Tintin in America (Tintin en Amérique) | |
---|---|
Date |
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Series | The Adventures of Tintin |
Publisher | Le Petit Vingtième |
Creative team | |
Creator | Hergé |
Original publication | |
Published in | Le Petit Vingtième |
Date of publication | 3 September 1931 – 20 October 1932 |
Language | French |
Translation | |
Publisher | Methuen |
Date | 1973 |
Translator |
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Chronology | |
Preceded by | Tintin in the Congo (1931) |
Followed by | Cigars of the Pharaoh (1934) |
Tintin in America (French: Tintin en Amérique) 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.
Following the publication of Tintin in the Congo , Hergé researched a story set in the United States, desiring to reflect his concerns regarding the treatment of American Indian communities by the U.S. government. Bolstered by a publicity stunt, Tintin in America was a commercial success in Belgium and was soon republished in France. Hergé continued The Adventures of Tintin with Cigars of the Pharaoh , and the series became a defining part of the Franco-Belgian comics tradition. In 1945, Tintin in America was re-drawn and colored in Hergé's ligne-claire style for republication by Casterman, with further alterations made at the request of his American publisher for a 1973 edition. The critical reception of the work has been mixed, with commentators on The Adventures of Tintin arguing that although it represents an improvement on the preceding two installments, it still reflects many of the problems that were visible in them. The story was adapted for both the 1976–77 West End play Tintin's Great American Adventure and the 1991 Ellipse/Nelvana animated series The Adventures of Tintin , which aired as the series finale.
In 1932, Tintin, a reporter for Le Petit Vingtième, goes with his dog Snowy on an assignment to Chicago, Illinois, to fight against the city's organised crime syndicate. Soon after arriving there, Tintin and Snowy are kidnapped by gangsters and brought before mobster boss Al Capone, whose criminal enterprises in the Congo were previously thwarted by Tintin. With Snowy's help, Tintin subdues his captors, but as he goes to inform the police, they reject his claims, and the gangsters escape while Tintin is away. After surviving attempts on his life, Tintin meets Capone's rival Bobby Smiles, who heads the Gangsters' Syndicate of Chicago. Tintin is unpersuaded by Smiles' attempt to hire him, and after Tintin orchestrates the arrest of his gang, Smiles escapes and heads west. [1]
Tintin pursues Smiles to the Midwestern town of Redskin City. Here, Smiles convinces the Blackfoot Confederacy that Tintin is their enemy, and when Tintin arrives, he is captured and threatened with execution. After escaping, Tintin discovers a source of underground petroleum. Oil companies offer Tintin large sums of money for the land, but despite Tintin stating that the Blackfeet own the land, the United States Army forces them to leave and oil companies build a city on the site within 24 hours. Tintin evades a lynch mob and a wildfire before coming across train tracks which he decides to follow in order to get back to civilization and continue on Smiles' trail. However, he is ambushed by the gangster and one of his associates, who ties him down to the tracks to be killed by a train scheduled to come through. However, the train happens to stop right before running him over and he is safely rescued, allowing him to continue on his search and find Smiles' remote hideaway cabin. After a brief altercation, he finally captures the gangster. [2]
Returning to Chicago with his prisoner, Tintin is praised as a hero, but gangsters kidnap Snowy and send Tintin a ransom note. Tracing the kidnappers to a local mansion, Tintin hides in a suit of armor and frees Snowy from the dungeon. The following day, Tintin is invited to a cannery, but it is a trap set by gangsters, who trick him into falling into the meat-grinding machine. Tintin is saved when the machine workers go on strike and then apprehends the mobsters. In thanks, he is invited to a banquet in his honor, where he is kidnapped. His captors tie him to a dumbbell and throw him into Lake Michigan to drown, but Tintin survives by floating to the surface, with his dumbbell having been accidentally replaced with a fake. Gangsters posing as police capture him, but he once again overwhelms them and hands them over to the authorities. Finally, Tintin's success against the gangsters is celebrated by a ticker-tape parade, following which he returns to Europe. [3]
Georges Remi—best known under the pen name Hergé—was the editor and illustrator of Le Petit Vingtième ("The Little Twentieth"), [4] a children's supplement to Le Vingtième Siècle ("The Twentieth Century"), a conservative Belgian newspaper based in Hergé's native Brussels. Run by the Abbé Norbert Wallez, the paper described itself as a "Catholic Newspaper for Doctrine and Information" and disseminated a far-right, fascist viewpoint. [5] According to Harry Thompson, such political ideas were common in 1930s Belgium, and Hergé's milieu was permeated with conservative ideas revolving around "patriotism, Catholicism, strict morality, discipline, and naivety". [6]
In 1929, Hergé began The Adventures of Tintin comic strip for Le Petit Vingtième, about the exploits of fictional young Belgian reporter Tintin. Having been fascinated with the outdoor world of Scouting and the way of life he called "Red Indians" since boyhood, Hergé wanted to set Tintin's first adventure among the Native Americans in the United States. [7] However, Wallez ordered him to set his first adventure in the Soviet Union as a piece of anti-socialist propaganda for children ( Tintin in the Land of the Soviets ) [8] and the second had been set in the Belgian Congo to encourage colonial sentiment ( Tintin in the Congo ). [9]
Tintin in America was the third story in the series. At the time, the Belgian far-right was deeply critical of the United States, as it was of the Soviet Union. [10] Wallez—and to a lesser degree Hergé—shared these opinions, viewing the country's capitalism, consumerism, and mechanization as a threat to traditional Belgian society. [11] Wallez wanted Hergé to use the story to denounce American capitalism and had little interest in depicting Native Americans, which was Hergé's primary desire. [12] As a result, Tintin's encounter with the natives took up only a sixth of the narrative. [13] Hergé sought to demystify the "cruel savage" stereotype of the Natives that had been widely perpetuated in western films. [10] His depiction of the Natives was broadly sympathetic, yet he also depicted them as gullible and naïve, much as he had depicted the Congolese in the previous Adventure. [13]
Hergé attempted greater research into the United States than he had done for the Belgian Congo or Soviet Union. [14] To learn more about Native Americans, Hergé read Paul Coze and René Thévenin's 1928 book Mœurs et histoire des Indiens Peaux-Rouges ("Customs and History of the Redskin Indians") [15] and visited Brussels' ethnographic museum. [16] As a result, his depiction of the Blackfoot Native Americans was "essentially accurate", with artefacts such as tipis and traditional costume copied from photographs. [16] Although Hergé's depiction of the Native Americans wearing war bonnets could be considered stereotypical, the Blackfeet were one of the few tribes who actually did wear these. [17]
To learn about Chicago and its gangsters, he read Georges Duhamel's 1930 book Scènes de la vie future ("Scenes from Future Life"). Written in the context of the Wall Street Crash of 1929, Duhamel's work contained strong anti-consumerist and anti-modernist sentiment, criticising the U.S.'s increased mechanisation and standardisation from a background of European conservatism; this would have resonated with both Wallez and Hergé's viewpoints. Many elements of Tintin in America, such as the abattoir scene, were adopted from Duhamel's descriptions. [18]
Hergé was also influenced by a special edition of radical anti-conformist magazine Le Crapouillot (The Mortar Shell) that was published in October 1930. Devoted to the United States, it contained a variety of photographs that influenced his depiction of the country. [19] Hergé used its images of skyscrapers as a basis for his depiction of Chicago and adopted its account of Native Americans being evicted from their land when oil was discovered there. [20] He was particularly interested in the articles in the magazine written by a reporter Claude Blanchard, who had recently traveled the U.S. He reported on the situation in Chicago and New York City and met with Native Americans in New Mexico. [21] Blanchard's article discussed the gangster George Moran, whom literary critic Jean-Marie Apostolidès believed provided the basis for the character Bobby Smiles. [22]
Hergé's depiction of the country was also influenced by American cinema, [23] and many of his illustrations were based on cinematic imagery. [24] Jean-Marc Lofficier and Randy Lofficier thought that Tintin's arrest of Smiles had been influenced by the Buffalo Bill stories, and that the idea of the gangsters taking Tintin away in their car came from Little Caesar . [25] Despite his extensive research into American life, Hergé accidentally drew steering wheels on the right side of cars in some panels of the comic. [26] It has been suggested that strongman Arthur Saxon, who died a decade prior to serialization of Tintin in America, may have influenced the character Billy Bolivar. [27]
One of the individuals that Hergé could have learned about through Blanchard's article was the Chicago-based American gangster Al Capone. [23] In the preceding story, Tintin in the Congo, Capone had been introduced as a character within the series. There, he was responsible for running a diamond smuggling racket that Tintin exposed, setting up for further confrontation in Tintin in America. [13] Capone was one of only two real-life individuals to be named in The Adventures of Tintin, [23] and was the only real-life figure to appear as a character in the series. [25] [ dubious – discuss ] In the original version, Hergé avoided depicting him directly, either illustrating the back of his head or hiding his face behind a scarf; this was altered in the second version, in which Capone's face was depicted. [28] It is not known if Capone ever learned about his inclusion in the story, [29] although during initial serialisation he would have been preoccupied with his trial and ensuing imprisonment. [30]
Tintin in America began serialization in Le Petit Vingtième on 3 September 1931, under the title of Les Aventures de Tintin, reporter, à Chicago (The Adventures of Tintin, Reporter, in Chicago). The use of "Chicago" over "America" reflected Wallez's desire for the story to focus on a critique of American capitalism and crime, for which the city was internationally renowned. [31] Partway through serialisation, as Tintin left Chicago and headed west, Hergé changed the title of the serial to Les Aventures de Tintin, reporter, en Amérique (The Adventures of Tintin, Reporter, in America). [32] The dog Snowy was given a diminished role in Tintin in America, which contained the last instance in the Adventures in which Tintin and Snowy have a conversation where they can understand each other. [33] In the banquet scene, a reference is made to a famous actress named Mary Pikefort, an allusion to the real-life actress Mary Pickford. [34] That same scene also featured a prototype for the character of Rastapopoulos, who was properly introduced in the following Cigars of the Pharaoh story. [35]
The strip's serialization coincided with the publication of another of Hergé's comics set in the United States: Les Aventures de "Tim" l'écureuil au Far-West (The Adventures of Tim the Squirrel Out West), published in sixteen installments by the Brussels department store L'Innovation. Produced every Thursday, the series was reminiscent of Hergé's earlier Totor series. [36] Alongside these stories, Hergé was involved in producing his weekly Quick and Flupke comic strip and drawing front covers for Le Petit Vingtième, as well as providing illustrations for another of Le Vingtième Siècle's supplements, Votre "Vingtième" Madame, and undertaking freelance work designing advertisements. [30] In September 1931, partway through the story's serialization, Hergé took a brief holiday in Spain with two friends, and in May 1932 was recalled to military service for two weeks. [37] On 20 July '32, Hergé married Germaine Kieckens, who was Wallez's secretary. Although neither of them was entirely happy with the union, they had been encouraged to do so by Wallez, who demanded that all his staff marry and who personally carried out the wedding ceremony. [38] After a honeymoon in Vianden, Luxembourg, the couple moved into an apartment in the rue Knapen, Schaerbeek. [39]
As he had done with the prior two Adventures, Wallez organized a publicity stunt to mark the culmination of Tintin in America, in which an actor portraying Tintin arrived in Brussels; it proved the most popular yet. [29] In 1932, the series was collected and published in a single volume by Les Éditions de Petit Vingtième, [40] coinciding with their publication of the first collected volume of Quick and Flupke. [41] A second edition was produced in France by Éditions Ogéo-Cœurs-Vaillants in 1934, while that same year Casterman published an edition, the first of The Adventures of Tintin that they released. [42] In 1936, Casterman asked Hergé to add several new color plates to a reprint of Tintin in America, which he agreed to. They also asked him to replace the cover with one depicting a car chase, but he refused. [32]
In the 1940s, when Hergé's popularity had increased, he redrew many of the original black-and-white Tintin adventures in color using the ligne claire ("clear line") drawing style he had developed, so that they visually fitted in with the newer Tintin stories. Tintin in America was reformatted and colored in 1945 [42] and saw publication in 1946. [13]
Various changes were made in the second edition. Some of the social commentaries regarding the poor treatment of Native Americans by the government were toned down. [13] The name of the Native tribe was changed from the Orteils Ficelés("Tied Toes") to the Pieds Noirs ("Black Feet"). [25] Perhaps because Al Capone's power had diminished in the intervening years, Hergé depicted Capone's scarred face in the 1945 version. [25] He removed the reference to Mary Pickford from the ceremonial dinner scene and deleted two Chinese hoodlums who tried to eat Snowy. [43] References to Belgium was also removed, allowing the story to have a greater international appeal. [20]
When the second version of the story was translated into English by Michael Turner and Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper, they made several alterations to the text. For instance, Monsieur Tom Hawke, whose name was a pun on tomahawk, was renamed Mr. Maurice Oyle, and the Swift factory was renamed Grynd Corp. [44] Other changes were made to render the story more culturally understandable to an Anglophone readership; whereas the factory originally sold its mix of dogs, cats, and rats as hare pâté—a food uncommon in Britain—the English translation rendered the mix as salami. [44] In another instance, garlic, pepper, and salt were added to the mixture in the French version, but this was changed to mustard, pepper, and salt for the English version, again reflecting British culinary tastes. [44]
In 1957, Hergé considered sending Tintin back to North America for another adventure featuring the indigenous people. He decided against it, instead of producing Tintin in Tibet . [45] Although Tintin in America and much of Hergé's earlier work displayed anti-American sentiment, he later grew more favourable to American culture, befriending one of the country's most prominent artists, Andy Warhol. [46] Hergé himself would first visit the United States in 1971, accompanied by his second wife Fanny Rodwell, and meet Edgar Red Cloud, the great-grandson of the warrior chief Red Cloud. With a letter of recommendation from his friend Father Gall, he was invited to indulge his childhood desire to meet with real "Red Indians"—members of the Oglala Lakota on their Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota—and take part in a pow wow. [16]
American publishers of Tintin in America were uneasy regarding the scene in which the Blackfoot Natives are forcibly removed from their land. Hergé nevertheless refused to remove it. [47] For the 1973 edition published in the U.S., the publishers made Hergé remove African-American characters from the book, and redraw them as Whites or Hispanics because they did not want to encourage racial integration among children. [48] That same year, the original black-and-white version was republished in a French-language collected volume with Tintin in the Land of the Soviets and Tintin in the Congo, the first part of the Archives Hergé collection. [42] In 1983, a facsimile of the original was published by Casterman. [42]
In 2020, Editions Moulinsart published a newly colorized version of the original 1932 B&W version of Tintin in America, with all-new English translation by Michael Farr. [49]
Jean-Marc Lofficier and Randy Lofficier opined that Hergé had made "another leap forward" with Tintin in America, noting that while it still "rambles on", it is "more tightly plotted" than its predecessors. [25] They believed that the illustrations showed "marked progress" and that for the first time, several of the frames could be seen as "individual pieces of art". [50] Believing that it was the first work with the "intangible epic quality" they thought characterized The Adventures of Tintin, they awarded it two out of five stars. [50] They considered Bobby Smiles to be "the first great villain" of the series, [25] and also thought that Mike MacAdam, the incompetent hotel detective featured in the comic, was a precursor to Thomson and Thompson, while another character, the drunken sheriff, anticipated Captain Haddock. [25] The Lofficiers believed that Hergé had successfully synthesized all of the "classic American myths" into a single narrative that "withstands comparison with the vision of America" presented in Gustave Le Rouge and Gustave Guitton's La Conspiration Des Milliardaires (The Billionaires' Conspiracy). They thought that Hergé's depiction of the exploitation of Native Americans was an "astonishing piece of the narrative". [51]
Harry Thompson considered the story to be "little more than a tourist ramble" across the U.S., describing it as only "marginally more sophisticated" than its predecessors. [12] He nevertheless thought that it contained many indicators of "greater things", [33] remarking that Hergé's sympathy for the Natives was "a revolutionary attitude" for 1931. [52] Thompson also opined that the book's "highlight" was on page 29 of the 1945 version, in which oil is discovered on Native land, following which they are cleared off by the U.S. Army, and a complete city is constructed on the site within 24 hours. [52] Biographer Benoît Peeters praised the strip's illustrations, feeling that they exhibited "a quality of lightness" and showed that Hergé was fascinated by the United States despite the anti-Americanism of his milieu. [53] He nevertheless considered it "in the same mode" as the earlier Adventures, calling it "a collection of clichés and snapshots of well-known places". [54] Elsewhere, Peeters commented that throughout the story, Tintin rushes around the country seeing as much as possible, likening him to the stereotypical American tourist. [55]
"Hergé paints a picture of 1930s America that is exciting, hectic, corrupt, fully automated and dangerous, one where the dollar is all-powerful. It rings true enough, at least as much as the image projected by Hollywood at the time".
Michael Farr, 2001. [56]
Hergé biographer Pierre Assouline believed Tintin in America to be "more developed and detailed" than the prior Adventures, [23] representing the cartoonist's "greatest success" in a "long time". [10] Opining that the illustrations were "superior" due to Hergé's accumulated experience, he nevertheless criticized instances where the story exhibited directional problems; for instance, in one scene, Tintin enters the tunnel, but Assouline notes that while he is supposed to be traveling downward, he is instead depicted climbing upstairs. [10] Such directional problems were also criticized by Michael Farr, [20] who nevertheless thought the story "action-packed", with a more developed sense of satire and therefore greater depth than Soviets or Congo. [34] He considered the depiction of Tintin climbing along the ledge of the skyscraper on page 10 to be "one of the most remarkable" illustrations in the entire series, inducing a sense of vertigo in the reader. [46] He also opined that the depiction of the Blackfoot Natives being forced from their land was the "strongest political statement" in the series, illustrating that Hergé had "an acute political conscience" and was not the advocate of racial superiority that he has been accused of being. [13] Comparing the 1932 and 1945 versions of the comic, Farr believed that the latter was technically superior, but had lost the "freshness" of the original. [20]
Literary critic Jean-Marie Apostolidès of Stanford University thought that in Tintin in America, Hergé had intentionally depicted the wealthy industrialists as being very similar to the gangsters. He noted that this negative portrayal of capitalists continued into later Adventures of Tintin with characters such as Basil Bazarov in The Broken Ear . [57] He considered this indicative of "a more ambivalent stance" to the right-wing agenda that Hergé had formerly adhered to. [22] Another literary critic, Tom McCarthy, concurred, believing that Tintin in America exhibited Hergé's "left-wing counter tendency" through attacking the racism and capitalist mass production of the U.S. [58] McCarthy believed that the work exposed social and political process as a "mere charade", much as Hergé had previously done in Tintin in the Land of the Soviets. [59] Years later, while brainstorming what ultimately became Tintin in Tibet , Hergé considered bringing Tintin back to the United States to aid a group of Native Americans in defending themselves from a large corporation willing to drill their land for oil, but Hergé felt in reflection that retracing old ground would be a step backwards and discarded the idea. [60]
Tintin in America was adapted into a 1991 episode of The Adventures of Tintin television series by French studio Ellipse and Canadian animation company Nelvana. [61] Directed by Stéphane Bernasconi, the character of Tintin was voiced by Thierry Wermuth in French and by Colin O'Meara in English. [61] Besides being aired as the last episode of the series (despite being the earliest book adapted), it is also the most altered episode, amounting to almost a completely new story. For example, the involvement of the Native Americans has been removed, giving the gangster element the main focus. Bobby Smiles, who was the head of a rival gang to Al Capone as depicted in the book, became a henchman of the latter (which is unnamed) as depicted in the series. The ending of the story also rewritten; in the book, Tintin returns safely to Europe, however, in the televised episode, he receives a phone call about the unknown situation and leaves his hotel room to solve it.
In 2002, French artist Jochen Gerner published a socio-political satire based on Tintin in America titled TNT en Amérique. It consisted of a replica of Hergé's book with most of the images blocked out with black ink; the only images left visible are those depicting violence, commerce, or divinity. [62] When interviewed as to this project, Gerner stated that his pervasive use of black was a reference to "the censure, to the night, the obscurity (the evil), the mystery of things not entirely revealed". [63]
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.
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.
The Shooting Star 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.
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.
Tintin in the Land of the Soviets is the first volume of The Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. Commissioned by the conservative Belgian newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle as anti-communist satire for its children's supplement Le Petit Vingtième, it was serialised weekly from January 1929 to May 1930 before being published in a collected volume by Éditions du Petit Vingtième in 1930. The story tells of young Belgian reporter Tintin and his dog Snowy, who are sent to the Soviet Union to report on Stalin's government. Knowing of his intentions, however, the secret police of the OGPU are sent to hunt him down.
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.
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.
Tintin is the titular protagonist of The Adventures of Tintin, the comic series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. The character was created in 1929 and introduced in Le Petit Vingtième, a weekly youth supplement to the Belgian newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle. Appearing as a young man with a round face and quiff hairstyle, Tintin is depicted as a precocious, multitalented reporter who travels the world with his dog Snowy.
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.