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A very personal work.
It was just too bad, I can t finish it. Funny to see The Flash as the foreman back then, thinking of the movie. How would that work?
Color comics (esp. superhero comics) lose a lot when printed in B&W.
In context, Flash as a leader was entirely reasonable. First of all, he thinks and moves faster than the rest. Additionally, and more to the point for the audience & creators of the time, Flash was the first of the "revived" Silver Age heroes. In a very real fashion, he led the way into the actual creation of the JLA.
The early 70s was one of the most enjoyable periods of all, but by the end of the decade things had deteriorated.
Aquaman in the DC Cineverse is essentially Prince Namor the Sub-Mariner. And why shouldn't he be? Namor was always way cooler than Arthur Curry.
These days, I spend a lot of time reading American comics and Japanese manga; but it all began with European comic albums. When I was a child, my access to the prolific output of certain Belgian cartoonists like Hergé was, for a variety of reasons, a lot easier than to the vaults of DC and Marvel. An only child, I used to fill my weekends and holidays with comics. Exploring the fantastical with minimal reading and maximum staring at colourful drawings felt like a good compromise. But when I entered my teenage years, the call of comic and manga titles like Batman, Akira, X-men, Ghost In The Shell, Alien, Terminator and Star Wars, sounded louder than ever. And since the Internet facilitated a worldwide purchase of comics, I mostly abandoned my childhood favourites for all the glory of the far West and East. Two Belgian titles, however, have stuck with me: the still ongoing series of Largo Winch, and Tintin. Amidst my monthly subscriptions to comics from overseas, I tend to once in a while return to these two darlings of mine. And today, I have returned to the adventures of Tintin and Snowy.
TINTIN IN THE CONGO was serialized in the early 1930s in a very conservative Belgian newspaper. (Note: I should normally start with TINTIN IN THE LAND OF THE SOVIETS, but Hergé’s first book wasn’t published in the coloured series until 2017.) I prefer to read the coloured version of the album, first published in 1946. In two respects, it differs from the later books in the series. First of all, we see Tintin and Snowy but many of the other famous characters, including professor Calculus, Thomson and Thompson and of course Captain Haddock, are nowhere to be seen yet——not uncommon in the first volume of anything of course. Secondly, this isn’t really a Tintin story but rather a Tintin travel journal, a collection of microscopic adventures taking place in Africa. Later books will tell more intricate tales, some of which have even led to exciting duologies. TINTIN IN THE CONGO comes nowhere near that format. It’s by far the simplest book in the series.
It’s also the most, dare I say, “naïve” book, at least from a narrative point of view. While some of the later Tintin books will include more drama, more tension and more serious ideas, TINTIN IN THE CONGO is undoubtedly aimed at children or at least at people seeking entertainment which has to be approached with the mentality of a child. As I will point out in a little bit, this is actually rather ironic. In any case, Tintin is a famed reporter whose reputation has reached the farthest corners of the Earth, from the inner sanctum of Al Capone’s crime operations to the least civilized tribes in the Congo. Even his talking fox terrier Snowy shares in his eminence. Not only is Tintin famous and beloved, he’s also feared by crooks and crime lords across the globe. His journey to the Congo is reported as a world event and Al Capone even thinks that Tintin’s intention is to investigate and potentially jeopardize his illegal activities in the Belgian colonies. Talk about ego boosting! Fortunately, this provides the book with some minor bits of mysterious antagonism; while Tintin goes out hunting animals or helps backwards tribes to solve the simplest of problems, stereotypical gangsters show up to smear his reputation or flat-out kill him. Never, however, will they be successful because lest we forget, Tintin really could substitute for Superman. And so can Snowy.
At the end of the ride, one must conclude that the fun of the book is in individual panels and cute but very outdated jokes. The level of sophistication the Tintin books will soon obtain is nowhere yet to be found. One might even argue that this book isn’t part of the “real series” yet, not unlike how some people choose to ignore THE HOBBIT as a legitimate part of THE LORD OF THE RINGS. Storywise, an overall cohesion is lacking; if there is a main plot, it’s a weak and unexciting one at best. Given its publication history, this, of course, makes sense. Newspaper funnies were much less concerned with complex storytelling than original comic albums. Hergé, it seems, had yet to discover his true intentions with the title. That said, as an introduction to the characters of Tintin and Snowy, to the drawing style of Hergé and his political sensibilities, this book is a good entry point for any future Tintin fan.
Let us indeed talk politics, for there’s a catch. Hergé has been accused of making profane use of ethnical stereotypes, reducing almost everyone but lily-white men to a vastly inferior status. This is all the more confrontational since most books in the series will take place in exotic countries. Tintin will have dealings with the Chinese, the Indians, the Egyptians, the Arabs, the Africans, the South-Americans, … and often, though much less pronounced in later books, a subtext of Western superiority flows through the story. It’s there if you want to find it, in the depiction of nasty characters, in how people are drawn, in their limited vocabulary and in the backwards nature of their culture. TINTIN IN THE CONGO has, for that very reason, been the subject of much controversy, in fact, forcing some publishers and bookshops to sell this one in the mature section. As stated a few paragraphs ago, this is a bit awkward given the childish nature of the story. However, the way black people are drawn and presented, their physical features exaggerated and their lack of education highly accentuated, is quite staggering from a modern perspective. Furthermore, a white dog shouts at the natives for being lazy... What may have seemed innocent and funny in pre-WWII days, tends to send cold chills down a modern man’s spine. Then again, it would be quite unfair to pull Hergé’s work out of its Zeitgeist. Though it’s not an excuse as such, the truth remains that this is how things were back in the day, when the Belgian Congo was a criminally exploited region of the world. It truly is a troubled and very dark page in my small country’s otherwise unremarkable history, but against this ill-fated background, the events in TINTIN IN THE CONGO can at least be understood if not condoned.
Another thing worth noticing is the ease with which animal life is taken in this book. Snakes, leopards and chimpanzees are killed with a triumphant smile and Tintin even commits to shooting an elephant, only to deprive the animal of its ivory. Once again, it is clear that things must be viewed through historical glasses lest we accuse Hergé of more than what he probably was: a child of his time. Other authors, like H.P. Lovecraft and indeed Ian Fleming, have also grown less acceptable in certain circles, but they too were not all that remarkable for their alleged racism in “those” days. Either way, between slaughtering cute animals and joking about it, and reducing natives to just one evolutionary step above amoebas, TINTIN IN THE CONGO was really nothing spectacularly obscene in the 1930s or 1940s, and should probably be allowed a little more breathing room, even today, than some are willing to give it. One can criticize the past, but to inflict harsh censorship on it is to probably lend it more detestable weight than the author had ever intended.
TINTIN IN THE CONGO is not a bad place to start, though it is in no way representative of the other Tintin books. It is by far the weakest and least interesting album in the series, but it comes with a fair dose of silly humour and a few good introductory moments for the two lead characters. Its unfortunate dismissal of cultural emancipation and animal rights should never be an obstacle, given where this comes from. In any case, the book maintains a good pace and never lingers too long on any individual micro-adventure. First impressions are everything, yes, but take my word for it, it will get better soon!
DD’s TINTIN chart:
TINTIN IN THE CONGO – 5/10
Tintin’s successful journey into the Belgian Congo has gained him a lot of extra attention from Al Capone and the other crime syndicates in America. Rather coincidentally, America is exactly where Tintin and his loyal companion Snowy will travel next. So naturally, the minute Tintin arrives in the USA, wicked cabbies and criminals everywhere try to kidnap him and even kill him. But Tintin proves relentless and, though he’s merely a reporter, actually dares to “arrest” some of them. The opposition, however, proves almost equally relentless, and so Tintin must flee into the land of the Indians, where a replay of last album’s greatest hits awaits us.
TINTIN IN AMERICA has a story to tell. Though still very simple and fairly unexciting, it’s a story and that’s more than what the former album had to offer. This time, the American stereotype is highly exaggerated. Powerful cars, oil fever, criminals and Coca-Cola all over the place and Indians looking for their “peace pipe”, it’s all here. But even though this is Tintin versus Chicago crime lords, the storytelling hasn’t fully detached itself from the linear-sequence-of-minuscule-adventures model. Individual funny moments take precedence over the bigger picture, revealing the newspaper publication it started out as. As before, that’s not a bad thing, though it feels a bit immature at times.
That said, twice the album mentions crimes without a clear suspect, in response to which several [insert plural form of N-word here] were hanged. Literally. Either Hergé was approaching America’s problematic racial tensions with a satirical “joke”, or he legitimately thought it funny to have black people executed for no reason. If the latter is true, it’s almost unbelievable that Spielberg made a Tintin film. If not, it’s still a very disturbing joke, no matter when or with which sensibilities it is taken in.
Overall, this is a good book for passing some time, but it still comes nowhere near the quality of books published further down the line.
DD’s TINTIN chart:
TINTIN IN THE CONGO – 5/10
TINTIN IN AMERICA – 5,5/10
This book normally goes for $90+ but an online store was having a 40% off sale and I hopped on it! I figured I'd never get an opportunity like that again!
The story is cool- it toys with the scary notion that Michael could be after you for the most random reason (like Halloween 1, when he only started following Laurie after she dropped the key off at the Myers house). This story has a young woman who just happens to resemble Michael's sister Judith. Besides that, this plays out just like it could have been one of the movies.... one of the better ones!
For seemingly no particular reason, Tintin and Snowy are on a boat sailing to Egypt. They meet a strange character obsessed with finding a certain spot in the desert and decide to accompany him, only to find a tomb with drug infused cigars upon arrival. I’ll let that sink in for a moment. Intoxicated and subdued, the threesome is thrown in the ocean in sarcophagi. What follows is a long journey that will eventually take Tintin and Snowy to India and a secret cult overlooking a convoluted drug operation.
Almost immediately, this album towers above its two predecessors in various ways. Hergé’s visual style has matured since last time, with much less emphasis on insultingly exaggerated physical features of foreigners on the one hand and the incorporation of pictorial metaphor on the other. The narrative is far more solid and more story-driven than ever before. The entire album feels more like the fruit of planning ahead, even if Hergé, at the time, was still just making it up from week to week as his work was needed for the newspapers. Lastly, the introduction of the comically inept duo Thompson and Thomson brings this book closer to the better known Tintin adventures yet to come.
Overall, CIGARS OF THE PHARAOH is a fairly decent Tintin book, definitely a step up from its silly and somewhat infantile predecessors.
DD’s TINTIN chart:
TINTIN IN THE CONGO – 5/10
TINTIN IN AMERICA – 5,5/10
CIGARS OF THE PHARAOH – 7/10
Still in India, relaxing after his previous adventure, Tintin receives word from Shang-Hai where his presence is most wanted. Once there, Tintin learns of a doctor who has developed an antidote for the “crazy poison” first introduced as a weapon in CIGARS OF THE PHARAOH. But the same enemy that narrowly eluded him in that previous book is now on to him once again. The doctor has vanished and while Tintin tries to find him, obstacles and dangers of all kinds await him on his path.
Squeezed between Japan and China in a propagandistic bit of warfare, Tintin must once again learn that no-one is to be trusted. People introduce themselves as being from camp A but turn out to be in camp B. This constant back-and-forth between forming new partnerships and being deceived again has been a part of the Tintin books since TINTIN IN AMERICA. With a myriad of new faces introduced with the turn of almost every other page, it gets hard sometimes to keep track of who is who even for us, the reader. But any effort to stay with the plot does pay off, as Hergé’s writing in THE BLUE LOTUS once again feels like an improvement over the previous books.
Rather interesting, it must be said, is the little speech given halfway through the book about racial and cultural prejudice, almost as if Hergé wanted to make amends for the borderline tasteless dialogue in the first two albums. It certainly makes the books far more comfortable to read.
THE BLUE LOTUS still lacks the mystery and fun of what the series will deliver further down the line, but it is a worthy successor to CIGARS OF THE PHARAOH.
DD’s TINTIN chart:
TINTIN IN THE CONGO – 5/10
TINTIN IN AMERICA – 5,5/10
CIGARS OF THE PHARAOH – 7/10
THE BLUE LOTUS - 7/10
I loved the Doug Moench/Bill Sienkiewicz run. True art.
They are indeed very good. Especially the ones released in the Hulk magazine.
What a team.
When a South-American statue is stolen from a museum but returned the next day, Tintin is suspicious and he has every right to be. The original statue has a broken ear, the returned statue doesn't. Either the thief fixed the broken ear, or the returned statue is a fake. Tintin tracks the thief--it's actually two thieves--down, only to discover that the original statue is of high value. A trip to South-America seems long overdue.
South-American regimes tend to hop from one coup to the next. Tintin gets ping-ponged between opposing fractions before finally making the trip to the jungle where the secret of the statue with the broken ear may finally be discovered.
THE BROKEN EAR tells a very concise story and takes us to various locations. Deceitful characters and fights with Tintin in the middle rather than on either side remain part of Hergé's menu. But the author is so much more in control of pace, jokes and a good sense of adventure than in the first couple of albums. Not once does he feel tempted to acknowledge or exploit negative stereotypes, except when producing thick accents in his text balloons for certain characters. This is another step up for Tintin.
DD’s TINTIN chart:
TINTIN IN THE CONGO – 5/10
TINTIN IN AMERICA – 5,5/10
CIGARS OF THE PHARAOH – 7/10
THE BLUE LOTUS - 7/10
THE BROKEN EAR - 7,5/10
Had only read parts of this as a kid.
Album or those Tempo re-releases?
The latter. Not as good as I remembered it. Probably one of the weaker entries.
How good is the print quality in these?
Pretty good, but not as good as Tempo in 1974, when they used glossy paper.
I see. Guess they use quite thick paper now? Have seen some bad print quality in more than a few releases in later years - especially stuff with a lot of dark colouring, and/or a lot use of black. Should probably try to get a few of these re-releases at some point. Back issues are available online too.
I have bought them all so far, twenty I believe, as there has been at least one series that has interested me in each. Same with the next one.
There are that many already? Will probably just buy those I find the most interesting. Alan Falk (Ric Hochet) and Bruno Brazil are the comics I'm looking to check out anyway.
They are both in the one out now.
Thanks! I'll look out for that issue! Do they publish the stories chronologically?