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Tintin is a reporter, and Hergé uses this to present the character in a number of adventures which were contemporaneous to the period in which he was working (most notably, the Bolshevik uprising in Russia and the Second World War) and sometimes even prescient (as in the case of the moon landings). Hergé also created a world for Tintin which managed to reduce detail to a simplified but recognisable and realistic representation, an effect Hergé was able to achieve with reference to a well-maintained archive of images.

Though Tintin’s adventures are formulaic—presenting a mystery which is then solved logically—Hergé infused the strip with his own sense of humour, and created supporting characters who, although predictable, were filled with charm that allowed the reader to engage with them. This formula of comfortable, humorous predictability is similar to the presentation of cast in the Peanuts strip or The Three Stooges. Hergé also had a great understanding of the mechanics of the comic strip, especially pacing, a skill displayed in The Castafiore Emerald, a work he meant to be packed with tension in which nothing actually happens.

Hergé initially improvised the creation of Tintin’s adventures, uncertain how Tintin would escape from whatever predicament appeared. Not until after the completion of Cigars of the Pharaoh was Hergé encouraged to research and plan his stories. The impetus came from Zhang Chongren, a Chinese student who, on hearing Hergé was to send Tintin to China in his next adventure, urged him to avoid perpetuating the perceptions Europeans had of China at the time. Hergé and Zhang collaborated on the next serial, The Blue Lotus, which has been cited by critics as Hergé’s first masterpiece. Interestingly, The Blue Lotus includes a reference to the European stereotypes associated with China, in a context that causes them to appear ridiculous.

Other changes to the mechanics of creating the strip were forced on Hergé by outside events. The Second World War and the invasion of Belgium by Hitler’s armies saw the closure of the newspaper in which Tintin was serialised. Work was halted on Land of Black Gold, and the already published Tintin in America and The Black Island were banned by the Nazi censors, who were concerned at their presentation of America and Britain. However, Hergé was able to continue with Tintin’s adventures, publishing four books and serialising two more adventures in a German-licensed newspaper.

During and after the German occupation Hergé was accused of being a collaborator because of the Nazi control of the paper (Le Soir), and he was briefly taken for interrogation after the war. He claimed that he was simply doing a job under the occupation, like a plumber or carpenter. His work of this period, unlike earlier and later work, is politically neutral and resulted in stories such as The Secret of the Unicorn and Red Rackham’s Treasure; but the apocalyptic The Shooting Star reflects the foreboding Hergé felt during this uncertain political period.

A post-war paper shortage forced changes in the format of the books. Hergé had usually allowed the stories to develop to a length that suited the story, but with paper now in short supply, publishers Casterman asked Hergé to consider using smaller panel sizes and adopt an arbitrary length of 62 pages. Hergé took on more staff (the first ten books having been produced by himself and his wife), eventually building a studio system.

The adoption of color allowed Hergé to expand the scope of the works. His use of color was more advanced than that of American comics of the time, with better production values allowing a combination of the four printing shades and thus a cinematographic approach to lighting and shading. Hergé and his studio would allow images to fill half pages or more, simply to detail and accentuate the scene, using colour to emphasise important points. Hergé notes this fact, stating “I consider my stories as movies. No narration, no descriptions, emphasis is given to images”.

Hergé’s personal life also affected the series; Tintin in Tibet was heavily influenced by his nervous breakdown. His nightmares, which he reportedly described as being “all white”, are reflected in the snowy landscapes. The plot has Tintin set off in search of Chang Chong-Chen, previously seen in The Blue Lotus, and the piece contains no villains and little moral judgement, with Hergé even refusing to confirm the Snowman of the Himalayas as “abominable”.

The conclusion of Tintin’s adventures was untimely. Hergé’s death on 3 March 1983 left the twenty-fourth and final adventure, Tintin and Alph-Art, unfinished. The plot saw Tintin embroiled in the world of modern art, and the story ended as he is about to be killed, encased in perspex and presented as a work of art, although it is unknown whether he really dies at the end of the story.

It is the year 1931. Having encountered Al Capone’s gangsters in his last adventure, Tintin in the Congo, Tintin is sent to Chicago, Illinois to clean up the city’s criminals. He is captured by gangsters several times, soon meeting Capone himself. Although Tintin temporarily captures Capone and some of his henchmen, the policeman he calls to help arrest the gangsters does not believe his story and tries to capture him instead (Tintin’s failure to capture Capone reflects the fact that Capone was still active when the comic strip was written).

After several attempts on his life, Tintin meets Capone’s rival, the devious Bobby Smiles, who heads the Gangsters Syndicate of Chicago. Tintin spends much of the book trying to capture Smiles, pursuing him to the Midwestern town of Redskin City. There he is captured by a Blackfoot Indian tribe (fooled by Smiles into thinking Tintin is their enemy), and discovers oil. This unintentionally causes the expulsion of the tribe, as unscrupulous oil corporations take over their land, depriving them of any share in the oil profits (see Ideology of Tintin). Finally, Tintin captures Smiles, and ships him back to Chicago in a crate.

After Smiles is captured, an unnamed bald gangster kidnaps Tintin’s dog, Snowy. Tintin manages to save him and arrests most of the bald gangster’s henchmen, although the gangster himself manages to escape. The next day the bald gangster orders a subordinate named Maurice Oyle to invite Tintin to a cannery, where Tintin is tricked into falling into the meat grinding machine. However, because the workers at the cannery are on strike, the meat grinder is deactivated and Tintin escapes. Tintin later tricks and captures both Maurice and the bald gangster.

After this escapade, Tintin is invited to a banquet held in his honor, where he is kidnapped by Chicago gangsters who have decided to wreak revenge upon him for his crackdown upon the city’s criminals. The gangsters tie Tintin and Snowy to a weight and throw them into Lake Michigan. However, the gangsters mistakenly used a block of wood as a weight, and thus Tintin and Snowy are saved by what is ostensibly a police patrol boat. It soon transpires that the crew of the boat are not policemen, but more gangsters, and they attempt to kill Tintin. However Tintin overpowers them, and later leads the police to the gangsters’ headquarters. A grateful Chicago holds a ticker-tape parade for Tintin, after which he returns to Europe.

Relationship to real life

Tintin in America depicts the real-life problems of gangsterism in 1930s America during the Great Depression, and the brief depiction of Al Capone is the only notable appearance of a real person in a Tintin album. A Rabbi whom some have identified as Menachem Begin appears briefly in Tintin in the Land of Black Gold, but his name is not given and he appears only very briefly. He only appeared in the early editions of the graphic novel and vanished in later ones.

References to social problems in the United States at the time are made, most notably in the sympathetic portrayal of Native Americans, whose mistreatment shows the prejudice and manipulative behavior of American oil companies that disenfranchise the tribe by seizing their land. Other issues in American society (such as lynching) are briefly alluded to. The failure of Prohibition in the U.S. is also highlighted, memorably portrayed in a scene where a small town sheriff becomes intoxicated in front of a sign proclaiming the Volstead Act.

The scene in which Tintin visits the factory run by Maurice Oyle (and nearly ends up as canned meat himself) is reminiscent of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, and its fierce indictment of the American meat packing industry.

However, much of the sequence in the American West is less realistic, as it depicts the West as it was in the days of the Wild West, complete with cowboys and Indians. Another inaccuracy is that American cars are sometimes depicted with right-hand steering columns.

Politics

Although he depicts the Indians as naive and bloodthirsty, Hergé also demonstrates sympathy for their plight. In the first black-and-white strip Tintin is shown photographing an Indian who is holding a begging bowl (the begging bowl has disappeared in the colour version). Hergé later depicts the Indians being driven off their land by armed soldiers so that the US Government may access the oil found there

Tintin and his dog Snowy are on a cruise ship in the Mediterranean Sea when they meet Dr Sarcophagus, an Egyptologist who owns a papyrus that he believes will lead him to the undiscovered tomb of the Pharaoh Kih-Oskh (a pun on kiosk, a newspaper stand). He invites Tintin to accompany him. Tintin also has an unpleasant encounter with Roberto Rastapopoulos, a wealthy businessman.

Later on the cruise, Tintin first meets the Thompson twins, who accuse him of smuggling opium they have found in his cabin. Locked in the hold of the ship, Tintin craftily escapes and meets Sarcophagus in Port Said, Egypt.

Tintin and Sarcophagus set off and discover the tomb of Kih-Oskh. On a nearby sand dune, Tintin finds a cigar bearing the symbol of Kih-Oskh — a circle with a wavy line through it and two dots on it, rather like a yin-yang symbol. But when he returns to the tomb, Sarcophagus has disappeared.

Entering the tomb, Tintin and Snowy are startled several times by doors closing behind them. They come to a room where rows of Egyptologists are mummified. At the end of the row are empty sarcophagi with notices to indicate that they are intended for Tintin, Snowy (and Sarcophagus too in the later edition). Following items of Sarcophagus’ clothing which have been left lying about, Tintin enters another room where drugged vapour puts him to sleep.

That night drug smugglers embark some sarcophagi aboard a ship but they are later cast overboard. The sarcophagi contain Tintin and Snowy who thus escape mummification. They are rescued from a gigantic wave by the crew of a sailing ship. On it they meet Senhor Oliviera de Figueira, a Portuguese salesman who travels the Middle East selling to local Arabs. He persuades Tintin to buy a top hat, ski equipment, a bow tie, an alarm clock, suspenders, a parrot, a water tin, a wooden golf club, a doghouse on wheels, and a lead for Snowy, and the overloaded Tintin walks away saying “Just as well I didn’t fall for his patter; you can end up with all sorts of useless stuff if you’re not careful”.

Tintin then sets out across the desert and is captured by the men of Sheik Patrash Pasha. He hates Westerners but is then delighted to discover that his captive is Tintin, whose exploits he has read of for years, and even shows one of the Tintin books that he has read (the exact book is different depending on the version, but it is always the most recent to have been published; in the first black and white strip, it is Tintin in the Congo; in the second it is Tintin in America; and in the colour version, it is Destination Moon).

Resuming his journey Tintin sees a woman being beaten by two men and rushes to her aid. The woman turns out to be an actress filming a movie that Rastapopoulos is making. The director is furious but Rastapopoulos is much calmer. He and Tintin apologise to each other over the incidents on the cruise ship and the filming and become friends.

When Tintin returns to the boat, he discovers that it has been smuggling guns. There is a lengthy comic sequence involving the Thompson twins who accuse him of being the smuggler. They hurry off when they think a grenade is due to explode, enabling Tintin to get away.

In Arabia, Tintin is walking in the desert when his water bottle is shot at and pierced by an unknown gunman. Desperate for water he sets off only to meet Thomson & Thompson who give chase. Later they hit an Arab on the head, mistaking him for Tintin. When Tintin reaches a local city he finds a procession of armed Arabs who claim that one of their sheiks was attacked by two members of a rival tribe, thus providing a pretext for war. Tintin is enlisted by force into the army.

While cleaning the local colonel’s office, he finds a cigar label with Kih-Oskh’s sign. He searches the office for a box of cigars hoping that they will provide a clue but is caught in the act by the colonel and charged with spying. He is executed by firing squad, but does not actually die: the firing squad’s rifles had been loaded with blanks. Placed in a ventilated grave, Tintin is later dug up by a pair of mysterious allies dressed as veiled women. These ‘allies’ are actually Thomson & Thompson again, who were determined to capture him alive and arranged for his death to be faked.

Tintin flees the city in a military airplane pursued by others. To save himself he takes a dive and lands in India. There Tintin finds Sarcophagus who is painting the sign of Kih-Oskh on the trees. He has gone completely mad and thinks that he is another Pharaoh, Ramesses II.

Tintin and Sarcophagus are taken by an elephant to a local colonial outpost. Later, the mad Sarcophagus escapes and tries to kill Tintin with a knife. It soon transpires that he was hypnotised by a local Fakir who wants Tintin dead. Some remarks by the Fakir lead Tintin to Zloty, a Hungarian writer, who explains that an international gang of drug smugglers is out to dispose of Tintin. At gunpoint, Tintin orders Zloty to give him the name of the gang’s leader but, before he can, the Fakir, from outside the window, blows a dart at Zloty. Zloty goes mad because the dart was tipped with Rajaijah juice, the poison-of-madness.

Tintin takes Sarcophagus and Zloty to the asylum with a letter from a local doctor, but the Fakir has substituted the letter and through a misunderstanding Tintin ends up imprisoned. He escapes by jumping on an obese inmate and over the wall. Snowy is unable to keep up with Tintin and is almost sacrificed by angry Indians for frightening their holy cow. The little dog is saved by Thomson & Thompson, acting as Nataraja. They then use Snowy to track down his master, whom they are still determined to arrest.

Tintin’s escape from the asylum is reported and he is recaptured at a train station. The ambulance taking him back to the asylum crashes into the car driven by Sarcophagus and Zloty. Tintin escapes and later meets the Maharaja of Gaipajama. Over dinner they hear music which the Maharaja believes is a warning that he will be driven insane like his relatives due to their opposition to the drug cartel and its oppression of the local farmers.

Tintin arranges for a dummy to be put in the Maharaja’s bed. That night the dummy is hit by a dart fired by the fakir. Tintin follows the fakir to the cartel’s hideout. The members within dress up in outfits that bear the symbol of Kih-Oskh and make them look rather like the Ku Klux Klan (as Tintin comments in the English edition). He manages to capture the gang which includes the Fakir, the Arab colonel and several others he met in the course of the adventure. He is later joined by the Maharaja, Snowy and the Thompson twins. Meanwhile, the tomb of Kih-Oskh is found by the Egyptian police. It contains evidence of Tintin’s innocence and a map showing them to the hideout.

The Fakir manages to escape, however, and later he and the cartel’s Grand Master kidnap the Maharaja’s young son. Tintin chases them into the Himalayas, recovers the prince and captures the Fakir. But the cartel leader falls off a cliff and (presumably) dies.

Later on, the Maharaja informs Tintin that one of the captured members of the cartel was a servant of his. In examining cigars found in his room, Tintin discovers that cigars bearing the “Kih-Oskh” label contain heroin, revealing the means by which the cartel smuggled drugs.

In Cigars of the Pharaoh, Tintin pursued an international group of drug distributors through the Middle East and India. He managed to capture most of the cartel members, but not the mysterious leader, who fell down a ravine in the mountains. Some time after these events, his body has still not been found. In order to unravel more of the network and stop the opium production at the source, Tintin travels to Shanghai, China, where he is awaited by the assassins of the opium consortium.

However, two attempts on Tintin’s life are foiled by a young Chinese stranger who arranges to meet Tintin in a secluded area. Once Tintin arrives for their rendezvous, he discovers that the young man has been struck by Rajaijah juice, the poison of madness, used by the opium gang against their enemies.

While in Shanghai, Tintin meets Mitsuhirato, a Japanese businessman, who urges him to return to India and protect his friend the Maharajah of Gaipajama.

Tintin also defends a young Chinese boy from a Western businessman and racist bully, Gibbons, a friend of Dawson, the corrupt police chief of the Shanghai International Settlement. Incensed, Gibbons and Dawson set about making life difficult for Tintin.

Having been persuaded by Mitsuhirato, Tintin is on his way back to India by ship when he is knocked unconscious and taken ashore along with Snowy. He wakes up outside Shanghai, in the home of Wang Chen-Yee, the leader of a brotherhood called “The Sons of the Dragon” dedicated to the fight against opium. Wang’s son is the young man who helped save him on two occasions, but is now insane. He goes about threatening to cut people’s heads off with a sword (thinking it will “show them the way”) and only his father’s stern authority can keep him in check.

Wang also reveals that Mitsuhirato is their chief opponent: a Japanese secret agent and drug smuggler. Tintin follows Mitsuhirato and sees him blowing up a railway line (this is based on the real-life Mukden Incident). No one is killed and damage is minor, but the event is successfully portrayed by the Japanese government as a major Chinese terrorist incident and used as a pretext for a Japanese invasion of Manchuria.

Having obtained a sample of the poison of madness, Tintin returns to Shanghai, which has now been occupied by the Japanese Army, and tries to make contact with Doctor Fan Hsi-Ying, an expert on insanity, who may be able to cure Wang’s son. However, Doctor Fan has been kidnapped by the opium gang, presumably to prevent him developing an antidote to the poison. A note left by the kidnappers demands ransom money which must be paid at an old temple in the city of Hukow.

After a brief period of imprisonment in Shanghai by the Japanese Army, Tintin escapes and rides a train to Hukow, but a flood washes the tracks, and all the passengers must disembark. He rescues a young boy, Chang Chong-Chen, from drowning in the Yangtze River. They become fast friends, and Chang rescues Tintin from the Thompsons who had reluctantly arrested him under orders from Dawson (who is collaborating with Mitsuhirato to capture Tintin). They later travel to the area where the ransom money is to be left, and are able to confirm that Doctor Fan has been kidnapped on Mitsuhirato’s orders.

Tintin and Chang return to Shanghai, but Wang and his family are kidnapped by Mitsuhirato. In order to find them, Tintin travels to the Shanghai docks and hides in one of the barrels being unloaded from an opium ship. But it turns out that he was seen, and when he emerges he is confronted by Mitsuhirato armed with a gun, and soon finds himself a prisoner alongside Wang. Then the boss of the opium cartel is revealed to be the film producer Rastapopoulos (see Cigars of the Pharaoh for back story). Tintin is incredulous that a man he had thought to be a friend could be the gang leader until Rastapopoulos reveals the tattoo of Kih-Oskh on his forearm. Fortunately, the Sons of the Dragon, who had previously overpowered Mitsuhirato’s thugs and had hidden in the other barrels (as planned by Tintin), reveal themselves, and force Mitsuhirato and Rastapopoulos to surrender. With Rastapopoulos arrested, the drug ring is finally brought down, and Mitsuhirato commits seppuku. The ensuing political fallout over his involvement with the cartel and Japanese espionage leads to Japan’s withdrawal from the League of Nations.

The title, Blue Lotus, refers to the name of an opium den, itself a reference to the blue lotus.

Method change

Up to the writing of The Blue Lotus, Hergé’s writing was mainly based on popular prejudice and on what his mentor, the abbot Norbert Wallez, had told him about Socialism, the Soviet Union, Belgian colonies in Africa or the United States, which was depicted as a nation of gangsters and cowboys and Indians of the sort found in Hollywood movies (though Hergé does sympathise with the Indians in the way they are forced off their land).

As Tintin was published in Le Petit Vingtième, a newspaper supplement, and Hergé announced at the end of Cigars that his next setting would be China. Father Gosset, chaplain to the Chinese students at the University of Leuven, wrote to Hergé urging him to be sensitive about what he wrote about China, since it might offend his Chinese students. Hergé agreed, and in the spring of 1934 Gosset introduced him to Zhang Chongren/Chang Ch’ung-jen (known to Hergé as ‘Chang Chong-chen’), a young sculpture student at the Brussels Académie des Beaux-Arts. The two young artists quickly became close friends, and Zhang introduced Hergé to Chinese culture, and the techniques of Chinese art.

As a result of this experience, Hergé would strive in The Blue Lotus, and in subsequent Tintin adventures, to be meticulously accurate in depicting the places which Tintin visited by painstakingly researching all his topics. When his UK publisher complained that The Black Island depicted an old-fashioned England, Hergé sent Bob de Moor to Britain to redraw anything that was no longer accurate, resulting in huge changes to the album. This new-found commitment to accuracy would become a Hergé trademark.

As a token of appreciation, he added a fictional “Chang” (“Tchang” in French) to The Blue Lotus, a young Chinese boy who meets and befriends Tintin. Hergé lets Tintin explain to Chang that Chang’s fear for the ‘white devils’ is based on prejudice and Chinese racism. He then recites a few Western stereotypes of the Chinese, confuting them.

Political turmoil

As another result of his friendship with Zhang (Chang), Hergé became increasing aware of the problems of colonialism, in particular the Japanese Empire’s advances into China. Tintin also rescues a Chinese boy from a racist bully Gibbons, who was a good friend of Dawson, the corrupt Police chief of the Shanghai International Settlement.

Tintin is a direct witness to the South Manchurian railway incident (Mukden incident), Japan’s pretext to occupy the province of Manchuria from China. The Japanese and some European characters are portrayed in a negative light, and their cartoon forms are somewhat racist. The Japanese, including the character of Mitsuhirato and Japanese soldiers are shown with beaming teeth while the Chinese are shown as tight-lipped. As a result it drew sharp criticism from various parties, including a protest by Japanese diplomats to the Belgian Foreign Ministry.

The Republic of China was so pleased with the album that its leader at the time, Chiang Kai-shek, invited Hergé for a visit. However, because of objections to the implied ideology of Tintin, the People’s Republic of China forbade the publication of the album for a long time. It finally allowed publication in 1984, but some controversial items were changed. For example the words , “Down with Japanese products!” was changed to dà jí lù, “Great Luck road”.

A fetish which originally belonged to a tribe of South American Indians is stolen from the Museum of Ethnography in Brussels. The following day it is back in the museum, along with a note apologizing for the inconvenience caused, saying that the reason for the theft had been a bet. Tintin, who is among the reporters looking into the story, realizes that the replacement is a fake, the distinction being an ear broken on the original but intact on the replacement.

He peruses a book from his own library with an image of the fetish, drawn by an explorer: it confirms that one of the ears is damaged, while the one back in the museum is not. Tintin then reads that a wood carver called Balthazar has died. Suspecting that Balthazar made a duplicate of the fetish and was murdered, Tintin tries to obtain the man’s parrot in order to get a clue to the killer’s identity. But he soon discovers that a pair of South Americans — Alonso Perez and Ramon Bada — are also on the trail of the fetish, following the same clues and employing more ruthless methods. They even make attempts on Tintin’s life.

The parrot eventually repeats the last words of his late owner, naming a man called Rodrigo Tortilla as his killer. Perez and Ramon know Tortilla, and Tintin, having tracked them down, overhears their conversation. This takes the three men, and their attempts to outwit each other, to South America, where the plot thickens.

During the journey by ship, Perez and Ramon murder Tortilla. It was he who stole the fetish from the museum and murdered Balthazar after getting him to produce the copy that Tortilla placed in the museum. Among his luggage is yet another replica of the stolen fetish. Tintin, who was also on the ship in disguise, has Perez and Ramon arrested as they dock in the main port of the republic of San Theodoros. But when soldiers arrive on board to take them away, they are led by a colonel who knows Ramon and Perez and, once ashore, lets them go. He then helps them to lure Tintin to shore where he is framed for terrorism and sentenced to death.

In San Theodoros General Alcazar and his rebels are fighting against the ruling General Tapioca. Just as Tintin finds himself at the gun tips of the firing squad, General Alcazar’s rebels save him. Unusually, Tintin has been drinking heavily (aguardiente, the national drink) because at the start of the execution, the soldiers found out that their guns had been tampered with and the commander treated him to a “little apertif” of aguardiente, and in a drunken state proclaims his support for Alcazar in front of a firing squad. Now in command of the country, General Alcazar honours Tintin by making him Colonel and aide-de-camp.

Tintin’s new position of power is not without its problems. For one thing his humiliated predecessor swears revenge and makes several bungled attempts to kill him and Alcazar. Perez & Ramon also continue in their attempts to get rid of him and recover the genuine fetish. The idol found in Tortilla’s possession has turned out to be yet another fake, and they are erroneously convinced that Tintin knows the location of the original fetish.

To add to this, two rival oil companies, General American Oil and British South-American Petrol, manipulate the governments of San Theodoros and the neighbouring state of Nuevo-Rico, pushing both countries to war in order to get control of some profitable oil fields. When Tintin attempts to prevent war, R.W. Trickler, a representative of General American Oil, arranges for him to be killed by a man named Pablo. Pablo’s attempt fails, due to a simultaneous assassination attempt by Ramon. Tintin captures Pablo, who begs for mercy, and lets him go.

Trickler then frames Tintin for espionage and the young man is soon sentenced to death. Pablo, grateful that Tintin spared his life, assembles a gang of men, breaks into the prison and frees Tintin and Snowy. They escape by car to the border with Nuevo-Rico, but come under fire by border guards. The incident is exaggerated in the press and used by the belligerent governments of both countries as justification for the war that Tintin tried to prevent.

Tintin escapes the Nuevo-Ricans and discovers that he is not far from the Arumbaya River. The Arumbayas, who live isolated in the rainforest, were the original owners of the fetish. The fetish itself is of no real value and Tintin has been wondering why so many people have been willing to steal and kill for it. He believes that the Arumbayas hold the answer and convinces a reluctant native to take him to them.

In the rainforest Tintin meets Ridgewell, a British explorer living with the Arumbayas, and he learns that the fetish was offered to a previous explorer called Walker (who also happens to be the author of the book “Travels in the Americas” {London, 1875} Tintin had read earlier) as a token of friendship during his stay with the tribe. But as soon as the explorers left, the Arumbayas discovered that a sacred diamond had disappeared. Lopez, a half-caste interpreter to the explorers, had stolen it. The Arumbayas were furious and pursued Walker’s expedition, massacring almost all the explorers. Walker himself managed to escape with the fetish while a wounded Lopez barely got himself out of the jungle. Tintin believes that Lopez hid the diamond in the fetish so that he could retrieve the stone later.

Tintin leaves the Arumbayas only to come across Perez and Ramon who have deserted from the San Theodoran Army. Tintin manages to capture them. In Perez’s wallet he finds a note which confirms that the diamond is in the fetish. The note used to belong to Rodrigo Tortilla, the man who originally stole the fetish from the museum and was later murdered by Ramon and Perez. How Tortilla is connected to Lopez is not revealed. Perez and Ramon later escape from Tintin.

With no leads to follow, Tintin and Snowy return home only to find copies of the fetish being sold in numerous shops. They go to the factory that produces them and meet Balthazar’s brother, who had found the fetish among his late brother’s affairs. However he has sold the original fetish to a rich man called Samuel Goldbarr, who has left for America. Using a plane Tintin manages to catch the ship, only to find that Perez and Ramon are already aboard and have finally got hold of the fetish. During the confrontation, the fetish falls and breaks revealing the diamond. All three of them try to save it but fall into the ocean. Tintin is saved by the crew. However, Alonso Perez and Ramon Bada drown (and are subsequently shown briefly being pulled up by devils to Hell).

The diamond has been lost to the ocean. The original fetish is glued and tied back together and returned to the museum.

Politics

The Broken Ear is set in a fictional South American dictatorship, San Theodoros. However, it uses this setting to depict political issues that were important in the 1930s.

The mutually disastrous conflict between San Theodoros and the neighbouring state of Nuevo-Rico is called the “Gran Chapo War”, a reference to the Gran Chaco War of 1932 to 1935 between Bolivia and Paraguay (“Gran Chapo” is a pun on the French term “grand chapeau”, meaning “big hat”). Oil companies born from the Standard Oil and the Shell Oil company provoked that war (the Standard-derived companies backing Bolivia, Shell backing Paraguay) in order to get their hands on prospected oil fields. This view is reflected in the shady businessman Trickler who tries to bribe Tintin and, when that fails, resorts to attempted murder and false evidence to get rid of him. In another parallel, the Chapo plains, just like the real Chaco, turn out not to have oil after all.

The arms dealer Basil Bazarov, who sells weapons to both sides, is based on the real life Basil Zaharoff. In the English translation, he works for ‘Korrupt Arms’, a pun on ‘corrupt’, but also on Krupp, the German arms manufacturers. When a member of an airport groundcrew remarks that Bazarov has a private plane it is no idle comment. Air travel in the 1930s was in its infancy and extremely expensive and only the very wealthy (such as an arms dealer like Bazarov) could have afforded such a luxury as their own aircraft.

Fictional languages

In the original French edition, Hergé made up an artificial language for the Arumbaya tribe and their sworn enemies, the Rumbabas, based on Marols or Marollien, a Flemish dialect spoken in the city of Brussels. Although Hergé was Francophone, he may have heard this dialect from his grandmother.

For the English edition, the translators made use of an accurate phonetic transcription of Cockney, transmogrified into an Indian-looking language by adding idiosyncratic punctuation and an exotic-looking morphology. Ridgewell is the only living white man who is able to speak this lingo, and he acts as an interpreter. When one of the Rumbabas shows them three shrunken heads on sticks, the native comments, “Ahw wada lu’vali bahn chaco conats!”, which means “Oh, what a lovely bunch of coconuts!”

When Tintin is hit by a golf ball, Ridgewell shouts “Ai tolja tahitta ferlip inbaul intada oh’l! Andatdohn meenis ferlip ineer oh’l!” which means “I told ya to hit the flippin’ ball into the ‘ole! And that don’t mean ‘is flippin’ ear-’ole!” . Funnily enough, the tribes speak proper English among themselves and when addressing Snowy.

While walking in the Belgian countryside Tintin sees an un-registered plane making an emergency landing, and goes to help, but as he comes near he is shot by the pilot. Tintin recovers at a hospital where police detectives Thomson and Thompson inform him that a similar plane has crashed in a field in Sussex, England. Tintin decides to investigate for himself.

Tintin takes a train from Brussels to the coast in order to board the ferry from Ostend to Dover. During the journey he is framed for the assault and theft of a fellow passenger (who is in fact part of the mysterious criminal gang Tintin has inadvertently stumbled upon). Thompson and Thomson arrest Tintin, but he escapes by handcuffing them to each other while they are asleep.

Arriving in England, Tintin is kidnapped by the same men who framed him. They take him to a clifftop, intending to make him jump off it, but Tintin escapes thanks to Snowy.

Tintin’s investigations lead him to Dr. J.W. Müller who, with his chauffeur Ivan, is part of a gang of money counterfeiters, led by Puschov, the so-called victim on the train.

Tintin’s pursuit of Müller and Ivan results in a plane crash in rural Scotland, where a friendly farmer gives him a kilt to wear. He visits the pub in the coastal village of Kiltoch, where he is told strange stories about the Black Island, where an evil beast is said to roam, killing humans. He buys a boat from a villager and heads for the island. There he is almost killed by a gorilla called Ranko. Stranded on the island, Tintin discovers that it is the hideout of the gang of forgers led by Puschov and Müller.

Tintin calls the police on their radio signalling device after watching Thompson and Thomson win an air show race on a television set (though they didn’t mean to). After a desperate holding-out action (in which Ranko’s arm is broken) the gang is captured, and Tintin returns to mainland Kiltoch — but the media and press do not stay very long after Ranko appears.

The gang is jailed and the now docile Ranko is placed in a zoo in Glasgow.

Tintin finds a lost briefcase and returns it to the owner, Professor Hector Alembick, who is a sigilographer, an expert on seals (as in the sort used to officiate state documents). He shows Tintin his collection of seals, including one which belonged to the Syldavian King Ottokar IV. Tintin then discovers that he and Alembick are under surveillance by some strange men. Tintin’s flat is even bombed in an attempt to kill him. Suspecting a Syldavian connection, Tintin offers to accompany Alembick to Syldavia for research.

On the plane Tintin begins to suspect his companion. The Alembick travelling with him doesn’t smoke and doesn’t seem to need the spectacles he wears, while the Alembick he first met smoked heavily and had very poor eyesight. During a layover, Tintin fakes a fall and grabs Alembick’s beard, thinking it is false and Alembick is an imposter. However, it is (for Alembick) painfully real. Tintin decides to let the matter drop but then, while flying over Syldavia, it is the pilot of the plane who opens a trap door and Tintin drops out, landing in a haywagon.

Tintin has a hunch that a plot is afoot to steal the sceptre of King Ottokar IV. In Syldavia, the reigning King must possess the sceptre to rule or he will be forced to abdicate. Every year he rides in a parade during St. Vladimir’s Day carrying it, while the people sing the national anthem. Tintin succeeds in warning the reigning King, Muskar XII, despite the efforts of the conspirators. He and the King rush to the royal treasure room to find Alembick, the royal photographer and some guards unconscious and the sceptre missing.

Tintin’s friends Thomson and Thompson are summoned to investigate but their theory on how the sceptre was stolen proves bad and painful for them. Later on, Tintin notices a spring cannon in a toy shop and this gives him the clue. Professor Alembick had asked for some photographs to be taken of the sceptre, but the camera was a spring cannon in disguise, which allowed him to catapult it out of the castle into a nearby forest.

Searching the forest, Tintin spots the sceptre being found by agents of the neighbouring country, Borduria. Following them all the way to the border, he wrests the sceptre from them. In the wallet of one of the thieves he discovers papers that show that the theft of the sceptre was just part of a major plan for the taking over of Syldavia by their long-time political rival, Borduria.

Tintin steals a Me-109 from a Bordurian airfield (whose squadron is being kept ready to take part in the envisioned “Anschluss” of Syldavia) to fly it back to the King in time. He is shot down by the Syldavians who have naturally opened fire on an enemy aircraft violating their airspace. He manages to make the rest of the journey by foot.

Meanwhile the Interior Minister informs the King that rumours have been spreading that the sceptre has been stolen and that there have been riots against local Bordurian businesses, acts which would justify a Bordurian takeover of the country. The King is about to abdicate when Snowy runs in with the sceptre (which had fallen out of Tintin’s pocket).

Tintin then gives the King the papers he took from the man who stole the sceptre. They prove that the plot was masterminded by Müsstler, leader of the Iron Guard, a local political party. The King takes action by having Müsstler and his associates arrested and the army mobilised along the Bordurian frontier. In response, the Bordurian leader pulls his own troops back from the border, though he stresses his own country’s “desire for peace” and criticises Syldavia’s “strange” behaviour.

The next day is St. Vladimir’s Day and Tintin is made a Knight of the Order of the Golden Pelican, the first non-Syldavian to receive such an honour. Further inquiries by the authorities reveal that, in a classic Ruritanian plot device, Professor Alembick is one of a pair of identical twins: Hector Alembick was kidnapped and replaced with his brother Alfred who left for Syldavia in his place.

Tintin and Snowy return home by a flying boat with Thomson and Thompson, who suffer momentary panic when the aircraft appears to be falling into the sea at the end of the flight. The reader is treated to a rare “wink to the camera” from Tintin, who points out their error, and they laugh about it so much that they do indeed fall into the sea as they disembark.

Politics

Like earlier stories such as The Blue Lotus, Tintin in the Land of the Soviets and The Broken Ear, King Ottokar’s Sceptre had a political subtext. The theft of the Sceptre is just part of a plot by Borduria to plunge Syldavia into a major political crisis and clear the way for a foreign invasion. Written in 1938, the story reflects the annexation and invasion of neighbouring states by Mussolini’s Italy and Nazi Germany. The unseen leader of the conspiracy is called Müsstler, a blend of Mussolini and Hitler.

Müsstler is the head of the Iron Guard. The name implies that it is a pro-fascist paramilitary group similar to the SA or Blackshirts which were common in Europe between the wars. An actual group called the Iron Guard was active in Romania in the years leading up to the Second World War.

However, these parallels appear to have been lost on the German censors during the occupation of Belgium during World War II; while Tintin in America and The Black Island were banned because they took place in enemy countries like the United States and Britain, King Ottokar’s Sceptre was not.

Tintin is informed by the Thompsons of a case involving the ramblings of a drunken man, later killed, found with a scrap of paper from what appears to be a tin of crab-meat with the word Karaboudjan scrawled on it. His subsequent investigation and the kidnapping of a Japanese man interested in talking to him leads Tintin to a ship also called the Karaboudjan, where he is abducted by a syndicate of criminals who have been hiding opium in the crab tins. Escaping from his locked room, Tintin encounters Captain Haddock, an alcoholic who is manipulated by his first mate, Allan, and is unaware of his crew’s criminal activities. Escaping the ship in a lifeboat in an attempt to reach Spain, they are attacked by a seaplane. They hijack the plane and tie up the pilots, but a storm and Haddock’s drunken behaviour causes them to crash-land in the Sahara.

After trekking across the desert, Tintin and Haddock reach a Moroccan port, but the Captain is kidnapped by members of his old crew. Tintin tracks them down and saves the Captain, but they both become intoxicated by the fumes from wine barrels breached in a shootout with the villains. Upon sobering up, Tintin discovers the necklace with the Crab with the Golden Claws on the now-subdued owner of the wine cellar, Omar Ben Salaad, and realizes that he is the leader of the drug cartel. After capturing Allan, the gang is put behind bars.

One night Tintin is out walking with his dog Snowy. The evening is particularly hot. Tintin then notices an extra star in the Great Bear. When he reaches home, he calls the Observatory. They say that they have the phenomenon under observation and hang up.

Tintin wonders why it is so hot, and opens the window. He sees that the star is getting bigger every minute. He walks to the Observatory, and, after some trouble, gets inside. He meets a man called Philippulus who proclaims himself to be a prophet and tells him that “It is a Judgement! Woe!” Puzzled, Tintin proceeds to the main room with the giant telescope. There he meets the director of the observatory, Professor Decimus Phostle, who explains that the extra star is a vast ball of fire making it way towards Earth, which will cause the end of the world.

In the event, however, the shooting star passes by the Earth, though a piece of it, a meteorite, lands in the arctic ocean, causing an earthquake that lasts a mere few seconds.

After an analysis of a spectroscopic photo of the meteor, Phostle deduces that it is composed of an entirely new metal. He names this metal “Phostlite”, but is dismayed to discover that the meteor has landed in the sea and therefore, presumably, is lost. Tintin, however, realises that the meteor could be protruding above the surface of the water, and the Professor is persuaded to organise an expedition led by himself to find the metal and to retrieve a sample of it for further research. The expedition consists of leading scientists, as well as Tintin, Snowy and the alcoholic Captain Haddock (ironically serving as president of the Society for Sober Sailors), aboard the trawler Aurora.

However, unknown to the Aurora expedition, another team has already set out, backed by a financier from São Rico by the name of Bohlwinkel, aboard the polar expedition ship Peary. The expedition becomes a race to be the first to land on the meteor. Bohlwinkel attempts to sabotage the Aurora expedition by getting Philippulus to plant a stick of dynamite on the ship on the eve of departure, but it is found and thrown overboard. While crossing the North Sea the Aurora is almost rammed into by another of Bohlwinkel’s ships, but Haddock manages to steer his ship out of the way.

Further setbacks occur at the Icelandic port of Akureyri, when Captain Haddock is informed that there is no fuel available. He is furious, but then he and Tintin come across an old friend of his, Captain Chester, who reveals that there is plenty of fuel, and that the Golden Oil Company (which has a fuel monopoly) is owned by Bohlwinkel. The three of them devise a plan to run a hose from Chester’s ship, Sirius, to the Aurora and thus trick Golden Oil into providing them with the fuel they need.

Coming close to catching the Peary, the Aurora then receives an indistinct distress call from another ship and has to turn round in order to help. Inquiries by Tintin then lead him to realise that the distress signal is a fake designed to further delay them. Resuming the journey, they then intercept a cable announcing that the Peary expedition has reached the meteorite but not actually claimed it yet. Tintin uses the ship’s seaplane to parachute on to the meteor and plant the expedition flag, beating the crew of the Peary by seconds. The Aurora expedition has won the race.

Tintin makes camp while the ship’s over-exerted engines are repaired. The next day he discovers the remarkable properties of Phostlite: his apple core instantly grows into an enormous tree full of oversized apples, and a maggot turns into a massive butterfly. Tintin is menaced by a giant spider and huge, exploding mushrooms before rescue arrives. Then a sudden seaquake shakes the meteor to its core; the young reporter and Snowy retrieve a rock sample and jump to safety as the rock sinks into the sea.

The triumphant expedition’s return is reported on the radio, along with the news that law enforcement agencies are closing on Bohlwinkel. As they prepare to dock, the Captain announces that they are short on one vital commodity — whisky

There is an amazing epidemic of wallet-snatchings around Brussels. Thomson and Thompson – who, during the course of the story, eventually lose their wallets by the dozens to the thief – look for the culprit at the Old Street Market where they meet Tintin. Tintin buys a boat model of an old ship for Captain Haddock, but, as he does, two men try to haggle it off him. The first is a Mr. Ivan Ivanovitch Sakharine, and the second is later revealed to be Barnaby. Sakharine calls on Tintin at his flat later, seeking to convince him -unsuccessfully- to sell his ship, but leaves his card. A little while later, the mainmast is broken by Snowy, and Tintin repairs it.

When the Captain visits Tintin, he sees the ship and reacts with astonishment. Haddock takes Tintin back to his apartment and shows him a portrait of one of his ancestors, Sir Francis Haddock, the captain of a 17th century naval vessel. In its background is the very same ship, called “the Unicorn” (a French ship in the original; in the English translation part of the fleet of Charles II of England, and a Union Flag has been inserted as the flag flown by the Unicorn). When Tintin and the Captain return to Tintin’s flat, they find that the model boat has been stolen. Tintin visits Sakharine, accusing him of having stolen it. While he discovers an identical ship in Sakharine’s collection, it is evidently a different one, for in this case, the mast has not been broken. The ship carries the letters “UNICORN” on the back as well. When Tintin returns home, he finds that his flat has been ransacked, and while cleaning up he finds a mysterious parchment. He realizes that it must have been hidden within the mainmast broken by Snowy, and subsequently rolled out onto the floor. He guesses that the parchement holds the clue to finding treasure and rushes back to the Captain’s flat.

The Captain, meanwhile, has taken out some heirlooms that had belonged to his great ancestor: a cutlass, a hat, and a journal which tells of how in 1676 he defeated the pirates led by Red Rackham. Haddock eagerly reads it out aloud to Tintin, sometimes getting a bit carried away while describing the battle scenes. Tintin himself is so taken in by the story that he does not even bother to take off his raincoat.

The pirate Red Rackham had just stolen some diamonds from a Spanish naval vessel when he engaged Sir Francis Haddock in battle in the West Indies. Although the volleys fired by Sir Francis destroyed Rackham’s much smaller ship, the pirates managed to overpower Sir Francis’s sailors; all but Sir Francis were either killed or forced to walk the plank. Red Rackham’s crew took over the Unicorn, stowing the jewels and treasure on board. Sir Francis escaped, killed Red Rackham in hand-to-hand combat, and escaped after igniting a long fuse in the munitions hold. As Sir Francis rowed to the safety of an uninhabited island nearby, the Unicorn exploded, killing the rest of the pirates.

The boat model which was stolen is just one of three constructed by Sir Francis which hold three parchments which, when placed together, will give the treasure’s location. Tintin is later kidnapped by the Bird Brothers, two unscrupulous antique dealers who believe that he possesses the parchments. They are behind the theft of Tintin’s model, having discovered the second parchment and have figured out that they needed all three to decode the clue to the treasure’s location. Tintin later escapes Marlinspike Hall, a country estate owned by the Bird Brothers. The parchments themselves, however, were stolen by a kleptomaniac specializing in wallets (the same pickpocket pursued by Thomson and Thompson, who is eventually cornered with Tintin’s help).

By the end of the story, Tintin and Haddock have the parchments, and discover where they will find the treasure, by combining the parchments. The sequel, Red Rackham’s Treasure, continues the story.

n The Secret of the Unicorn, Tintin and Captain Haddock discovered the location of the Unicorn, a pirate ship which was blown up in the West Indies by Captain Haddock’s ancestor Sir Francis Haddock in 1676. After destroying the vessel, Sir Francis fled to a nearby island. Tintin and Captain Haddock believe that the pirate’s treasure is in the remains of the sunken Unicorn.

Tintin and the Captain hire the Sirius, a boat under Haddock’s command, to search for said treasure. As the crew prepare for the search, their plans are discovered and publicized by the press, forcing Tintin and Haddock to deal with numerous strangers claiming to be Rackham’s descendants and insisting on a share of the treasure. They are quickly driven away by Haddock, whose claim to be the descendant of the man who killed Red Rackham has more weight.

Another petitioner is Professor Cuthbert Calculus, an eccentric and largely deaf inventor who offers the use of a special shark-shaped, electrically powered one-man submarine to help search for the sunken ship without being bothered by the numerous sharks in the area. The treasure hunters turn him down and later set off for the trip.

Before Tintin and the Captain clear the port, their friends, Thomson and Thompson intercept them with orders to join the crew to protect the treasure hunters from the possible threat of Max Bird, a rival treasure hunter who escaped from prison. (Ultimately, Bird is never seen or mentioned again, making him a MacGuffin for getting the detectives on board the ship). Shortly after the departure, Tintin and Haddock discover that Calculus has stowed away on board (in a lifeboat, complete with bedclothes;pillow and blanket stolen from the Thompson twins cabin over which they are shown quarreling; and a tin of biscuits which the ship’s cook had blamed Snowy for swiping from the galley). The professor has stashed the unassembled parts of his submarine in the hold–removing the Captain’s crates of whisky in the process. Despite initially threatening to throw Calculus into the hold on bread and water, Haddock grudgingly decides to keep him along for the trip.

Although it is never directly stated in the book, the coordinates given in the parchment place the island in the Caribbean, to the north of Hispaniola. Initially, the party cannot find anything at the coordinates ( [show location on an interactive map] 20°37′42″N 70°52′15″W / 20.62833, -70.87083), but then Tintin hypothesizes that Sir Francis Haddock used a Paris meridian instead of the Greenwich one (which would yield [show location on an interactive map] 20°37′42″N 68°32′1″W / 20.62833, -68.53361). Sure enough, the ship reaches an unknown and uninhabited island, where Tintin and his friends believe the treasure to be buried. As they come ashore to explore it, the Captain stubs his toe on a piece of wood protruding from the sand, which is excavated and turns out to be the remains of Sir Francis Haddock’s rowboat. As they penetrate into the interior of the island, they encounter numerous skulls, which Tintin deduces are the remains of the island’s cannibalistic former inhabitants. There is also a magnificent pagan icon of Sir Francis, and numerous parrots that repeat the Haddockian argot, which an amused Tintin realizes has been passed down for generations.

Calculus’s submarine proves useful in searching for the sunken Unicorn, while the actual examination of the wreck itself is performed with a hardhat diving suit. The Thompson twins soon begin to rue their decision to join the treasure-hunt, because they are consigned to manning the gigantic air pumps supplying the diving suit when Tintin, and later the Captain, explore the wreck. While facing complications like shark attacks, they discover a gold bejeweled cross, a strongbox of old documents, the figurehead of the ship and, to Captain Haddock’s delight, a large supply of vintage Jamaican rum.

Although the search is otherwise unproductive, the crew spots a large wooden cross on the island itself and Tintin believes that the reference in their map to “under the Eagle’s cross” could refer to it as the marker for the treasure’s location in Sir Francis’s calendar etchings. Upon coming to the cross the party begins to dig, but after a while, Tintin realizes that they are following a false lead, considering that Sir Francis would not deliberately leave his treasure on an island he did not intend to return to, and they return to the Sirius.

Time passes. Although there are further dives to the wreck, they are unable to find the treasure itself and they go home disappointed. Upon disembarking, the Captain is accosted by a reporter. In retribution for the unwanted attention brought earlier by the press to their expedition, Haddock impishly refers him to “my secretary, Mr. Calculus,” whom the reporter tries to interview in vain.

Once home, Calculus’s further examination of the parchment documents in the chest that they retrieved allows him to determine that Captain Haddock is heir to the large estate of Marlinspike Hall. Upon this discovery, Tintin insists that Haddock must purchase the estate (which is up for auction), but the Captain declines, noting that he is short on funds due to the wasted expense of their failed treasure hunt. However, Calculus, who has received large sums of money from the government after a profitable sale of his submarine design, overcomes that difficulty in gratitude for a successful test run.

After purchasing the Hall, Tintin and Captain Haddock explore the cellars of the main house. Amongst the cluttered antiques left by the malevolent Bird Brothers (the former owners), they find a statue of Saint John and Tintin remembers that he is called “The Eagle of Patmos” (the island where he was supposedly exiled to) and is often depicted with that bird. The statue is holding a globe, and Tintin finds the location of the island where Sir Francis Haddock was exiled. He accidentally discovers it to be a trigger button to open the globe. The treasure was hidden inside the globe — and the statue was holding a cross above it, just as the map indicated.

Influence

The shark-shaped submarine on the book’s cover was the inspiration for “Troy,” the real-life shark-shaped submersible constructed by aquatic filmmaker and oceanographic explorer Fabien Cousteau, the grandson of Jacques Cousteau.[citation needed]

In the movie Kramer vs. Kramer, Dustin Hoffman’s character reads this book to his son.

A mysterious illness is afflicting members of an archaeological expedition recently returned from the Andes, where they had unearthed the tomb of the Inca, Rascar Capac. One by one, the expedition members fall into a mysterious coma. The only clue is shards of crystal found near each victim, which are fragments of shattered crystal balls. Concerned, Tintin, Captain Haddock and Professor Calculus go to stay with Calculus’s old friend, and expedition member, the ebullient Professor Tarragon, who is keeping Rascar Capac’s mummy in his house. But the mummy soon disappears when a lightning storm sends a ball of fire down the chimney, and, after each being visited in their nightmares by the mummy, the three wake to find Tarragon comatose, with the telltale shards of crystal by his bed.

Tarragon later wakes up but screams about mysterious figures attacking him. Tintin later visits a hospital where all the other stricken explorers go through the same horrors at a precise time of day.

The plot thickens even further, however, when Calculus, taking a stroll around Professor Tarragon’s house, discovers a striking gold bracelet, puts it on (remarking on how nicely it goes with his coat), and then mysteriously disappears. The bracelet had previously been worn by the now-vanished mummy.

While looking for Calculus, Tintin and the Captain are fired upon by an unseen gunman who escapes in a black car, having kidnapped Calculus. The alarm is raised and the police set up road blocks, but the kidnappers switch cars and slip through the net.

Tintin and Haddock pursue the abductors to La Rochelle, where they discover that Calculus is on board a ship called the Pachacamac, which is bound for Peru, and resolve to meet his ship there.

The story is continued in Prisoners of the Sun, the next volume in the series, although that did not appear until 1946, due to problems Hergé got into following the liberation of Belgium at the end of World War II, when he and other members of the Le Soir were investigated for working for a collaborationist newspaper.

Background

The Seven Crystal Balls was written during World War II. With Belgium under German occupation, Hergé decided to avoid the overt political content that he had included in previous Tintin stories, such as The Blue Lotus, The Broken Ear and King Ottokar’s Sceptre.

As the opening sequence of the book indicates, The Seven Crystal Balls and its theme of an ancient curse, was inspired by the Curse of the Pharaohs, the speculation that members of the Howard Carter expedition, discoverers of the tomb of Tutankhamun, died in tragic and mysterious ways due to a curse.

Tintin and Captain Haddock arrive in Peru to look for Professor Calculus, following the events in The Seven Crystal Balls, which ended with Calculus being kidnapped for putting on the bracelet of the mummified Inca, Rascar Capac. Although Tintin and Haddock intercept the ship carrying Calculus, the Pachacamac, near Callao, they are unable to rescue him, and they set off on the trail of the Quechua-speaking natives who have taken him. It leads them to the mountain town of Jauga, where a train is sabotaged in an attempt to kill them. They find both the authorities and the locals extremely unwilling to help them track Calculus’ kidnappers.

Tintin then encounters a young Indian boy named Zorrino, whom he protects from two bullying men of white descent. Following that, a mysterious Indian gives him a medallion, telling him it will save him from danger. Soon after, Zorrino offers to take them to the Temple of the Sun, where he claims their friend is being held. The Temple lies deep in the Andes, and the journey there is long and eventful – it involves hindrance from natives and Captain Haddock being terrorised by the local wildlife.

Finally they come upon the Temple of the Sun – and stumble right into a group of Inca who have survived until modern-day times. Zorrino is saved from harm when Tintin gives him the medallion (the Indian who had given it to him reveals himself as one of the Incan high priests, and explains that he gave it to Tintin because he was moved by his effort to protect Zorrino from abuse), but Tintin and Haddock are sentenced to death for their sacrilegious intrusion and end up on the same pyre as Calculus. Tintin has, however, chosen the hour of their death to coincide with a solar eclipse, and the terrified Inca believe he can command their God, the Sun. Afterwards, the leader of the Incas tells them the “magic liquid” mentioned in the preceding volume was a coca-derivative used to hypnotize the explorers who had excavated Rascar Capac’s tomb as punishment for their sacrilege. Tintin convinces him to break the curse, and they return to Europe with a gift of Incan gold and jewels, while Zorrino decides to stay with the Incas.