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The one with the total eclipse of the sun Prisoners of the Sun is the second part of a story started in The Seven Crystal Balls , but really, until very late in the adventure, there’s little reference made to events in the earlier book and consequently, there’s no need to have read the previous book, terrific though it is (one of the best Tintin adventures, in fact), since as far as second part is concerned, it can be summed up as… Calculus has been kidnapped. Well, ok, to expand slightly on that since it’s a regular occurrence in Tintin adventures, Calculus has been kidnapped and taken to Peru, although the reasons for his abduction are rather flimsy, it seeming to be on account of him inadvertently picking up and wearing a precious artefact belonging to the mummy of the ancient Inca ruler Rascar Capac (which seems to have disappeared, vaporised in a ball of lightning in the last book). All you really need to know is that Tintin, Snowy and Captain Haddock are in Peru to try to rescue...

The one with the mummy There's the temptation to regard the first parts of all the Tintin two-part adventures as lesser scene-setting setting works for the main course ( Destination Moon surpassed by the exploits of Explorers on the Moon , The Secret of the Unicorn establishing the adventure in Red Rackham's Treasure , and here with The Seven Crystal Balls clearly being "eclipsed" by the Inca adventures of Prisoners of the Sun . In many ways however there is just as much if not more interest in the earlier parts of these stories, which tend to have a rather more serious tone than is usual in Tintin books whereas their second-halves fall back on the usual exotic adventuring. This is particularly the case with The Seven Crystal Balls . On the surface, it would seem to be little more than a mature version of the Egyptological themes of one of Hergé's earliest (and consequently most underrated) solo adventures, the hugely entertaining Cigars of the Pharaoh . Once a...

The one with the Beastie It all starts off innocently enough, as it often does in a Tintin adventure, but before long, our young investigative journalist is embarking on a journey that takes him to the British Isles and ultimately to the mystic Black Island in Scotland. He has good reason to make the journey, having witnessed an unmarked plane landing in a nearby field while out for a walk and, by the end of page one Tintin is shot by the pilot as he goes to investigate. Recovering in hospital, he learns from Thompson and Thomson that the same plane has been reported crash-landing in Sussex, and Tintin accordingly sets out with Snowy to get to the bottom of the mystery. Like many of Tintin's earliest adventures, the ones initially serialised in the Petit Vingtième in the late 1920s and 1930s, the story takes the form of a linear line, with a rolling series of events taking Tintin from one place to the next, getting involved in mishaps and picking up clues along the way. Reworked fo...

The one that has big problems with political correctness Tintin's second adventure after Tintin in the Land of the Soviets (which having never been revised and coloured, seems to remain outside the official canon) has only been published in English relatively recently, and with its political and racial innocence (some might put it a little more strongly than that), there's good reason why it remains one of the lesser Tintin adventures.  Written before Tintin had fully developed into an investigative journalist chasing master criminals across the globe, under the seas and into space, it's the travelogue aspect that is the primary purpose behind the early Tintin adventures, the story revelling in the exoticism of foreign lands and alien cultures. Drawn also before there was a wider selection of reference material for Hergé, and being very much of its racially insensitive time, the depiction of the Belgian colony of the Congo and the natives is consequently potentially offens...

The one where Tintin is lynched There's not really a whole lot to recommend about one of Tintin's earliest adventures. In terms of plotting, characterisation and artwork, Tintin in America - created in 1931 and completely redrawn for collected colour publication in 1945 - is rather primitive compared to the sophisticated later adventures, the story suffering from no clear single storyline other than Tintin chasing one particular criminal across America. The book reflects rather its serialised origins where Tintin and Snowy are put through sequences borrowed from every genre of Hollywood filmmaking, from gangster films to Westerns. Tintin's reputation as a fearless reporter however is so well known that news of his arrival in America strikes fear into the hearts of Al Capone and his gangsters, who immediately try to capture and dispose of him the moment he arrives in Chicago. Escaping their clutches, Tintin however soon breaks up their organised crime activities, but has to...

The one where Tintin faces a firing squad drunk There’s an understandable tendency to look dismissively at the earliest solo Tintin adventures - justifiably in some cases. The artwork is somewhat naïve, as are the depictions of the countries that Tintin visits and the racial stereotyping, and the stories themselves suffer from the episodic format that they were originally published in, and there’s often no clear overarching story, just a series of adventures based around a theme. On the other hand, the attraction of his character and the foundations of his investigative nature are established in his exploration of the exotic lands, delighting in the diversity of a world rather that is more complicated than it would seem. In this respect, The Broken Ear is certainly one of the best earliest Tintin adventures and, packed with incident and adventure, it’s also one of the most memorable. More than just a series of adventures in a foreign land, there’s some real-life relevance to the natur...

The one Tintin adventure that has everything Tintin’s earliest adventures are often rather underrated in favour of the more sophisticated plotting and artwork of the mid-period high-points, but Cigars of the Pharaoh certainly stands up better than the latter-day Tintin ( Flight 714 to Sydney , Tintin and the Picaros ) and in some ways there’s a purity and innocence here that is unmatched in any other Tintin adventure. What some see as a weakness - the episodic nature dictated by the original 1932 serialisation and tendency of the story to lose sight of the main plot - actually works to its advantage, the story accumulating one fantastic incident after another. Some are of the knockabout humour variety - the Thompsons make a fine first appearance here in a running theme where they are trying to arrest Tintin and inadvertently saving him from worse situations - while others are highly imaginative and thrilling, particularly to the younger reader. Here in Cigars of the Pharaoh , while go...

The one with Tapioca and the Bananas Comfortingly enjoying life in Marlinspike Hall, there’s a marked reluctance on the part of Tintin and Captain Haddock to get involved in another mad adventure, and one perhaps senses in this a similar reluctance from Hergé, eight years after publication of the previous Tintin adventure Flight 714 to Sydney , to run his characters through the same old paces once again. Once they all get going however, it’s pretty much business as usual in Tintin and the Picaros , although it would prove to be the last completed Tintin adventure. Hergé initially has a great deal of fun at the expense of his heroes prevarication. The opera singer Bianca Castafiore has been arrested in San Theodoros while on a tour of South America and charged with spying offenses. Despite pressure from press and television reporters and despite the gallant words of Calculus, Haddock is the last person that is going to the rush of the diva, believing correctly she is quite capable of he...

The one where Tintin is abducted by aliens (and Hergé too) Although like any Tintin book there are certainly points to recommend about it, like most of the later Tintin books, Flight 714 to Sydney suffers from there being rather too much going on. Unlike the earlier Tintin books however, it’s not just that the storyline here takes on rather a lot and relies heavily on coincidences, or that it is overpopulated by the familiar and growing cast of regular characters, but what is unfortunate is that even Hergé’s beautiful clear-line artwork becomes rather messy and overly-cluttered here for the first time.  The characteristics that make the best Tintin adventures are however still to be found here. There’s no shortage of adventure in the storyline, which as usual starts off innocently enough as Tintin, Captain Haddock and Calculus stopping off in Djakarta on their way on Flight 714 for a conference in Sydney. An encounter with an old friend Skut introduces them however to eccentric mi...

The one where nothing happens After the personal drama that lead to the creation of Tintin in Tibet , one of Tintin's least typical but finest adventures, you'd be forgiven for thinking that Hergé had hit some kind of creative block by the time it came to writing its follow-up. If that's the case then The Castafiore Emerald is the comics' equivalent of Fellini's 8½ , the artist gathering together a huge cast of familiar characters, and without having recourse to the formula of the conventional narrative format, knowingly and self-reflexively have them run through the standard old routines and mannerisms. Nothing significant seems to happen, but it's still a hugely entertaining experiment that does open-up and shed some light on the creative process. The familiar process of running jokes are the narrative thread that links everything together in The Castafiore Emerald when the Milanese opera diva famous for her rendition of the Jewel Song from Faust (" Ah,...