The Adventures of Tintin: Explorers on the Moon - Hergé

The one that is out of this world

The slow build-up of Destination Moon, slightly overburdened with technological background details taking precedence over the spy thriller elements, proves to be justified by the sheer brilliance, imagination, thrills and entertainment provided in the second part of the story which takes Tintin and his friends into genuinely new territory. Explorers on the Moon, in many ways, is Hergé at his very best.

Consequently, having established the scientific principles of space flight in the opening book, there's little time wasted here in getting the rocket ship to the Moon. The story still has time before then however to explore some of the strange phenomenon of space flight, and it has considerable fun with weightlessness and extravehicular activity, mostly at the expense of Captain Haddock and his attempts to imbibe some contraband whiskey. There is some licence taken here, as there is with the eventual exploration of conditions on the moon, but it has to be remembered that this published fifteen years before man first landed on the moon, and much of the procedures and findings here are nonetheless very close to the reality.

What enlivens Explorers on the Moon however is the wonderful dynamic played out between Tintin, Snowy, Haddock, Calculus and the Thomsons - all of them settling into well-defined roles that have been established after several adventures - and how they interact with the spy thriller element that unfolds after several tense and dangerous lunar explorations. There’s certainly a debt owed to Fritz Lang's pulpy Woman on the Moon (Frau im Mond) in this respect, but that doesn't prevent the novelty of the setting and the inherent wonder and danger of being marooned far from home to be fully exploited.

Best of all, Hergé's artwork here is quite literally out of this world. The rendering of earth landscapes in Hergé’s ligne-claire style is always magnificent, whether it is working with jungles, deserts, seascapes, or rocky Andean and snow-covered Himalayan mountain ranges, but it proves to be perfect for establishing the lifeless majesty of lunar landscapes, craters and caverns. Some of the scenes, with the red rocket set against the stars with planet Earth in the background, are still simply beautiful timeless images. Hergé captures the wonder and mystery of the moon, and even if it has since been walked upon in real life, its mystery remains and still fires the imagination, and that's exactly what Explorers on the Moon captures.

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