I wanted to wrap up my exciting summary of Tintin In America with a flourish, but the problem with the book is that Herge’s plotting – such a strength of the series in the later books, when he neatly worked multiple subplots together into 64-page maxi-comics with ridiculous skill – here is total ass. Immediately after the rockfall which Tintin of course survives, he captures Bobby Smiles.
You of course see the problem: Tintin has already beaten up Al Capone and spent most of the book chasing down Bobby Smiles, the other evil-est gangster in Chicago. And then, two-thirds of the way through the book, Tintin catches him. Leaving another third of the book where Tintin essentially has nothing to do, so Herge goes into his stockpile of stupid as gangster after gangster concocts a horrible death trap for Tintin, which he always blithely escapes in the most retardedly lucky way possible.
In case I’m not making myself clear, consider these two examples. Firstly, Tintin is tricked by a gangster into visiting a sausage factory. “Hey,” says the gangster, “let’s go up over the giant meat grinder and take a look!”
Seriously.
Now, you might be wondering what incredibly insane stroke of luck Tintin might have to get out of this one. The answer is terribly depressing.
Tintin owes his life to a union, the members of whom stop working (and shut down the grinder) at the exact instant that Tintin and Snowy fall into the giant whirling metal blades of death. It was probably a corrupt union, too.
Leaving aside the question of why Tintin would be rescued, even unintentionally, by agents of the same social forces he’s fighting –
– he then meets up with the gangster, who takes credit for shutting off the blades and saving Tintin’s life. Tintin accepts this unconditionally. Whirling metal blades of death? Everyday occurrence for Tintin! It just sort of happens, you see. Nothing suspicious about whirling metal blades of death. Or for that matter the tricked-out guardrails which conveniently gave way.
But it gets even stupider!
You’d think this would be a powerfully simple deathtrap Tintin is in this time, right? Take him out onto the lake, tie a weight to his feet, then toss him overboard. (Or through a trapdoor, which is not quite how non-pressurized environments work on boats, but whatever. We have already established that Herge loves himself some trapdoors.)
Guess what?
But how can this be?
It is worth noting at this point that Herge took no pains whatsoever to set up this switch. In fact, this scene is the first (and only) time you see the circus strongman and/or his trainer in the entire book.
So, in order for this to work:
1.) The gangsters have to have the opportunity to accidentally switch their gigantic real “dumbbell” (well, actually it’s probably a barbell, but whatever) for the fake wooden one. How often does this happen in real life? How often do the paths of two people with massive novelty dumbbells coincide, anyhow?
2.) They also have to fail to notice that the fake wooden dumbbell weighs a lot less than the massive metal dumbbell.
3.) They have to perform task #2 repeatedly.
And remember, these gangsters are the terrors of all Chicago.
To sum up:
Tintin, you lucky fucking bastard.
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I realize that comics bloggers have a long and storied history of taking the piss out of comic books. But to this non-Tintin reader, this write-up makes Tintin sound like unreadable crap. Am I wrong? Is this just a bad one?
This is, ignoring a couple of the really early efforts, the first one. As such, it’s much, much rougher than the later efforts, where Herge refined his plotting to a great degree and really produced some of the best all-ages adventure comics of the 20th century. They really start to kick in around Red Rackham’s Treasure.
Having not read Tintin since I was a wee lad, I was afraid that they were all this bad and I just remembered them better. Thank goodness (though I do remember thinking that the red indian tripping over the “buried hachet” was kind of stupid, even at age 8.)
What I like is that they remember to mention Snowy on the ticker tape parade sign. Can everybody else hear Snowy talking? If Paris Hilton brought in Osama Bin Laden, would we remember to mention Tinkerbell?
Even despite the crappy plotting, Tintin in America is a fun read. I mean, that bit with the dumbbells is hilarious. Stupid, but hilarious.
Look at Snowy in the fourth picture you posted. Tintin may be stupid enough to buy that explanation, but his freakin’ DOG isn’t.
Yes, Tintin in America is terrible and I even gave it as a present to a friend who did an exchange year in the States :-S Luckily his younger nephew liked it 🙂
Btw: the original cover of this book got sold today at an auction in Paris and became the most expensive comics drawing ever: Tintin painting sold for record price
[…] The end result is nice, but peeking behind the factory walls isn’t always pretty (cue scene from Tintin in […]
Your comments on the text (barbell vs dumbbell), smiles prison names curse words, etc. show what a stupid fuck you are. These are English translations and not the original text.
As for the racism, this book was produced in the 1930s then coloured in 1945. So, a white European was a racist 63 years ago? Big deal, in your shitty cunt-ry of America blacks were still not allowed into white restaurants and had to sit at the back of public transport and give away seats to whites less than 30 years ago.
You certainly do not have the slightest knowlege or the simplist of mental capacities to comment on Herge’s work. (who is a Belgian by the way, not a “Frenchman” retard).
Thus, I advice you to keep doing what you do best, which is masturbating in your sisiter’s soiled underpants while you surf the web on the computer located in your parents’ basement. You and the rest of your fellow americans have more important stuff to think about, like how could some degenerate cavemen destroy your cunt-ry on 9-11 and are still at large regardless of all your stupid wars, the 6000 killed in both of them, and the tens of thousands of your soldiers who will live the rest of their lives as useless puppets after losing one or more of their limbs?
I think he knows HergĂ© was Belgian. He certainly knows Tintin was (athough Tintin was never officially of any nationality). He calls him “French” because HergĂ© lived in France for so long. It’s not like he had some sort of strong Belgian identity Ă la Jacques Brel or anything. He was Franco-Belgian.
All in all calm the fuck down. I’m a Tintin fan too but I don’t love everything about it. An American is not allowed to criticize European racism because his country has a history of racism too? What the hell kind of logic is that?
Besides, bitch about sweeping generations all you want, but I have found that the French (I KNOW HERGÉ WAS BELGIAN, SHUT UP) are massively more insensitive to racist imagery than Americans. Case in point: Banania. When I saw a box of it (this design: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d9/Banania4.jpg) I almost had a stroke.
You get extra points for your unironic usage of the excruciatingly overdone “basement dweller” insult.
So, a white European was a racist 63 years ago? Big deal, in your shitty cunt-ry of America blacks were still not allowed into white restaurants and had to sit at the back of public transport and give away seats to whites less than 30 years ago.
I’m going to start by linking to the wiki page for Leopold II, after reading that read the page on the congo free state – note that to belgiums of Herge’s generation Leopold II and the CFS would have been more recent history than the segregation laws are to modern USians.
I should also point out that comics containing sambo imagery are racist by definition, comics containing sambo imagery that also portray the congolese as cannibalistic savages who need to be killed by white people is just… even herge later found that to be a horrible idea (though he found more problems with the fact that he hadn’t done any research than with the whole horrible spectre of genocide he managed to invoke – because Herge was very much a naturally occuring stereotypical dickhead francophone than anything else).
And don’t get me started on the portayal of asian-americans and native americans in the Lucky Luke comics. French comic books aimed at children, to this day, have serious issues wrt race that make america look like a genuine post-racial society.