull tale of scientific development there is a bit of mystery: who’s the spy? What are Thomson and Thompson doing in Greek national costumes if they’re not in Greece? And what use is it to take Snowy to the moon anyway?
Lots of great physical comedy, like when Haddock inadvertently tears apart the chair that Baxter is sitting in, or Snowy’s, or the detectives’ arresting a skeleton. Calculus with his hearing aid, or pulling his hair out when his radio-controlled rocket gets taken over, is pretty hilarious too. Of course, the classic is when Haddock tells Calculus he’s “acting the goat” – Calculus erupts with a furious temper tantrum, showing a withering sarcasm and superhuman strength, all the while chiding Haddock for his clumsiness. Just as funny is Haddock’s scared, wide-eyed reaction to his friend’s fury – he’s totally tongue-tied; nothing like our favourite characters acting out of character. There’s also the detectives using reverse psychology on Haddock when it seems like he wants out of the mission (Tintin often uses the same method, usually with the help of a bottle of whiskey as in Tintin in Tibet, but it’s interesting to see the detectives be clever in spite of themselves). Of course, the ever-present amnesia episode is interesting enough, but ultimately nothing can delay the inevitable: the moon must be launched into space. So it is, leading to the inevitable part 2: “Explorers on the Moon”!
Explorers on the Moon – Off they go into space, and of course Haddock wastes no time in getting wasted. Tintin, in a rare fit of pique, scolds him terrible (Haddock’s had it coming for years). The detectives are discovered on board (no adventure can be complete without the delicate duo providing comic relief), and they have a relapse of purple hair growing – good timing. Thompson himself has another fit of pique – what is it with all the characters going out of character here – and there’s plenty of weird science (magnetic boots, turning the rocket 180 degrees so it can be landed, etc). The words of the first man to walk the moon: “This is it!… I’ve walked a few steps!… For the first itme in the history of mankind there is an EXPLORER ON THE MOON.” Tintin describes the place as “a nightmare land, a place of death, horrifying in its desolation… Not a tree, not a flower, not a blade of grass…. Not a bird, not a sound, not a cloud.” The explorers proceed to have their bit of fun in low gravity, adventures in the moon-tank, and a mysterious accident. The detectives walk in circles again (a la Land of Black Gold), and there’s lunar spelunking – need to have a bit of man-versus-nature danger to supplement the usual man-versus-man drama. Finally, with a stowaway discovered on board (there was so much security in book one getting into the rocket facility, but clearly none for getting into the bird itself) the real bloodthirsty action begins. The final part of the book is inventive, well-paced drama, with plenty of Tintin heroism – brave little guy. Even more drama when they get back to earth, as well as a bit of fun with a bottle of Loch Lamond whisky and some Haddock buffoonery giving the book a near-perfect finale.
The Calculus Affair – This book has a very subtle start, with plenty scenes of pastoral life at Marlinspike. Quoth Haddock: “Ah, peace and quiet! … How quiet it is here … just listen to it…” The quiet is, of course, broken by a mystery – glass objects have started shattering spontaneously. Is Calculus, who lives at Marlinspike and has a laboratory there, somehow involved? Of course he is – this book is, after all, named The Calculus Affair and has a picture of a passed-out-unconscious Calculus on the cover (and it’s not because he’s had too much wine, either). In comes the boorish Jolyon Wagg, a Falstaff of sorts, and provides a bit of boffish intrigue. Calculus goes to Geneva, he’s followed by foreign government agents, and when Tintin and Haddock follow him they discover foul play: Calculus has been kidnapped! Suddenly the book is full of car chases, wipe-outs, fist fights, explosions and mosquito attacks. We also get to meet Arturo Benedetto Giovanni Guiseppe Pietro Archangelo Alfredo Cartoffoli da Milano, a psychotic Italian sportscar driver who my son Zen just loves for his accent (we have so many laughs just reading that scene out loud over and over again). Great multi-page continuity: Snowy carries Calculus’ umbrella over several pages until it is lost in Geneva, then there is the amusing episode of a piece of sticking plaster that always manages to find its way back to Haddock (the sticking plaster makes a brief reappearance in Tintin and the Picaros). Tintin and Haddock arrive in Borduria, and we get our first encounter with the whiskers of Kurvi-Tasch, that oft-mentioned trope. Tintin and Haddock are “escorted” by two local detectives Kronick and Klumsi (chronic and clumsy – get it?), a very amusing episode, and then they evade the police chase by hiding out in Bianca Castofiore’s dressing closet. The three pages scenes in this book with Castofiore are much longer than any other encounter with her, which may have been a matter of only a few panels in King Ottokar’s Sceptre and The Red Sea Sharks (I think), and preluded a book where she is featured throughout, The Castofiore Emerald, which has become one of my favourite books in the series. But more on that later.
A great coincidence allows our friends to accomplish their mission, but they still have to commandeer a tank and do other foolish acts (and escape sure-death situations either with bravery or by luck and coincidence), before finally getting home to Marlinspike Hall to encounter the greatest danger of all: Jolyon Wagg! Great drawings, great humour, great action, and a very funny, rich and rewarding book.
The Red Sea Sharks – Not one of the best Tintin adventures, although it still has its moments. For the first fourteen pages, Tintin and Haddock are again shown moving around Marlinspike, running into their old friend Alcazar (he of The Broken Ear and The Seven Crystal Balls fame) when he’s in town buying weapons for another coup attempt (we’ll finally see much, much more of him in Tintin and the Picaros when we learn of the outcome of this shopping mission). Pesky Abdullah shows up (the naughty prankster from Land of Black Gold) because his father the emir has been deposed – all these heads of state without power. Tintin and Haddock then set off on another adventure on nothing more than the pretext of getting away form Abdullah. In no time at all they are in a plane that has a bomb aboard, they are hiding out from border patrols, and they are being hunted by attack planes and artillery vehicles (dispatched by “Mull Pasha”, a military commander we’ve seen before when he went under the name of Dr Müller in The Black Island and Land of Black Gold), hiding out with fugutive princes, and taking on aggressive cheetahs. Interesting things happen when Tintin is rescued by the ship of the Marquis di Gorgonzola, one of the richest men in the world and a socialite who has taken to sea with the rich and famous, including our friend Bianca Castofiore. In the book we also meet a new friend of Tintin, the Estonian pilot Piotr Skut – who turns up again in Flight 714. In no time, we’re also reunited with some old villains from old Tintin books such as The Blue Lotus (three of them) and The Crab With The Golden Claws (only one). This may be the Tintin book with the most regular characters in it (although Cuthbert Calculus and the detectives are largely absent). Great comedy in the scenes where the crew abandons ship, and then again with the submarine attack.
Incidentally, the cover of the book – and the scene in the book that it represents – offers us a rare chance to see Captain Haddock wearing anything other than his standard blue sweater with the anchor on the chest: for four frames he’s shown wearing only the white undershirt he has on beneath his blue sweater (I’m exaggerrating – he’s also seen wearing foppish “country gentleman” get-up in a few other books, such as The Seven Crystal Balls and Tintin and the Picaros). Otherwise first mate Alan, Bolt the handyman, Cuthbert Calculus, Cutts the butcher, Captain Haddock, Nestor, Tintin, Thompson and Thomson, and anyone else that regularly appears in a Tintin book seems to be born wearing the same clothes (there are some exceptions: Rastapopoulos, Bianca Castafiore, General Alcazar, and a few others seem to lack a uniform all of their own).
Tintin in Tibet – Probably the most celebrated Tintin book, it shows our boy hero’s reunion after over 25 years with his friend from The Blue Lotus, Chang Chong-Chen (real-life friends Hergé and Zhang Chong-ren, upon whom the character of Chang Chong-chen had been based, had actually went nearly 50 years without meeting); or rather it chronicles the attempt to reunite – on his way to Brussels, the plane Chang is on goes down in the Himalayas, with everyone on the plane dead or missing. But Tintin feels that Chang is still alive, so he and Haddock go off to rescue him, enjoying a few misadventures in Delhi first en route to Calcutta. Marching off, they head on foot into the hills, where there are various misadventures. The scenery is breathtaking and the art impeccable, very much in line with Hergé’s first story set in the mountains, Prisoners of the Sun (which also had Tintin befriending a young boy). Haddock is, of course, always good for a laugh with his brave buffoonery, and Snowy quite funny in yet another drinking episode (he seems to enjoy whiskey as much as Haddock does, and he always drinks too much). In no time at all they encounter yeti tracks, an avalanche, a snowstorm and lamas! The story is a clever tale of bravery and great valour, as well as strange egg-headed beings. This is one of only a few Tintin books where there is a mystery but no real enemy or adversary (other than the elements – they are nearly frozen to death many times); other such books are “Red Rackham’s Treasure” and “The Castafiore Emerald.”
Apparently, this book, published in 1958 on the eve of the Dalai Lama’s retreat from the area, was unpopular with the Chinese (of the People’s Republic of China) and popular with the Taiwanese (Republic of China) government and went a long way for raising awareness about a land called Tibet. In 2006, the Dalai Lama awarded Tintin (not Hergé, who had passed away in 1983)the Truth of Light award.
The Castafiore Emerald – When I was a kid I didn’t like this book at all, but reading it as an adult I finally appreciate it for what it it, and would even consider it one of my favourite stories. Why? Well, the interesting thing about this book is that not much happens in it – there’s no adventure, no jet-setting, no boats or airplanes or explosions; there’s not even a villain. Just a compelling mystery, and lots of character development, as well as some pretty good comedy, some social commentary, and great use of recurring incidents. The whole tale is set in Marlinspike Hall and its environs, and it starts with Tintin and Haddock’s encounter with gypsies who are camped out next to the garbage dump. Haddock invites them to use part of his land; then Bianca Castafiore drops in for a visit and the real fun begins. She’s a prima donna, of course, and can never remember Haddock’s name (Captain Hemlock, Captain Fatstock, Captain Drydock, etc etc etc), and brings with her a maid, Irma, and a pianist, Wagner. There’s a broken tile on the steps, there’s an owl, a nightingale, and Bianca Castafiore’s jewels (how many times do we hear Castafiore scream “Mercy, my jewels!”?), which sometimes go missing. Calculus debuts his colour TV invention, Haddock has a romance (sort of), and we get a new character – Mr Bolt, the handyman. Impeccable.
Flight 714 – Flight 714 has long been my favourite Tintin story (along with The Black Island, and now also The Castafiore Emerald). It picks up quickly, with a chance encounter in Jakarta (in a part of the world where I now live, coincidentally), and introduces a fascinating new characters: the eccentrically corrupt billionaire Laszlo Carreidas (check out how he cheats at the game of battleship). The book also sees the re-entry of the Estonian Piotr Skut, the one-eyed enemy pilot from The Red Sea Sharks that Tintin and Haddock eventually befriend, as well as Rastapopoulous (now wearing cowboy boots), Tintin’s arch-enemy – who was also last seen in The Red Sea Sharks – and a crazy, tormented first mate Alan (who proves to be a mighty fast draw, by the way). Happily, we get to see a lot of both of them and learn a lot more about their characters. Later, when Tintin and crew are kidnapped and interrogated and blasted with truth serums, we get to enjoy a tremendous cat and mouse chase through the jungle and into the tombs of ancient undiscovered civilizations – wow, I wonder if Herge has been reading HP Lovecraft. Snowy even has a lot of airtime in this adventure.
Oddly enough, there seems to be a movement to allow violence to happen “offscreen” in Hergé’s world – Tintin beats up two thugs in a doorway, we can’t see what’s happening, and then the “camera” is not on Rastapopulous when he’s jabbed with a needle. Is this the dawn of PC? But that’s okay, because eventually we get to see Rastapopoulos have a conniption, then get captured by our heroes, and then suffer one terrible indignity after another. The sheer lunacy is bracing. Of course, there are terrible ordeals that our heroes must suffer, and before long the island is destroyed in a volcanic burst – and why not? Interestingly, near the end of the book we meet yet another new character, Mik Kanrokitoff, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Fukuda Yasuo, the prime minister of Japan in most of 2008.
Fantastically subtle comedy throughout – check out the scene when Haddock gets a glass of Sani-cola, which is “overflowing with chlorophyl”, pressed upon him; when no-one is looking he pours it into a potted plant… which promptly withers and dies (chlorphyl indeed!). Calculus is, of course, Calculus: “Is this a television film?” when the airplane is being hijacked, or getting huffy when he thinks he’s been lied to. And Carreidas himself: “You’re sacked, Spalding,” to the coward who has betrayed him. Then there’s Haddock’s Adventures With the Sticky Tape Part 2 (see The Calculus Affair for Sticky Tape Part 1), and Calculus’ amazing kung fu (savate, actually, since he’s Belgian)! Jolyon Wagg makes an appearance with his family (last seen in abundance in The Calculus Affair). Finally, there’s Snowy, who tells us “I could tell them a thing or two! … But no one would believe me!” after they’re rescued by a UFO and have their memories wiped. Yes, that would be a true statement, wouldn’t it!
According to the Wikipedia, Herge produced two more pages for the edition than could be published, which are simply snipped out (they would have fallen between page 59 and page 60), I wonder when we’ll finally see them.
Tintin and the Picaros – Interestingly, Hergé followed one of his strongest Tintin adventures with one of his weakest (this is a relative term, of course – Hergé is consistently stunning). Tintin and the Picaros opens in Marlinspike with a few new oddities – Tintin on a motorcycle, a portable TV (sample of groovy 70s design), Tintin doing yoga, as well as Haddock reacting violently to alcohol (a mystery that is carried through half of the book). There’s international intrigue when Bianca Castafiore is arrested in San Theodoros. Insane diplomacy appears between Tapiocopalis and Marlinspike, and there we go – on to more civil war intrigues in Central America with our old friend General Alcazar (who has a new wife, an American monstrosity called Peggy) and who has appeared in various Tintin adventures starting with The Broken Ear; besides Alcazar, there is also the shifty Pablo, also from The Broken Ear and General Sprodz, from The Calculus Affair. Tintin and Haddock approach the scandal differently for a change – when Castafiore has been framed, Haddock is the one who wants to charge into battle while Tintin wants nothing to do with the whole stinky business. The setting changes to Central America, but before long Tintin is there and we get a crazy pyramid adventure, more amnesia, a walk through the jungle, and crazy drunk revolutionaries. What is the world coming to!?! Of course, no Broken Ear reunion can be complete without anthropologist Ridgewell, whose jungle village is also having problems with too much free jungle whiskey. Again, the “local” lingo is a strangely masked phonetic version of cockney English – just read it aloud to see how far English spelling is from the literal sounds. Since we’re in the jungle, there’s plenty of mucking about with crazed wildlife, such as alligators, anaconda and an electric eel (last seen in Tintin in the Congo), which our hero saintily returns to the pond (he’s quite different lad from the big game hunter in Tintin in the Congo, where he massacred a tribe of antelope and assassinated chimpanzees). And when things settle in the jungle, what else could possibly happen than Jolyon Wagg, an associate from Marlinspike, entering the scene, a coincedence that helps our heroes win the day. And why not – coincedences are what this is all about anyway!! And what a wonderful grand finale – Thompson and Thomson are to be executed, only to be saved by a floating head and some gunmen (’70s hallucinatory imagery, of course), with lots of “HEY NONNY NO, HEY NONNY NO.”
Unusually, Tintin appears in this book with full pants, not the knee-length leggings we’ve seen in practically every frame he’s been in (except for when he’s in costume, such as in The Blue Lotus, The Black Island or Explorers On The Moon). I guess this would have been a new look for Tintin had Herge lived long enough to give us a few more adventures.
Fantastic comedy on page 47-48, when Bianca Castafiore is on trial with Thomson and Thompson. The kangaroo court is absurd, as is Castafiore’s howling of “MY BEAUTY PAST COMPARE”, which blasts the local transmitting station into submission! And then there is the exchange of Thompson and Thomson when they think that their final hour has approached: “Can you perhaps think of some famous last words?” “Er… What about ‘Kiss me Thompson”… Will that do?” Absurd.
Tintin and Alph-Art – This is the only Tintin story I haven’t read. I will get it one of these days…