»The Tintin Companion

While reading through the first two volumes in the lovingly-produced Hergé Archives, Tintin in The Soviet Union and Tintin in the Congo, I decided to read through The Tintin Companion. I found myself richly rewarded: I had never realised the extent to which Hergé's original black-and-white comics (dessins) and the subsequent colour publications in French reflected the political topics of their day. The politics remain, however, in The Blue Lotus, published for the first time in English following Hergé's death in 1983: the plot closely follows the Japanese exploits in Manchuria, and the occupation of Shanghai, and the subsequent dissolution of the League of Nations. Publishers requested Hergé to make his settings more anonymous: the made-up nation of Khemed, a substitute for Saudi Arabia complete with the dynastic ruler, Emir Ben Kalish Ezab.

I have written before about what a tremendous influence the Tintin books are especially on my vocabulary and knowledge of places.

Tintin in the Congo is available in colour in the original French, as well as several other European languages; as far as I know, the colour edition is not available in English. The black-and-white portfolios feature an excellent translation by the team of Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper and Michael Turner, and almost exactly the same plot. Tintin in the Soviet Union, the first full adventure with our hero the reporter, shows quite clearly that the author had not found his voice: the plot is full of stereotypes, has Tintin constantly finding himself in impossible situations, and has crude ideas about other countries (Hergé had not, at this time, visited the Soviet Union). Similarly, the adventures in The Congo is full of racial and class stereotypes, some of which disappeared during the transition from black-and-white to colour; one cannot blame the author for working within the national and ethnic stereotypes of the day, nor can one laud him for paying attention to detail. The Tintin Companion shows the depths to which he eventually goes in obtaining excellent detail about the people, settings, and ideas for his subsequent books; even The Blue Lotus, which has some terrible language (mostly spoken by Americans!) about the native Shanghai population, shows more sensitivity towards character development.