The Shooting Star (L'Étoile mystérieuse) | |
---|---|
Date | 1942 (colour) |
Series | The Adventures of Tintin |
Publisher | Casterman |
Creative team | |
Creator | Hergé |
Original publication | |
Published in | Le Soir |
Date of publication | 20 October 1941 – 21 May 1942 |
Language | French |
Translation | |
Publisher | Methuen |
Date | 1961 |
Translator |
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Chronology | |
Preceded by | The Crab with the Golden Claws (1941) |
Followed by | The Secret of the Unicorn (1943) |
The Shooting Star (French: L'Étoile mystérieuse) is the tenth volume of The Adventures of Tintin , the comics series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. The story was serialised daily in Le Soir , Belgium's leading francophone newspaper, from October 1941 to May 1942 amidst the German occupation of Belgium during World War II. The story tells of young Belgian reporter Tintin, who travels with his dog Snowy and friend Captain Haddock aboard a scientific expedition to the Arctic Ocean on an international race to find a meteorite that has fallen to the Earth.
The Shooting Star was a commercial success and was published in book form by Casterman shortly after its conclusion; the first Tintin volume to be originally published in the 62-page full-colour format. Hergé continued The Adventures of Tintin with The Secret of the Unicorn , while the series itself became a defining part of the Franco-Belgian comics tradition. The Shooting Star has received a mixed critical reception and has been one of the more controversial installments in the series due to the perceived antisemitic portrayal of its villain. The story was adapted for both the 1957 Belvision animated series, Hergé's Adventures of Tintin , and for the 1991 animated series The Adventures of Tintin by Ellipse and Nelvana.
A giant meteoroid approaches the Earth, spotted from an observatory by Professor Decimus Phostle; he and a self-proclaimed prophet, Philippulus, predict that the meteoroid will hit Earth and cause the end of the world. The meteoroid misses Earth, but a fragment of it plunges into the Arctic Ocean. Phostle determines that the object is made of a new material which he names Phostlite, and arranges an expedition to find it with a crew of European scientists. Accompanied by Tintin and Snowy, their polar expedition ship, the Aurora, is helmed by Tintin's friend Captain Haddock. [1] Meanwhile, another expedition is funded by the financier Mr. Bohlwinkel, with a team setting out aboard the polar expedition ship Peary; thus, Phostle's expedition becomes part of a race to land on the meteorite.
On the day of the Aurora's departure, Bohlwinkel has a henchman plant a stick of dynamite on the ship, but the dynamite is found and eventually thrown overboard. In one of the shipping lanes of the North Sea, the Aurora is almost rammed by another of Bohlwinkel's ships, but Haddock steers out of the way. Further setbacks occur when Aurora has to refuel at Iceland, going to the port of Akureyri, where Haddock is informed that the Golden Oil Company (which is owned by Bohlwinkel's bank and has a fuel monopoly) has no fuel available. He and Tintin then come across an old friend of his, Captain Chester, and Tintin comes up with a plan to trick Golden Oil into providing the fuel they need by secretly running a hose to Aurora from Chester's ship, Sirius. [2] As they are getting closer to the Peary the Aurora receives an indistinct distress call from another ship and the crew agrees to alter their course to help; however, Tintin exposes that the distress signal is a decoy to delay them, and they resume the journey. The Aurora intercepts a cable announcing that the Peary expedition has reached the meteorite but not yet claimed it. While the Peary crew rows to the meteorite, Tintin uses the Aurora's seaplane to get to and parachute onto the meteorite and plant the expedition's flag, thus winning the race.
Tintin and Snowy (who followed on the plane) make camp on the meteorite while the Aurora's engines are repaired after developing trouble. The next day, he finds immense explosive mushrooms, and discovers that Phostlite accelerates growth: his apple core grows into a large tree while a maggot turns into a huge butterfly, and he and Snowy are menaced by a giant spider that escaped from his lunch box, before the seaplane arrives again. A sudden seaquake shakes the meteorite to its core and it starts sinking into the sea. Tintin gets himself, Snowy and a piece of Phostlite to the pilot of the seaplane in the plane's life raft, as the meteorite itself finally disappears into the sea. Thereafter, Bohlwinkel learns that he is expected to be tried for his crimes. As the Aurora returns home, Captain Haddock steers the ship toward land to refuel not with oil, but with whisky. [3]
Amidst the German occupation of Belgium during World War II, Hergé became the founding editor of Le Soir Jeunesse, a children's supplement in Belgium's leading newspaper, Le Soir. [4] [5] [lower-alpha 1] Hergé's previous employer, the Catholic newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle (which had originated The Adventures of Tintin through its own children's supplement, Le Petit Vingtième) was no longer allowed by the German authorities to continue publishing; [7] Le Soir, in contrast, was allowed to stay open under the administrative control of the occupying military government. [4] Le Soir Jeunesse serialized most of The Shooting Star's immediate predecessor, The Crab with the Golden Claws , but ceased publication due to paper shortages in 1941. The Adventures of Tintin was then moved to Le Soir itself, [8] [9] where The Crab with the Golden Claws was concluded and the subsequent four Adventures (including The Shooting Star) were serialized. [9] [10] [11] [12] [13]
During its initial serialization, The Shooting Star featured the United States as the primary antagonists; explaining this, Hergé asserted that the story revolved around the theme of "the rivalry for progress between Europe and the United States". [14] Although not disliking Americans themselves, he had a strong disdain for American big business, [15] and had exhibited anti-American themes in earlier works, in particular in Tintin in America . [16] During serialisation of The Shooting Star, in December 1941, the U.S. entered the war on the side of the Allies, thus coming into direct conflict with Germany. [17] All of the scientists featured were from Axis, neutral, or occupied countries which might be a reflection of the strip's anti-Allies political slant. [18] [19] Hergé biographer Harry Thompson stated this should not be interpreted as a strong anti-Ally bias, for the only two nation-states in Europe that were part of the Allies at that point were the Soviet Union and United Kingdom, and that the characters of Haddock and Chester were British. [15]
As he had done for other Adventures of Tintin which featured sea travel, Hergé was careful to obtain as much data about ships as possible in order to make his portrayals more realistic. The design of the Aurora was based on the RRS William Scoresby, while that of the Peary was most likely based upon another Antarctic ship, the RRS Discovery. [20] The seaplane on which the expedition travels was based on the German Arado 196-A. [21] Hergé nevertheless later criticised his own efforts in this area, saying that if Aurora had been a real ship, it would probably be unseaworthy. [22]
The Shooting Star shared plot similarities with The Chase of the Golden Meteor , a 1908 novel by pioneering French science-fiction writer Jules Verne. [23] As in Hergé's story, Verne's novel features an expedition to the North Atlantic to find a meteorite fragment containing a new element. In both stories, the competing expedition teams were led by an eccentric professor and a Jewish banker, and Verne's novel had a Doktor Schultze to Hergé's Professor Schulze—both from the University of Jena. Hergé denied deliberately copying Verne's story, saying that he had only read one of the French novelist's works; it is possible that the influence from Verne came via Jacques Van Melkebeke, Hergé's friend and assistant, who was a fan of the genre. [23] The Swedish expedition member Eric Björgenskjöld physically resembles a real person: Auguste Piccard, who later became Hergé's inspiration for Professor Calculus. [24]
"All I actually did was show a villainous financier with a Semitic appearance and a Jewish name: Blumenstein, in The Shooting Star. But does that mean there was anti-Semitism on my part? It seems to me that in my entire panoply of bad guys there are all sorts; I have shown a lot of "villains" of various origins, without any particular treatment of this or that race... We've always told Jewish stories, Marseillaise stories, Scottish stories. But who could have predicted that the Jewish stories would end as we know now that they did, in the death camps of Treblinka and Auschwitz?"
Hergé to Numa Sadoul [25]
Under Nazi control, Le Soir was publishing a variety of antisemitic articles, calling for the Jews to be further excluded from public life and describing them as racial enemies of the Belgian people. [26] Hergé biographer Pierre Assouline noted that there was a "remarkable correlation" between the antisemitic nature of Le Soir's editorials and The Shooting Star's depiction of Jews. [17] Within months of the story's publication, legislation was passed to collect and deport Jews from Belgium to Nazi concentration camps. [27] Thus, The Shooting Star reflected trends in the Belgian political situation at the time. [27] However, the story was not the first time that Hergé had adopted such a perspective in his work; he had recently provided illustrations for Robert de Vroyland's Fables, a number of which contained antisemitic stereotypes, reflecting the racism in much of de Vroyland's book. [28] Similarly, his depiction of the character of Rastapopoulos, who was introduced in Tintin in America , has been cited as being based upon antisemitic stereotypes. [29]
When The Shooting Star appeared in Le Soir, Hergé featured a gag in which two Jews hear the prophetic news that the end of the world is near. They rub their hands together in eagerness, and one comments: "Did you hear, Isaac? The end of the world! What if it's true?" The other responds: "Hey, hey, it vould be a gut ding, Solomon! I owe my suppliers 50,000 francs, and zis way I von't haf to pay vem!" Hergé omitted this scene from the collected edition. [30]
The character of Blumenstein displays antisemitic stereotypes, such as having a bulbous nose and being an avaricious, manipulative businessman. [31] Hergé later dismissed concerns over this Jewish caricature, saying "That was the style then". [17] In his assessment of Franco-Belgian comics, Matthew Screech expressed the opinion that Blumenstein was an anti-American stereotype rather than an anti-Jewish one. [32] Similarly, reporter and Tintin expert Michael Farr asserted that Blumenstein was "more parodied as a financier than Jew". [33] Conversely, Lofficier and Lofficier asserted that both anti-Americanism and antisemitism were present, and that it is the United States and International Jewry who were the "ruthless opponents" of Tintin. [34] Nazi apologists and revisionists such as French Holocaust denier Olivier Mathieu used The Shooting Star as evidence that Hergé was an antisemite with Nazi sympathies. [35]
To graphic novel specialist Hugo Frey, the competing expeditions are presented as a simplistic race between good and evil, wherein Blumenstein displays the stereotypes of Jews held by advocates of the Jewish World Conspiracy presented in works such as the antisemitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion . Frey writes that Blumenstein's "large and bulbous nose ... rounded forehead, receding black hair, and small beady eyes" were stock antisemitic imagery in the 1930s and 1940s, as promoted by those such as journalist Édouard Drumont, whose antisemitic Paris-based newspaper La Libre Parole was influential in Brussels. [36] According to Frey, Blumenstein's depiction as an overweight cigar-smoker reflected the antisemitic stereotype of Jews as being financially powerful, [37] while he suggested that the scene in which Blumenstein learned that he was to be tracked down for his crimes recalled the contemporary roundup of Jews in Nazi Europe. [38] Frey contrasts Hergé's complicity with the antisemites to the actions of other Belgians, such as those who struck against the Nazis at the Université libre de Bruxelles and those who risked their lives to hide Jews. [38]
The Shooting Star was serialised daily in Le Soir from 20 October 1941 to 21 May 1942 [10] in French under the title L'Étoile mystérieuse (The Mysterious Star). [39] Tintin's previous adventure, The Crab with the Golden Claws , had been serialised weekly until the demise of Le Soir's children's supplement, Le Soir Jeunesse, before continuing daily in the main newspaper itself; the earlier serial had ended the day before The Shooting Star began. [40] The Shooting Star was the first Tintin adventure to be serialised daily in its entirety. [39] As with earlier Adventures of Tintin, the story was later serialised in France in the Catholic newspaper Cœurs Vaillants , where it first appeared on 6 June 1943. [41]
On page 20 of the published book, Hergé included a cameo of the characters Thomson and Thompson and Quick & Flupke. [34] The story also introduced Captain Chester, who is mentioned in later adventures, and Professor Cantonneau, who returns in The Seven Crystal Balls . [42]
On 21 May 1942, The Shooting Star concluded serialisation. Less than a week later, the occupied government proclaimed that all Jews in Belgium would have to wear a yellow badge on their clothing, and in July the Gestapo began raids on Jewish premises, followed by deportations of Jews to Nazi concentration camps and extermination camps, resulting in around 32,000 Belgian Jews being killed. [43] Hergé later recalled: "I saw very few Jews wearing the yellow star, but finally, I did see some. They told me that some Jews were gone; that people had come for them and sent them away. I didn't want to believe it". [44]
The earlier Tintin albums reproduced the newspaper strips, which had come to appear weekly in Thursday supplements, two-page allotments of three tiers to a page. War shortages reduced the space for the strip by a third, and later the supplements disappeared completely; the comic appeared daily in the main newspaper as a four-panel strip. For publication in book form, Casterman insisted that Hergé must adhere to a new album format of four sixteen-page signatures, which gave sixty-two pages of story plus a cover page. Though the format reduced the page count, it maintained the same amount of story by reducing the size of the panels reproduced. As The Shooting Star progressed, Hergé cut up and laid out clippings of the strip in an exercise book in preparation for the new layouts. [45] It was the first volume of The Adventures of Tintin to be originally published in the 62-page full-colour format that thereafter was the series standard (as opposed to first being published in a black and white newspaper strip reproduction format that all prior books had done). [46] Casterman published the album in September 1942. [47] Unlike the previous books in the series, because it was printed immediately in colour, it did not need to be totally redrawn. [48] The 177 daily strips from the original serialisation were not enough to fill the 62 pages Casterman had allotted, so Hergé added large panels, such as a half-page panel of a giant telescope on page three. [33] Hergé wanted to include a small gold star inside the "o" of "Étoile" on the cover page, but Casterman refused, deeming it too expensive. [49]
In 1954, Hergé began making various changes to the story for its re-publication. Aware of the controversy surrounding the depiction of Blumenstein, he renamed the character "Bohlwinkel", adopting this name from bollewinkel, a Brussels dialect term for a confectionery store. He later discovered that, by coincidence, Bohlwinkel was also a Jewish name. [50] Trying to tone down the book's anti-American sentiment, he also changed the United States to a fictional South American nation called São Rico, replacing the U.S. flag flown by the Peary's crew with that of the fictional state. [51] In 1959, Hergé made a new list of changes to be made to the artwork in The Shooting Star, which included altering Bohlwinkel's nose, but the changes were postponed and never made. [44]
In 1957, the animation company Belvision Studios produced a string of colour adaptations based on Hergé's original comics, adapting eight of the Adventures into a series of daily five-minute episodes. The Shooting Star was the sixth to be adapted in the second animated series; it was directed by Ray Goossens and written by Greg, a well-known cartoonist who was to become editor-in-chief of Tintin magazine. [52]
In 1991, a second animated series based upon The Adventures of Tintin was produced, this time as a collaboration between the French studio Ellipse and the Canadian animation company Nelvana. The Shooting Star was the eighth story to be adapted and was a single twenty-minute episode. Directed by Stéphane Bernasconi, the series has been praised for being "generally faithful" to the original comics, to the extent that the animation was directly adopted from Hergé's original panels. [53] Bohlwinkel was tactfully kept nameless in the adaptation and his arrest is shown.
In 2010, American cartoonist Charles Burns authored X'ed Out, a graphic novel with a variety of allusions to The Adventures of Tintin. In one scene, the protagonist Nitnit discovers a warehouse containing white eggs with red spots, akin to the mushrooms in The Shooting Star, [54] with the cover of Burns' book paying homage to Hergé. [55] In 2015, the original front cover sketch of the book was sold for €2.5 million to a European investor, Marina David of Petits Papiers-Huberty-Breyne, at the Brussels Antiques and Fine Art Fair. [56]
"The Shooting Star remains to this day a blot on Hergé's record. How did the man who had so eloquently defended the Native Americans in Tintin in America and the Chinese in The Blue Lotus, who only three years before denounced fascism in King Ottokar's Sceptre, become a propagandist for the Axis remains hard to understand. It did not have to be that way".
Randy and Jean-Marc Lofficier [34]
Pierre Assouline remarked that Hergé's attention to accuracy lapsed in The Shooting Star. For instance, the meteorite's approach toward Earth caused a heat wave, while the meteorite itself proceeded to float on the surface of the ocean. In reality, no such heat wave would have been caused, while the meteorite would have plunged to the sea floor, causing a tsunami. [17] He noted that the concept of madness was a recurring theme throughout the story, and that there was "an unreality in the whole adventure". [17] Fellow biographer Benoît Peeters asserted that The Shooting Star was "of great power and brilliant construction". [14] Elsewhere, Peeters wrote that the book was "notable for the entry of the fantastic into Hergé's work". [57]
Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier deemed the antisemitism a "sad moment" in the series, awarding the story one out of five stars. [16] Nevertheless, they felt that the "pre-apocalyptic ambiance is stark and believable", and that the giant mushrooms on the meteorite were a "strange anticipation" of the mushroom-clouds produced by the atomic bombings in 1945. [34] Focusing on the characters of Professor Phostle and Philippulus, they asserted that both resembled Sophocles Sarcophagus from Cigars of the Pharaoh and that the former was "in the Jules Verne tradition" of eccentric professors. [58] According to philosopher Pascal Bruckner, Tintin experts find Philippulus a caricature of Marshal of France Philippe Pétain, who demanded the French repent imaginary sins when he took power. [59] Philippe Goddin stated that the strips for this story "kept the reader daily on tenterhooks in a story replete with new twists and humour". [60]
Harry Thompson described The Shooting Star as "the most important of all Hergé's wartime stories", having "an air of bizarre fantasy" that was unlike his prior work. [61] He observed that the character of Professor Phostle was a prototype for Professor Calculus, introduced later in the series. [62] Michael Farr asserted that the apocalyptic setting of the story reflected the wartime mood in Europe. [39] He characterises the opening pages of the story as being "unique in [Hergé's] work for the feeling of foreboding they convey", adding that "Hergé daringly eschews the strip cartoonist's recognised means of denoting a dream, deliberately confusing the reader". [39] He felt that the "flow of the narrative is less accomplished" than in other stories, with "spurts and rushes followed by slower passages, upsetting the rhythm and pace". [63]
Literary critic Jean-Marie Apostolidès psychoanalysed The Shooting Star, describing it as "the final attempt of the foundling [i.e. Tintin] to rid himself of the bastard [i.e. Haddock] and to preserve the integrity of his former values", pointing out that the first thirteen pages are devoted purely to the boy reporter. [64] He also argued that Phostle and Philippus represent two-halves of "an ambivalent father figure" within the story, with the former prefiguring Calculus "more than any other previous character". [65] He suggests that when hiding on the Aurora, Philippus can be compared to The Phantom of the Opera, as he steals a stick of dynamite and climbs up the ship's mast before threatening to detonate the weapon. [66] Apostolidès believed that the shooting star itself is "more a religious mystery than a scientific one" and that Tintin is therefore "the perfect one to figure it out in some religious way—that is, unrealistically". [65] Apostolidès analysed the political component of the story in terms of "the incarnation of unregulated capitalism against the spirit of European values", arguing that Hergé was adhering to "a utopian vision that, in 1942, smacks of pro-German propaganda". [67]
Literary critic Tom McCarthy believed that The Shooting Star represents the apex of the "right-wing strain" in Hergé's work. [68] He highlighted the instance in which Tintin impersonates God in order to give commands to Philippus as representing one of various occasions in The Adventures of Tintin where "sacred authority manifests itself largely as a voice, and commanding—or commandeering—that voice is what guarantees power". [69] McCarthy further observes that the image of a giant spider in a ball of fire, which appears near the start of the story, reflects the theme of madness that is again present throughout the series. [70] Discussing the political elements of Hergé's series, McCarthy also noted that in the original publication of the story, the spider which climbed in front of the observatory telescope and was thus magnified greatly was initially termed Aranea Fasciata; he saw this as an intentional satire of the threat to Europe posed by fascism. [71]
Georges Prosper Remi, known by the pen name Hergé, from the French pronunciation of his reversed initials RG, was a Belgian comic strip artist. He is best known for creating The Adventures of Tintin, the series of comic albums which are considered one of the most popular European comics of the 20th century. He was also responsible for two other well-known series, Quick & Flupke (1930–1940) and The Adventures of Jo, Zette and Jocko (1936–1957). His works were executed in his distinctive ligne claire drawing style.
Cigars of the Pharaoh is the fourth volume of The Adventures of Tintin, the series of comic albums by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. Commissioned by the conservative Belgian newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle for its children's supplement Le Petit Vingtième, it was serialised weekly from December 1932 to February 1934. The story tells of young Belgian reporter Tintin and his dog Snowy, who are travelling in Egypt when they discover a pharaoh's tomb with dead Egyptologists and boxes of cigars. Pursuing the mystery of the cigars, Tintin and Snowy travel across Southern Arabia and India, and reveal the secrets of an international drug smuggling enterprise.
King Ottokar's Sceptre is the eighth volume of The Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. Commissioned by the conservative Belgian newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle for its children's supplement Le Petit Vingtième, it was serialised weekly from August 1938 to August 1939. Hergé intended the story as a satirical criticism of the expansionist policies of Nazi Germany, in particular the annexation of Austria in March 1938. The story tells of young Belgian reporter Tintin and his dog Snowy, who travel to the fictional Balkan nation of Syldavia, where they combat a plot to overthrow the monarchy of King Muskar XII.
The Red Sea Sharks is the nineteenth volume of The Adventures of Tintin, the comic series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. The story was initially serialised weekly in Belgium's Tintin magazine from October 1956 to January 1958 before being published in a collected volume by Casterman in 1958. The narrative follows the young reporter Tintin, his dog Snowy, and his friend Captain Haddock as they travel to the fictional Middle Eastern kingdom of Khemed with the intention of aiding the Emir Ben Kalish Ezab in regaining control after a coup d'état by his enemies, who are financed by slave traders led by Tintin's old nemesis Rastapopoulos.
The Blue Lotus is the fifth volume of The Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. Commissioned by the conservative Belgian newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle for its children's supplement Le Petit Vingtième, it was serialised weekly from August 1934 to October 1935 before being published in a collected volume by Casterman in 1936. Continuing where the plot of the previous story, Cigars of the Pharaoh, left off, the story tells of young Belgian reporter Tintin and his dog Snowy, who are invited to China in the middle of the 1931 Japanese invasion, where Tintin reveals the machinations of Japanese spies and uncovers a drug-smuggling ring.
Tintin in America is the third volume of The Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. Commissioned by the conservative Belgian newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle for its children's supplement Le Petit Vingtième, it was serialized weekly from September 1931 to October 1932 before being published in a collected volume by Éditions du Petit Vingtième in 1932. The story tells of young Belgian reporter Tintin and his dog Snowy who travel to the United States, where Tintin reports on organized crime in Chicago. Pursuing a gangster across the country, he encounters a tribe of Blackfoot Native Americans before defeating the Chicago crime syndicate.
The Crab with the Golden Claws is the ninth volume of The Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. The story was serialised weekly in Le Soir Jeunesse, the children's supplement to Le Soir, Belgium's leading francophone newspaper, from October 1940 to October 1941 amidst the German occupation of Belgium during World War II. Partway through serialisation, Le Soir Jeunesse was cancelled and the story began to be serialised daily in the pages of Le Soir. The story tells of young Belgian reporter Tintin and his dog Snowy, who travel to Morocco to pursue the international opium smugglers. The story marks the first appearance of main character Captain Haddock.
Tintin in Tibet is the twentieth volume of The Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. It was serialised weekly from September 1958 to November 1959 in Tintin magazine and published as a book in 1960. Hergé considered it his favourite Tintin adventure and an emotional effort, as he created it while suffering from traumatic nightmares and a personal conflict while deciding to leave his wife of three decades for a younger woman. The story tells of the young reporter Tintin in search of his friend Chang Chong-Chen, who the authorities claim has died in a plane crash in the Himalayas. Convinced that Chang has survived and accompanied only by Snowy, Captain Haddock and the Sherpa guide Tharkey, Tintin crosses the Himalayas to the plateau of Tibet, along the way encountering the mysterious Yeti.
The Broken Ear is the sixth volume of The Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by the Belgian cartoonist Hergé. Commissioned by the conservative Belgian newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle for its children's supplement Le Petit Vingtième, it was serialised weekly from December 1935 to February 1937. The story tells of young Belgian reporter Tintin and his dog Snowy, as he searches for a stolen South American fetish, identifiable by its broken right ear, and deals with other thieves who are after it. In doing so, he ends up in the fictional nation of San Theodoros, where he becomes embroiled in a war and discovers the Arumbaya tribe deep in the forest.
Tintin in the Congo is the second volume of The Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by Belgian comic strip artist Hergé. Commissioned by the conservative Belgian newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle for its children's supplement Le Petit Vingtième, it was serialised weekly from May 1930 to June 1931 before being published in a collected volume by Éditions de Petit Vingtième in 1931. The story tells of young Belgian reporter Tintin and his dog Snowy, who are sent to the Belgian Congo to report on events in the country. Amid various encounters with the native Congolese people and wild animals, Tintin unearths a criminal diamond smuggling operation run by the American gangster Al Capone.
The Black Island is the seventh volume of The Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. Commissioned by the conservative Belgian newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle for its children's supplement Le Petit Vingtième, it was serialised weekly from April to November 1937. The story tells of young Belgian reporter Tintin and his dog Snowy, who travel to England in pursuit of a gang of counterfeiters. Framed for theft and hunted by detectives Thomson and Thompson, Tintin follows the criminals to Scotland, discovering their lair on the Black Island.
The Secret of the Unicorn is the eleventh volume of The Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. The story was serialised daily in Le Soir, Belgium's leading francophone newspaper, from June 1942 to January 1943 amidst the Nazi German occupation of Belgium during World War II. The story revolves around young reporter Tintin, his dog Snowy, and his friend Captain Haddock, who discover a riddle left by Haddock's ancestor, the 17th century Sir Francis Haddock, which can lead them to the hidden treasure of the pirate Red Rackham. To unravel the riddle, Tintin and Haddock must obtain three identical models of Sir Francis's ship, the Unicorn, but they discover that criminals are also after three model ships and are willing to kill in order to obtain them.
Red Rackham's Treasure is the twelfth volume of The Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. The story was serialised daily in Le Soir, Belgium's leading francophone newspaper, from February to September 1943 amidst the German occupation of Belgium during World War II. Completing an arc begun in The Secret of the Unicorn, the story tells of young reporter Tintin and his friend Captain Haddock as they launch an expedition to the Caribbean to locate the treasure of the pirate Red Rackham.
The Seven Crystal Balls is the thirteenth volume of The Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. The story was serialised daily in Le Soir, Belgium's leading francophone newspaper, from December 1943 amidst the German occupation of Belgium during World War II. The story was cancelled abruptly following the Allied liberation in September 1944, when Hergé was blacklisted after being accused of collaborating with the occupying Germans. After he was cleared two years later, the story and its follow-up Prisoners of the Sun were then serialised weekly in the new Tintin magazine from September 1946 to April 1948. The story revolves around the investigations of a young reporter Tintin and his friend Captain Haddock into the abduction of their friend Professor Calculus and its connection to a mysterious illness which has afflicted the members of an archaeological expedition to Peru.
Prisoners of the Sun is the fourteenth volume of The Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. The story was serialised weekly in the newly established Tintin magazine from September 1946 to April 1948. Completing an arc begun in The Seven Crystal Balls, the story tells of young reporter Tintin, his dog Snowy, and friend Captain Haddock as they continue their efforts to rescue the kidnapped Professor Calculus by travelling through Andean villages, mountains, and rain forests, before finding a hidden Inca civilisation.
Land of Black Gold is the fifteenth volume of The Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. The story was commissioned by the conservative Belgian newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle for its children's supplement Le Petit Vingtième, in which it was initially serialised from September 1939 until the German invasion of Belgium in May 1940, at which the newspaper was shut down and the story interrupted. After eight years, Hergé returned to Land of Black Gold, completing its serialisation in Belgium's Tintin magazine from September 1948 to February 1950, after which it was published in a collected volume by Casterman in 1950. Set on the eve of a European war, the plot revolves around the attempts of young Belgian reporter Tintin to uncover a militant group responsible for sabotaging oil supplies in the Middle East.
Explorers on the Moon is the seventeenth volume of The Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. The story was serialised weekly in Belgium's Tintin magazine from October 1952 to December 1953 before being published in a collected volume by Casterman in 1954. Completing a story arc begun in the preceding volume, Destination Moon (1953), the narrative tells of the young reporter Tintin, his dog Snowy, and friends Captain Haddock, Professor Calculus, and Thomson and Thompson who are aboard humanity's first crewed rocket mission to the Moon.
The Calculus Affair is the eighteenth volume of The Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by the Belgian cartoonist Hergé. It was serialised weekly in Belgium's Tintin magazine from December 1954 to February 1956 before being published in a single volume by Casterman in 1956. The story follows the attempts of the young reporter Tintin, his dog Snowy, and his friend Captain Haddock to rescue their friend Professor Calculus, who has developed a machine capable of destroying objects with sound waves, from kidnapping attempts by the competing European countries of Borduria and Syldavia.
Destination Moon is the sixteenth volume of The Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. The story was initially serialised weekly in Belgium's Tintin magazine from March to September 1950 and April to October 1952 before being published in a collected volume by Casterman in 1953. The plot tells of young reporter Tintin and his friend Captain Haddock who receive an invitation from Professor Calculus to come to Syldavia, where Calculus is working on a top-secret project in a secure government facility to plan a crewed mission to the Moon.
The Adventures of Totor, Chief Scout of the Cockchafers is the first comic strip series by the Belgian cartoonist and author Hergé, who later came to notability as the author of The Adventures of Tintin series. It was serialised monthly from July 1926 to summer 1929 in Belgian scouting magazine Le Boy Scout Belge, with a nine month break in 1927. The plot synopsis revolved around the eponymous Totor, a Belgian boy scout who travels to visit his aunt and uncle in Texas, United States. Once there, he comes across hostile Native American tribes and gangsters, each of whom he outwits, before returning to Belgium.
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