Kornwulf

My dad had a complete collection of the Adventures of Tintin (in Finnish, obviously). I read them as a kid, as I read every single comic in his extensive collection. And I never much cared for them to be honest. There were some individual stories I liked, but mostly I was left wondering why this is such a well-known and respected series. (The answer is, of course, that it came before many of the similar but better European comic series).

Anyway, my dad kicked the bucket a few years ago (and good riddance too). By this time he had gotten rid of most of his comics, but what he had kept were the Tintins. I took them, and now I'm finally re-reading them as an adult, trying to find out if I was right or wrong earlier.

Well, I haven't read all of them yet, but in general I'm finding I was right, but now I actually understand why.

The biggest problem in the early albums (at least until L’Île noire, so the seventh entry in the series) is that Tintin is doing things alone in them. Side characters tend to be very flat, and exist only to expedite Tintin on his journey. This is particularly evident in the first three albums (Tintin au pays des Soviets, Tintin au Congo, and Tintin au Amérique), but the pattern also repeats in L’Île noire). Tintin just by himself is, frankly, boring, and sets him up as an almost superhuman character.

The biggest exception to this rule is Le Lotus bleu (#5), where Tintin has several different sidekicks along the way, all with something of a personality, and their presence carries the story wonderfully well. Le Lotus bleu is also the first one where Hergé has clearly done his research right: the story is set in a particular place (China) and particular time (the 1930s), and it doesn't fall victim of weird flights of francy as the preceeding stories almost unversally do. The preceeding album, Les Cigares du Pharaon (the story of which partially continues into Le Lotus bleu) is also okay on the side character front – Philémon Siclone is pretty much a prototype-Tryphon Tournesol, for instance – but it is let down on the realism side, featuring for instance Tintin learning the language of the elephants in the space of a few moments.

Le Lotus bleu is also very interesting in having a very strong anti-racist and anti-colonialist message, when just a few years ago Hergé was both of those things in Tintin au Congo. (Though I will admit there is also an antiracist message in Tintin au Amérique). The following album, L’Oreille cassée, continues with having an anticolonialist theme, although being set in two imaginary countries it's less anchored in reality than Le Lotus bleu. It's also less good on the sidekick front, but the side characters are not nearly as flat as in the ealier installments.

L’Île noire, in addition to Tintin going in alone, has other problems, despite being from the era of otherwise decent Tintin albums. The story, about an international organisation making counterfeit money and transporting it with unmarked aeroplanes just makes no damn sense. In addition to Tintin going in alone, he has this weird vigilante vibe of constantly resisting the police, but still turning in the bad guys to them no problem, his past transgressions forgiven. And in the early Finnish edition I have, there's the art style: the entire album has been redrawn and "updated" in 1965, with vehicles changed from the 1930s originals to 1960s ones. For one thing, this ruins some of the jokes – Tintin getting dirty being on the roof of a train going through a tunnel makes no sense when the train is not drawn by a steam locomotive – but the redrawings are just entirely soulless.

So, from the first seven Tintin albums, I would argue only Le Lotus bleu is actually worth reading. Les Cigares du Pharaon is probably necessary reading before it so you understand everything that's going on, and if you like what you read in those two then L’Oreille cassée is also fine (though I would argue Franquin did a Latin American banana republic storyline much better in the Spirou & Fantasio series – though admittedly that was two decades later and probably heavily influenced by Hergé). However, everything before those, alongside L’Île noire, are best left unread.

Also, reading these in order reveals how often Hergé recycles settings and gags. Some of them are fun, sure, but "Tintin getting imprisoned but escapes" and "the fake beard was actually real" are both getting stale when repeated in multiple consecutive stories (at least this time the latter was not someone who looks like Tintin in disguise but isn't).

Interestingly, while all the Tintin's I've reread and discussed in this thread so far were originally published in longer format, this is the first one where it feels like things are missing from this abbreviated version. Many scenes and details feel they have been rushed through, and some details are explained only in dialogue when it feels like they would be better done as show, don't tell. For the first time in this read-through I actually feel like it would be worthwhile to look up the translation of the original version and read that too.

A final note: I was surprised to realise this album saw the first appearance of Bianca Castafiore, meaning she was in the series before Haddock or Tournesol. A detail I find fascinating. Of course, this does not change the fact Castafiore is the only major woman character in the series, and she is played exclusively for laughs. While Hergé had gotten over his racism and flirtation with fascism over the years (according to Wikipedia, he was close to Belgium's local fascist movement), he never got over his sexism. But I'm getting ahead of myself, I was supposed to write about Le Sceptre d’Ottokar and even that shortly!

Le Crabe aux pinces d'or sees the first appearance of Captain Haddock, and his deciption is not a very positive one: he's an alcoholic, he cannot resist drink, and he turns violent when he drinks. (Because of this I think I only read this album once as a kid; Haddock reminded me too much of my parents). This is not all he is in the story, but the alcoholism is pretty overpowering.

In L'Étoile mystérieuse, Haddock is more fully fleshed out. He's still an alcoholic, make no mistake, but now it's more of a side gag. Rather, the album paints Haddock as this experienced seafarer with strong emotions. To be honest, this album is probably my favourite deciption of Haddock in that he is in there as a sea captain on his own merits, not as "the friend of Tintin," and he gets to shine as an experienced sea captain.

In Le Secret de La Licorne and Le Trésor de Rackham le Rouge, we then learn about Haddock's noble roots and his ancestral home Château de Moulinsart – which he gains control of at the end of Rackham le Rouge. Thus we end up with Haddock in his "final form."

Tryphon Tournesol also appears in Le Trésor de Rackham le Rouge. He doesn't really have a development arc like Haddock, rather he appears pretty much fully formed in that album.

As for the stories themselves... Le Crabe aux pinces d'or has Tintin once again chasing after drug smugglers in an exotic location (Marocco). It's a decent, fast-paced, fairly realistic story. Colonialism of the era is... faithfully reproduced, but Hergé is not as critical of it as in, say Le Lotus Bleu.

I have conflicting feelings about L'Étoile mystérieuse. The middle of the story, where Tintin and Haddock race towards a fallen meteorite, trying to beat a rival expedition (whose funder keeps trying to sabotage them), is some of the strongest storytelling in the series. However, the dreamlike sequences at the beginning and the end of the story – an asteroid nearly striking Earth in the beginning, with Tintin essentially the only one to realise it, and the meteorite having mystic properties that make plants and animals grow at immense speed to immense size at the end – are both very weak. As a side note, it's interesting that both Hergé and Tove Jansson chose were moved by World War II to write about a celestial object hitting Earth.

Reading about the background of the story, L'Étoile mystérieuse is also one of the most interesting Tintins in terms of the background and changes made to it. In the original story, Tintin & co's opponents were an US American expedition, funded by a racist caricature of a Jewish banker. After the war, the story was redrawn, with the banker now being less of a racist caricature and their origins moved to the fictional Latin American country São Rico (which arguably made the story worse, since if a meteorite made of a previously unheard of metal did land in the Arctic, surely the great powers of the era would compete to gain access to it).

Storywise, the diptych Le Secret de La Licorne and Le Trésor de Rackham le Rouge is arguably worse than the other two. The first part is a relatively low-stakes adventure in Brussels, predominantly setting the scene for the sequel. The sequel is about finding the pirate's treasure, which is one of my favourite tropes... but it just falls a bit flat, with little to no conflict in the story. Essentially they just look for the treasure and eventually find it. It's competently done (apart from the uncharacteristically aggressive sharks), but it lacks suspense.

One final note: I am reading the 1970s Finnish editions of these, and one detail that struck me about the otherwise fairly well-done editions was a dissonance about the deciption of the titular La Licorne in Le Secret de La Licorne. In the text, De Hadoque is described as having served in the navy of Louis XIV. However, in the illustrations the La Licorne is flying the (old version of the) Union Jack. I suspect this was because the pictures were from an "international" printing based on the English one, resulting in a conflict between the text and the images. I'm pondering if I should try to find one of the newer editions to discover if it has been fixed in them.

Les Sept Boules de Cristal and it's conclusion Le Temple du Soleil left me a bit cold. The bit in the beginning where Haddock is trying to be a distinquished château owner is funny. The rest of the story is a competent adventure, but it felt like going through the motions. The finale, where Tintin famously gets his gang out of trouble by making use of a solar eclipse to claim he's favoured by the Sun God feels... I'm not sure if Hergé was the first to use that trope, but more importantly it comes across as horribly patronising towards the Inca that have imprisoned him. Not only in the "these savages don't understand the concept of the eclipse" way, but also the fact that we see many of the Inca living in "the regular world", and supposedly none of them noticed an eclipse is coming up?

The Moon diptych (Objectif Lune and On a marché sur la Lune) was probably my favourite Tintin adventure as a teen, and I have to say it still holds after all these years. I love a good outdated scifi, but at the same time Hergé's story is absolutely on a solid scientific foundation. Hell, his rocket uses the same principle for creating gravity as the ships in The Expanse decades later.

There's a real sense of suspense in both stories, both holding up really well, while injecting the series usual comedy in the stories. The second part especially works really, really well – while also being unsually dark for a Tintin story. Also: Tournesol is finally granted the dignity of being a serious scientist, rather than being a joke because of his disability. Unfortunately this does not last.

I had very little memory the next story, L'Affaire Tournesol, but it turns out it's the best album in the series in my opinion (well, so far anyway). A thightly constructed, believable action story, where Tintin and Haddock chase after Tournesol's kidnappers. The duo is finally given a chance to work together without anyone else, with a realistic motivation and it just works. A high point.

* yes

* no, but I want to

* no and I don’t want to

* it’s complicated

* see results