Curiosity thrills the cat

Dear Readers,

It has been quite a difficult month for all of us here in India with regard to the second wave of the pandemic.I hope all of you and your close relatives are keeping safe and healthy.In times like these, it is natural that you yearn for a more simpler and blissful time, an escape into something comforting and familiar, something which stirs the pot of childhood nostalgia and brings up the sheer joy of reading, especially something as funny and exciting as a Tintin adventure! If you are new to Tintin, hope this encourages you to pick up a book or all the 24 books.If you are a Tintin-o-phile, please let me know your favourite Tintin books in the comments below.Happy reading! 

Long before the advent of Network Television and 24/7 news channels - movie theatres across the world used to show something known as the Newsreel.A Newsreel would contain video clippings of the current major news events from across the world with a narrator adding commentary to the vivid pictures unfolding in front of the viewer. The viewers need only sit comfortably in their seats and they would be transported into different worlds — everything from the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II to the testing of the atomic bomb, from the jungles of Borneo to the inauguration of the Golden Gate Bridge…

For a pre-Internet era 90’s kid like myself, Tintin offered a similar experience. To read it was to be instantly transported into the thick of an exotic adventure. Tintin was a young Belgian reporter and the cast also included his motley group of friends - Captain Haddock, Professor Calculus, the detectives Thompson & Thomson and his trusted fox terrier - Snowy. The ‘bad guys’ would usually be smugglers, drug traffickers or weapons dealers and these adventures would take Tintin and his friends from the heights of the Andes to the treacherous shipwrecks in the Caribbean Sea and everywhere in between. The creator of Tintin - Georges Remi also known by his pen name - Hergé - worked as a cartoonist with the Belgian newspaper Le Petit Vingtième and developed Tintin as a cartoon column in the weekly children’s supplement to the newspaper.

Even though it was originally created for a children’s magazine — the narrative is never simplistic.Tintin often gets into danger while trying to resolve mysteries but relies on his quick thinking and bravery to get out of it.The plots usually contain many twists and a lot of hilarity.The comics are very clearly drawn and coloured and accurately capture the finer details of the region of the world in which the story finds itself.The humour is slapstick but never forced and is always carefully woven into the idiosyncrasies of the characters. Professor Calculus is funny because he completely misunderstands what is spoken due to him being hard of hearing. Capt. Haddock has a colourful sailor’s vocabulary and is an incurable alcoholic.Thomson & Thompson get into most bizarrely dangerous situations because of their complete lack of common sense as can be seen in the below frame from Tintin & The Land of Black Gold:

The plot lines in Tintin showcase a very deep understanding of the international political and historical trends of the twentieth century. Hergé was excellent at capturing the contemporary political mood - whether it be shades of Nazism in King Ottokar’s Sceptre, the illegal and brutal occupation of Japan by China in The Blue Lotus or the terrible impact that European colonisation had on the indigenous cultures of America in The Prisoners of the Sun.In his later books, Hergé was not shy of subtly bringing to light the hypocrisy of the European powers in World affairs. However, his first three books - Tintin in The land of the Soviets, Tintin in the Congo and Tintin in America were meant as propaganda to inoculate Belgian children from the perils of Communism, Anti-Colonialism and unbridled capitalism respectively as this was the mandate to Hergé from the newspaper.Some critics have never forgiven Hergé for this crime.There is also a very valid criticism made about the caricaturing of Black people in his works which can only be called racist whereas on the other hand, people such as the native Americans, the Chinese and the Arabs escape this sort of crude treatment.The other strange aspect is the almost complete absence of female characters except Bianca Castiafore - the celebrity Opera singer who appears in six of the twenty four Tintin books.All in all one must remember that Hergé was a man of his times and that his sensitivity to issues of human rights developed as the years went by.

Tintin also has had a profound impact on popular culture. For many growing up in the Twentieth Century - the window to the world and its people - reading Tintin was to be immersed in the geography and history of the world while being entertained.Everyone from filmmaker Steven Spielberg to Nobel prize winning writer Orhan Pamuk is a big admirer of Tintin.

My recommendations for the best Tintin books are as follows:

1.Prisoners of the Sun

In the Tintin adventure before the events of this book-Tintin &The Seven Crystal Balls, Prof. Calculus is kidnapped by a shadowy group of native American Peruvians and this book begins by Tintin, Capt. Haddock and Snowy traveling to Peru to try to find Calculus.The story takes them across the icy heights of the Andes and dense Amazonian Jungles to a group of Incas living in secrecy in a lost city in the heart of the continent.Tintin & Co are captured by the Incas and how they secure their release from their captives and also manage to free Calculus is a truly ingenious plot point.What I absolutely adore about this adventure is the quality of illustration - which does a fantastic job of capturing the high-altitude Peruvian landscape and the rituals and art of the Incas very accurately. It is a very satisfying conclusion to the story which begins in the previous adventure and really showcases Hergé’s eye for detail for both the plot and the visual element of comic book storytelling.

2.Destination Moon & Explorers on the Moon

This two part adventure combines the best of the typical Tintin-esque slapstick humour with meticulously researched facts about space travel and Nuclear physics.These are then seamlessly put together for a thrilling adventure. Professor Calculus is invited by the Govt. of Slyvadia ( a fictional country in the Tintin universe last mentioned in an earlier Tintin book - King Ottokar’s Sceptre ) to head a space program which plans to take humans to the moon and he volunteers Tintin, Snowy and Capt. Haddock without their consent but after a few bouts of cursing in typical Haddock style they agree to accompany Calculus in this risky mission.The Thomsons also turn up in this secret space facility trying to investigate an attempt by some players to sabotage the Moon mission and end up on the moon rocket because they get their AM and PM mixed up. This whole bunch plus a saboteur end up landing on the moon and making some startling discoveries while also managing to work against time as they end up very close to exhausting the supply of oxygen while on their journey back to Earth.These two books steer the Tintin series away from pure adventure into the realm of science fiction.They were published in 1953 - a good decade and a half before mankind’s actual journey to the moon and Hergé must be commended for capturing the thrill of setting foot where no man has gone before. Calculus is the main character in this story and it is his tenacity and drive to make the moon mission a success is what drives the whole adventure forward.All in all an exhilarating Sci-fi Adventure.

3.Flight 714

This adventure begins with Tintin & gang being Enroute to attend an Astronomy congress in Sydney where they meet a new character - the Billionaire Laszlo Carreidas who persuades them to board his private jet with him as he is also going to the same conference. Carreidas’s butler Spalding betrays him and the plane ends up being hijacked and diverted to an island in the Celebes Sea in Indonesia where it is revealed that Spalding has been working with the frequently occurring Tintin villain Rastapopulous to rob Carreidas of his fortune. Rastapopulous has everyone on the plane bound and imprisoned and has Carrieidas injected with truth serum so that he reveals the details of his Swiss Bank account but this backfires.Tintin & gang manage to escape but in an unexpected twist, they end up hiding in an underground chamber with strange unearthly statues to which they are guided telepathically by Mik Kanrokitoff, a scientist who uses a telepathic transmitter to guide them to the underground lair….What happens next is too fascinating to be revealed here but I think it will suffice to say that this is the only Tintin books which flirts with the paranormal and contains one of the most extraordinary twists in the whole series.

In conclusion, reading Tintin makes one aware of people and places different from one’s own milieu, inculcating a global perspective which is often missing in other superhero comics and most importantly it makes for some fun, light reading which can considerably brighten up one’s day.It is the perfect antidote to all the doom and gloom in the world currently - a perfect way to avoid Billions of Blue Blistering Barnacles!