Misplaced Pages

#273726

127-621: The Shooting Star (French: L'Étoile mystérieuse ) is the tenth volume of The Adventures of Tintin , the comics series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé . The story was serialised daily in Le Soir , Belgium's leading francophone newspaper, from October 1941 to May 1942 amidst the German occupation of Belgium during World War II . The story tells of young Belgian reporter Tintin , who travels with his dog Snowy and friend Captain Haddock aboard

254-466: A big-game hunter , accidentally killing fifteen antelope as opposed to the one needed for the evening meal. However, concerns over the number of dead animals led Tintin ' s Scandinavian publishers to request changes. A page of Tintin killing a rhinoceros by drilling a hole in its back and inserting a stick of dynamite was deemed excessive; Hergé replaced the page with one in which the rhino accidentally discharges Tintin's rifle while he sleeps under

381-498: A graphic novel with a variety of allusions to The Adventures of Tintin . In one scene, the protagonist Nitnit discovers a warehouse containing white eggs with red spots, akin to the mushrooms in The Shooting Star , with the cover of Burns' book paying homage to Hergé. In 2015, the original front cover sketch of the book was sold for €2.5 million to a European investor, Marina David of Petits Papiers-Huberty-Breyne, at

508-433: A voice , and commanding—or commandeering—that voice is what guarantees power". McCarthy further observes that the image of a giant spider in a ball of fire, which appears near the start of the story, reflects the theme of madness that is again present throughout the series. Discussing the political elements of Hergé's series, McCarthy also noted that in the original publication of the story, the spider which climbed in front of

635-515: A "strange anticipation" of the mushroom-clouds produced by the atomic bombings in 1945 . Focusing on the characters of Professor Phostle and Philippulus, they asserted that both resembled Sophocles Sarcophagus from Cigars of the Pharaoh and that the former was "in the Jules Verne tradition" of eccentric professors. According to philosopher Pascal Bruckner , Tintin experts find Philippulus

762-512: A 24th unfinished album was released, the studios were disbanded, and the assets were transferred to the Hergé Foundation . Tintin is a young Belgian reporter and adventurer who becomes involved in dangerous cases in which he takes heroic action to save the day. The Adventures may feature Tintin hard at work in his investigative journalism, but seldom is he seen actually turning in a story. Readers and critics have described Tintin as

889-553: A Jewish banker, and Verne's novel had a Doktor Schultze to Hergé's Professor Schulze—both from the University of Jena . Hergé denied deliberately copying Verne's story, saying that he had only read one of the French novelist's works; it is possible that the influence from Verne came via Jacques Van Melkebeke , Hergé's friend and assistant, who was a fan of the genre. The Swedish expedition member Eric Björgenskjöld physically resembles

1016-406: A bed of magma in the asthenosphere and inner mantle . The plates converge upon one another, and one subducts below the other, or, where there is only shear stress , move horizontally past each other (see transform plate boundary below). Little movements called fault creep are minor and not measurable. The plates meet with each other, and if rough spots cause the movement to stop at the edges,

1143-612: A branch of the Western Publishing Company in the 1950s. The albums were translated from French into American English with some artwork panels blanked except for the speech balloons. This was done to remove content considered to be inappropriate for children, such as drunkenness and free mixing of races. The albums were not popular and only six were published in mixed order. The edited albums later had their blanked areas redrawn by Hergé to be more acceptable, and they currently appear this way in published editions around

1270-401: A bulbous nose and being an avaricious, manipulative businessman. Hergé later dismissed concerns over this Jewish caricature, saying "That was the style then". In his assessment of Franco-Belgian comics, Matthew Screech expressed the opinion that Blumenstein was an anti-American stereotype rather than an anti-Jewish one. Similarly, reporter and Tintin expert Michael Farr asserted that Blumenstein

1397-403: A caricature of Marshal of France Philippe Pétain , who demanded the French repent imaginary sins when he took power. Philippe Goddin stated that the strips for this story "kept the reader daily on tenterhooks in a story replete with new twists and humour". Harry Thompson described The Shooting Star as "the most important of all Hergé's wartime stories", having "an air of bizarre fantasy" that

SECTION 10

#1732801680274

1524-604: A classic Franco-Belgian strip". Syldavia in particular is described in considerable detail, Hergé creating a history, customs, and a language, which is actually a Slavic-looking transcript of Marols , a working-class Brussels dialect. He set the country in the Balkans , and it is, by his own admission, modelled after Albania . The country finds itself threatened by neighbouring Borduria, with an attempted annexation appearing in King Ottokar's Sceptre . This situation parallels

1651-412: A cover page. Though the format reduced the page count, it maintained the same amount of story by reducing the size of the panels reproduced. As The Shooting Star progressed, Hergé cut up and laid out clippings of the strip in an exercise book in preparation for the new layouts. It was the first volume of The Adventures of Tintin to be originally published in the 62-page full-colour format that thereafter

1778-483: A crew of European scientists. Accompanied by Tintin and Snowy, their polar expedition ship, the Aurora , is helmed by Tintin's friend Captain Haddock . Meanwhile, another expedition is funded by the financier Mr. Bohlwinkel , with a team setting out aboard the polar expedition ship Peary ; thus, Phostle's expedition becomes part of a race to land on the meteorite . On the day of the Aurora' s departure, Bohlwinkel has

1905-472: A criminal case was initiated, although the matter was transferred to a civil court. Belgium's Centre for Equal Opportunities warned against "over-reaction and hyper political correctness ". Seaquake Understanding plate tectonics helps to explain the cause of submarine earthquakes. The Earth's surface or lithosphere comprises tectonic plates which average approximately 80 km (50 mi) in thickness, and are continuously moving very slowly upon

2032-478: A gag in which two Jews hear the prophetic news that the end of the world is near. They rub their hands together in eagerness, and one comments: "Did you hear, Isaac? The end of the world! What if it's true?" The other responds: "Hey, hey, it vould be a gut ding, Solomon! I owe my suppliers 50,000 francs , and zis way I von't haf to pay vem!" Hergé omitted this scene from the collected edition. The character of Blumenstein displays antisemitic stereotypes, such as having

2159-416: A giant spider that escaped from his lunch box, before the seaplane arrives again. A sudden seaquake shakes the meteorite to its core and it starts sinking into the sea. Tintin gets himself, Snowy and a piece of Phostlite to the pilot of the seaplane in the plane's life raft, as the meteorite itself finally disappears into the sea. Thereafter, Bohlwinkel learns that he is expected to be tried for his crimes. As

2286-540: A henchman plant a stick of dynamite on the ship, but the dynamite is found and eventually thrown overboard. In one of the shipping lanes of the North Sea , the Aurora is almost rammed by another of Bohlwinkel's ships, but Haddock steers out of the way. Further setbacks occur when Aurora has to refuel at Iceland, going to the port of Akureyri , where Haddock is informed that the Golden Oil Company (which

2413-534: A lesson in mathematics. Hergé later admitted the flaws in the original story, excusing it saying: "I portrayed these Africans according to ... this purely paternalistic spirit of the time". Sue Buswell, who was the editor of Tintin at Methuen, summarised the perceived problems with the book in 1988 as "all to do with rubbery lips and heaps of dead animals", although Thompson noted her quote may have been "taken out of context". Drawing on André Maurois ' Les Silences du colonel Bramble , Hergé presents Tintin as

2540-579: A real person: Auguste Piccard , who later became Hergé's inspiration for Professor Calculus . "All I actually did was show a villainous financier with a Semitic appearance and a Jewish name: Blumenstein, in The Shooting Star . But does that mean there was anti-Semitism on my part? It seems to me that in my entire panoply of bad guys there are all sorts; I have shown a lot of "villains" of various origins, without any particular treatment of this or that race... We've always told Jewish stories, Marseillaise stories, Scottish stories. But who could have predicted that

2667-608: A real ship, it would probably be unseaworthy. The Shooting Star shared plot similarities with The Chase of the Golden Meteor , a 1908 novel by pioneering French science-fiction writer Jules Verne . As in Hergé's story, Verne's novel features an expedition to the North Atlantic to find a meteorite fragment containing a new element. In both stories, the competing expedition teams were led by an eccentric professor and

SECTION 20

#1732801680274

2794-594: A reflection of the strip's anti-Allies political slant. Hergé biographer Harry Thompson stated this should not be interpreted as a strong anti-Ally bias, for the only two nation-states in Europe that were part of the Allies at that point were the Soviet Union and United Kingdom, and that the characters of Haddock and Chester were British. As he had done for other Adventures of Tintin which featured sea travel, Hergé

2921-571: A result, the colourful supporting cast was developed during this period. Thomson and Thompson ( Dupont et Dupond in Hergé's original version) are two incompetent detectives who look like identical twins, their only discernible difference being the shape of their moustaches. First introduced in Cigars of the Pharaoh , they provide much of the comic relief throughout the series, being afflicted with chronic spoonerisms . They are extremely clumsy, thoroughly incompetent, and usually bent on arresting

3048-585: A scientific expedition to the Arctic Ocean on an international race to find a meteorite that has fallen to the Earth. The Shooting Star was a commercial success and was published in book form by Casterman shortly after its conclusion; the first Tintin volume to be originally published in the 62-page full-colour format. Hergé continued The Adventures of Tintin with The Secret of the Unicorn , while

3175-476: A sense of responsibility to my readers". Hergé's use of research and photographic reference allowed him to build a realised universe for Tintin, going so far as to create fictionalised countries, dressing them with specific political cultures. These were heavily informed by the cultures evident in Hergé's lifetime. Pierre Skilling has asserted that Hergé saw monarchy as "the legitimate form of government", noting that democratic "values seem underrepresented in [such]

3302-578: A strip about a Boy Scout patrol leader titled Les Aventures de Totor C.P. des Hannetons ( The Adventures of Totor, Scout Leader of the Cockchafers ) for the Scouting newspaper Le Boy Scout Belge ( The Belgian Boy Scout ). Totor was a strong influence on Tintin , with Hergé describing the latter as being like Totor's younger brother. Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier stated that graphically, Totor and Tintin were "virtually identical" except for

3429-615: A strong disdain for American big business, and had exhibited anti-American themes in earlier works, in particular in Tintin in America . During serialisation of The Shooting Star , in December 1941, the U.S. entered the war on the side of the Allies , thus coming into direct conflict with Germany. All of the scientists featured were from Axis , neutral , or occupied countries which might be

3556-662: A strong protagonist. Tintin's iconic representation enhances this aspect, with Scott McCloud noting that it "allows readers to mask themselves in a character and safely enter a sensually stimulating world". Snowy ( Milou in Hergé's original version), a white Wire Fox Terrier dog, is Tintin's loyal companion. Like Captain Haddock, Snowy is fond of Loch Lomond brand Scotch whisky , and his occasional bouts of drinking tend to get him into unintentional trouble, as does his only fear: arachnids. Captain Archibald Haddock ( Capitaine Haddock in Hergé's original version)

3683-625: A tree. In 2007, the UK's Commission for Racial Equality called for the book to be pulled from shelves after a complaint, stating: "It beggars belief that in this day and age Borders would think it acceptable to sell and display Tintin in the Congo." In August 2007, a Congolese student filed a complaint in Brussels that the book was an insult to the Congolese people. Public prosecutors investigated, and

3810-745: A week later, the occupied government proclaimed that all Jews in Belgium would have to wear a yellow badge on their clothing, and in July the Gestapo began raids on Jewish premises, followed by deportations of Jews to Nazi concentration camps and extermination camps , resulting in around 32,000 Belgian Jews being killed. Hergé later recalled: "I saw very few Jews wearing the yellow star, but finally, I did see some. They told me that some Jews were gone; that people had come for them and sent them away. I didn't want to believe it". The earlier Tintin albums reproduced

3937-411: A well-rounded yet open-ended, intelligent, and creative character, noting that his lack of backstory and neutral personality permits a reflection of the evil, folly, and foolhardiness which surrounds him. The character never compromises his Boy Scout ideals, which represent Hergé's own, and his status allows the reader to assume his position within the story, rather than merely following the adventures of

The Shooting Star - Misplaced Pages Continue

4064-610: A work given to him by Wallez and authored by Joseph Douillet , the former Belgian consul in Russia, that is highly critical of the Soviet regime, although Hergé contextualised this by noting that in Belgium, at the time a devout Catholic nation, "anything Bolshevik was atheist ". In the story, Bolshevik leaders are motivated by personal greed and a desire to deceive the world. Tintin discovers, buried, "the hideout where Lenin , Trotsky , and Stalin have collected together wealth stolen from

4191-430: A work whose idioms and jokes would be meritorious in their own right. Despite the free hand Hergé afforded the two, they worked closely with the original text, asking for regular assistance to understand Hergé's intentions. The British translations were also Anglicised to appeal to British customs and values. Milou, for example, was renamed Snowy at the translators' discretion. Captain Haddock's Le château de Moulinsart

4318-460: A youth supplement to the Belgian newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle ( The Twentieth Century ). The success of the series led to serialised strips published in Belgium's leading newspaper Le Soir ( The Evening ) and spun into a successful Tintin magazine . In 1950, Hergé created Studios Hergé , which produced the canonical versions of ten Tintin albums. Following Hergé's death in 1983,

4445-569: Is a Merchant Marine sea captain and Tintin's best friend. Introduced in The Crab with the Golden Claws , Haddock is initially depicted as a weak and alcoholic character, but later evolves to become genuinely heroic and even a socialite after he finds a treasure from his ancestor, Sir Francis Haddock ( Chevalier François de Hadoque ). The Captain's coarse humanity and sarcasm act as a counterpoint to Tintin's often-implausible heroism; he

4572-620: Is able to come apart because of the two plates moving apart, in a sudden movement, an earthquake tremor may be felt for example at the Mid-Atlantic Ridge between North America and Africa. The following is a list of some major submarine earthquakes since the 17th century. A 2019 study based on new higher-resolution data from the Transportable Array network of USArray found that large ocean storms could create undersea earthquakes when they passed over certain areas of

4699-422: Is always quick with a dry comment whenever the boy reporter seems too idealistic. The hot-tempered Haddock uses a range of colourful insults and curses to express his feelings, such as "billions of bilious blue blistering barnacles!" ( Mille milliards de mille sabords! ) or "ten thousand thundering typhoons!" Professor Cuthbert Calculus ( Professeur Tryphon Tournesol in Hergé's original version; tournesol

4826-399: Is an opera singer of whom Haddock is terrified. She was first introduced in King Ottokar's Sceptre and seems to appear wherever the protagonists travel, along with her maid Irma and pianist Igor Wagner . Although amiable and strong-willed, she is also comically foolish, whimsical, absent-minded, talkative, and seemingly unaware that her voice is shrill and appallingly loud. Her speciality

4953-621: Is especially noticeable in the seascapes, which are reminiscent of works by Hokusai and Hiroshige . Hergé also declared Mark Twain an influence, although this admiration may have led him astray when depicting Incas as having no knowledge of an upcoming solar eclipse in Prisoners of the Sun , an error T. F. Mills attributed to an attempt to portray "Incas in awe of a latter-day ' Connecticut Yankee '". Tintin first appeared in English in

5080-422: Is frequently replaced by malapropisms such as " Paddock ", " Stopcock ", or " Hopscotch ", while Nestor, Haddock's butler, is confused with "Chestor" and "Hector". Her own name means "white and chaste flower": a meaning to which Professor Calculus once refers when he breeds a white rose and names it for the singer. She was based upon opera divas in general (according to Hergé's perception), Hergé's Aunt Ninie (who

5207-525: Is owned by Bohlwinkel's bank and has a fuel monopoly) has no fuel available. He and Tintin then come across an old friend of his, Captain Chester , and Tintin comes up with a plan to trick Golden Oil into providing the fuel they need by secretly running a hose to Aurora from Chester's ship, Sirius . As they are getting closer to the Peary the Aurora receives an indistinct distress call from another ship and

The Shooting Star - Misplaced Pages Continue

5334-714: Is the French word for 'sunflower') is an absent-minded and partially deaf physicist and a regular character alongside Tintin, Snowy, and Captain Haddock. He was introduced in Red Rackham's Treasure , and based partially on Auguste Piccard , a Swiss physicist. "Everybody wants to be Tintin: generation after generation. In a world of Rastapopouloses , Tricklers and Carreidases —or, more prosaically, Jolyon Waggs and Bolt-the-builders —Tintin represents an unattainable ideal of goodness, cleanness, authenticity". —Literary critic Tom McCarthy , 2006 Hergé's supporting characters have been cited as far more developed than

5461-459: Is the Jewel Song ( Ah! Je ris de me voir si belle en ce miroir / Ah! My beauty past compare, these jewels bright I wear ) from Gounod 's opera Faust , which she sings at the least provocation. She is often maternal toward Haddock, of whose dislike she remains ignorant. She often confuses words, especially names, with other words that rhyme with them or of which they remind her; "Haddock"

5588-529: The Adventures of Tintin from a more "adult" perspective as Les Métamorphoses de Tintin , published in English as The Metamorphoses of Tintin, or Tintin for Adults in 2010. In reviewing Apostolidès' book, Nathan Perl-Rosenthal of The New Republic thought that it was "not for the faint of heart: it is densely-packed with close textual analysis and laden with psychological jargon". Following Apostolidès's work, French psychoanalyst Serge Tisseron examined

5715-421: The Allies entered Brussels and Hergé's German employers fled. Le Soir was shut down and The Adventures of Tintin was put on hold. Then in 1946, Hergé accepted an invitation from Belgian comic publisher Raymond Leblanc and his new publishing company Le Lombard to continue The Adventures of Tintin in the new Le journal de Tintin ( Tintin magazine). Hergé quickly learned that he no longer had

5842-611: The Art Deco designer, also affected early Tintin adventures: "His influence can be detected at the beginning of the Soviets , where my drawings are designed along a decorative line, like an 'S'". Hergé also readily adopted the image of round noses from George McManus , feeling they were "so much fun that I used them, without scruples!" During the extensive research Hergé carried out for The Blue Lotus , he became influenced by Chinese and Japanese illustrative styles and woodcuts . This

5969-539: The Aurora returns home, Captain Haddock steers the ship toward land to refuel not with oil, but with whisky. Amidst the German occupation of Belgium during World War II , Hergé became the founding editor of Le Soir Jeunesse, a children's supplement in Belgium's leading newspaper, Le Soir . Hergé's previous employer, the Catholic newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle (which had originated The Adventures of Tintin through its own children's supplement, Le Petit Vingtième)

6096-521: The Internet and international telephone network in those areas. This is particularly common in Asia, where many submarine links cross submarine earthquake zones along Pacific Ring of Fire . The different ways in which tectonic plates rub against each other under the ocean or sea floor to create submarine earthquakes. The type of friction created may be due to the characteristic of the geologic fault or

6223-626: The Italian conquest of Albania , and that of Czechoslovakia and Austria by expansionist Nazi Germany prior to World War II. Hergé's use of research would include months of preparation for Tintin's voyage to the Moon in the two-part storyline spread across Destination Moon and Explorers on the Moon . His research for the storyline was noted in New Scientist : "The considerable research undertaken by Hergé enabled him to come very close to

6350-549: The Pacific plate has been moving along at about 5 cm/yr in a northwesterly direction, whereas the North American plate is moving south-easterly. Rising convection currents occur where two plates are moving away from each other. In the gap , thus produced hot magma rises up, meets the cooler sea water, cools, and solidifies, attaching to either or both tectonic plate edges creating an oceanic spreading ridge . When

6477-596: The Paris Gare du Nord railway station, following which he organised the publication of the story in book form. The story's popularity led to an increase in sales, so Wallez granted Hergé two assistants. At Wallez's direction, in June he began serialisation of the second story, Tintin in the Congo , designed to encourage colonial sentiment towards the Belgian Congo . Authored in a paternalistic style that depicted

SECTION 50

#1732801680274

6604-903: The United Kingdom . He also sent Tintin to fictional countries of his own devising, such as the Latin American republic of San Theodoros , the East European kingdom of Syldavia , or the fascist state of Borduria —whose leader's name, Müsstler, was a portmanteau of the names of the Nazi German Führer Adolf Hitler and the Italian Fascist Prime Minister Benito Mussolini . In May 1940, Nazi Germany invaded Belgium as World War II spread further across Europe. Although Hergé briefly fled to France and

6731-538: The volcanic arc along the Great Sumatran fault. A transform-fault boundary, or simply a transform boundary is where two plates will slide past each other, and the irregular pattern of their edges may catch on each other. The lithosphere is neither added to from the asthenosphere nor is it destroyed as in convergent plate action. For example, along the San Andreas Fault strike-slip fault zone,

6858-435: The 1930s and 1940s, as promoted by those such as journalist Édouard Drumont , whose antisemitic Paris-based newspaper La Libre Parole was influential in Brussels. According to Frey, Blumenstein's depiction as an overweight cigar-smoker reflected the antisemitic stereotype of Jews as being financially powerful, while he suggested that the scene in which Blumenstein learned that he was to be tracked down for his crimes recalled

6985-426: The 62 pages Casterman had allotted, so Hergé added large panels, such as a half-page panel of a giant telescope on page three. Hergé wanted to include a small gold star inside the "o" of "Étoile" on the cover page, but Casterman refused, deeming it too expensive. In 1954, Hergé began making various changes to the story for its re-publication. Aware of the controversy surrounding the depiction of Blumenstein, he renamed

7112-754: The Arab emir, and Abdullah his mischievous son, Dr. Müller the evil German psychiatrist, Oliveira da Figueira the friendly Portuguese salesman, Cutts the butcher whose phone number is repeatedly confused with Haddock's, and Allan the henchman of Rastapopoulos and formerly Haddock's first mate. The settings within Tintin have also added depth to the strips. Hergé mixes real and fictional lands into his stories. In King Ottokar's Sceptre (revisited once more in The Calculus Affair ) Hergé creates two fictional countries, Syldavia and Borduria , and invites

7239-687: The British countryside would be acceptable to British readers. The resulting 1966 album is the dramatically updated and redrawn version most commonly available today. As of the early 21st century, Egmont publishes Tintin books in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. The Tintin books have had relatively limited popularity in the United States. The works were first adapted for the American English market by Golden Books ,

7366-919: The Brussels Antiques and Fine Art Fair. " The Shooting Star remains to this day a blot on Hergé's record. How did the man who had so eloquently defended the Native Americans in Tintin in America and the Chinese in The Blue Lotus , who only three years before denounced fascism in King Ottokar's Sceptre , become a propagandist for the Axis remains hard to understand. It did not have to be that way". Randy and Jean-Marc Lofficier Pierre Assouline remarked that Hergé's attention to accuracy lapsed in The Shooting Star . For instance,

7493-565: The Catholic newspaper Cœurs Vaillants , where it first appeared on 6 June 1943. On page 20 of the published book, Hergé included a cameo of the characters Thomson and Thompson and Quick & Flupke . The story also introduced Captain Chester, who is mentioned in later adventures, and Professor Cantonneau , who returns in The Seven Crystal Balls . On 21 May 1942, The Shooting Star concluded serialisation. Less than

7620-430: The Congolese as childlike idiots, in later decades it was accused of racism, but at the time was uncontroversial and popular, and further publicity stunts were held to increase sales. For the third adventure, Tintin in America , serialised from September 1931 to October 1932, Hergé finally got to deal with a scenario of his own choice, and used the work to push an anti-capitalist, anti-consumerist agenda in keeping with

7747-405: The Earth, spotted from an observatory by Professor Decimus Phostle ; he and a self-proclaimed prophet, Philippulus , predict that the meteoroid will hit Earth and cause the end of the world. The meteoroid misses Earth, but a fragment of it plunges into the Arctic Ocean . Phostle determines that the object is made of a new material which he names Phostlite, and arranges an expedition to find it with

SECTION 60

#1732801680274

7874-484: The Golden Claws , had been serialised weekly until the demise of Le Soir ' s children's supplement, Le Soir Jeunesse , before continuing daily in the main newspaper itself; the earlier serial had ended the day before The Shooting Star began. The Shooting Star was the first Tintin adventure to be serialised daily in its entirety. As with earlier Adventures of Tintin , the story was later serialised in France in

8001-421: The Golden Claws was concluded and the subsequent four Adventures (including The Shooting Star ) were serialized. During its initial serialization, The Shooting Star featured the United States as the primary antagonists; explaining this, Hergé asserted that the story revolved around the theme of "the rivalry for progress between Europe and the United States". Although not disliking Americans themselves, he had

8128-570: The Golden Claws was the first to be published with Hyslop's lettering. Hyslop was given versions of Hergé's artwork with blank panels. Hyslop would write his English script on a clear cellophane -like material, aiming to fit within the original speech bubble. Occasionally the size of the bubbles would need to be adjusted if the translated text would not fit. In the early 2000s, Tintin's English publishers Egmont discontinued publishing books featuring Hyslop's handwritten lettering, instead publishing books with text created with digital fonts. This change

8255-743: The Hergé Foundation has presented such criticism as naïveté and scholars of Hergé such as Harry Thompson have said that "Hergé did what he was told by the Abbé Wallez", Hergé himself felt that his background made it impossible to avoid prejudice, stating: "I was fed the prejudices of the bourgeois society that surrounded me". In Tintin in the Land of the Soviets , the Bolsheviks were presented as villains. Hergé drew on Moscow Unveiled ,

8382-677: The Hergé Foundation, Hergé's widow Fanny Rodwell said: "We never thought that this story of friendship would have a resonance more than 40 years later". The study of Tintin, sometimes referred to as "Tintinology", has become the life work of some literary critics in Belgium, France and the United Kingdom. Belgian author Philippe Goddin has written Hergé et Tintin reporters: Du Petit Vingtième au Journal Tintin (1986, later republished in English as Hergé and Tintin Reporters: From "Le Petit Vingtième" to "Tintin" Magazine in 1987) and Hergé et les Bigotudos (1993) amongst other books on

8509-558: The Jewish stories would end as we know now that they did, in the death camps of Treblinka and Auschwitz ?" Hergé to Numa Sadoul Under Nazi control, Le Soir was publishing a variety of antisemitic articles, calling for the Jews to be further excluded from public life and describing them as racial enemies of the Belgian people . Hergé biographer Pierre Assouline noted that there

8636-505: The Opera , as he steals a stick of dynamite and climbs up the ship's mast before threatening to detonate the weapon. Apostolidès believed that the shooting star itself is "more a religious mystery than a scientific one" and that Tintin is therefore "the perfect one to figure it out in some religious way—that is, unrealistically". Apostolidès analysed the political component of the story in terms of "the incarnation of unregulated capitalism against

8763-480: The Scout uniform, also noting many similarities between their respective adventures, particularly in the illustration style, the fast pace of the story, and the use of humour. He was fascinated by new techniques in the medium such as the systematic use of speech bubbles—found in such American comics as George McManus ' Bringing up Father , George Herriman 's Krazy Kat , and Rudolph Dirks 's Katzenjammer Kids , copies of which had been sent to him from Mexico by

8890-403: The Soviet Union, Belgian Congo, Peru, India, Egypt, Morocco, Indonesia, Iceland, Nepal, Tibet, and China. Other actual locales used were the Sahara Desert, the Atlantic Ocean, and the Moon. Hergé's extensive research began with The Blue Lotus ; Hergé said that "it was from that time that I undertook research and really interested myself in the people and countries to which I sent Tintin, out of

9017-446: The bastard [i.e. Haddock] and to preserve the integrity of his former values", pointing out that the first thirteen pages are devoted purely to the boy reporter. He also argued that Phostle and Philippus represent two-halves of "an ambivalent father figure" within the story, with the former prefiguring Calculus "more than any other previous character". He suggests that when hiding on the Aurora , Philippus can be compared to The Phantom of

9144-523: The central character, each imbued with strength of character and depth of personality, which has been compared with that of the characters of Charles Dickens . Hergé used the supporting characters to create a realistic world in which to set his protagonists' adventures. To further the realism and continuity, characters would recur throughout the series. The occupation of Belgium and the restrictions imposed upon Hergé forced him to focus on characterisation to avoid depicting troublesome political situations. As

9271-416: The character "Bohlwinkel", adopting this name from bollewinkel , a Brussels dialect term for a confectionery store . He later discovered that, by coincidence, Bohlwinkel was also a Jewish name. Trying to tone down the book's anti-American sentiment, he also changed the United States to a fictional South American nation called São Rico, replacing the U.S. flag flown by the Peary ' s crew with that of

9398-402: The character of Tintin and the sort of adventures that would befall him came to me, I believe, in five minutes, the moment I first made a sketch of the figure of this hero: that is to say, he had not haunted my youth nor even my dreams. Although it's possible that as a child I imagined myself in the role of a sort of Tintin". —Hergé, 15 November 1966. Georges Prosper Remi, best known under

9525-614: The competing expeditions are presented as a simplistic race between good and evil, wherein Blumenstein displays the stereotypes of Jews held by advocates of the Jewish World Conspiracy presented in works such as the antisemitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion . Frey writes that Blumenstein's "large and bulbous nose ... rounded forehead, receding black hair, and small beady eyes" were stock antisemitic imagery in

9652-704: The contemporary roundup of Jews in Nazi Europe. Frey contrasts Hergé's complicity with the antisemites to the actions of other Belgians, such as those who struck against the Nazis at the Université libre de Bruxelles and those who risked their lives to hide Jews. The Shooting Star was serialised daily in Le Soir from 20 October 1941 to 21 May 1942 in French under the title L'Étoile mystérieuse ( The Mysterious Star ). Tintin's previous adventure, The Crab with

9779-414: The crew agrees to alter their course to help; however, Tintin exposes that the distress signal is a decoy to delay them, and they resume the journey. The Aurora intercepts a cable announcing that the Peary expedition has reached the meteorite but not yet claimed it. While the Peary crew rows to the meteorite, Tintin uses the Aurora ' s seaplane to get to and parachute onto the meteorite and plant

9906-585: The damage is not often caused by the earthquake at the rift zone, but rather by events which are triggered by the earthquake. Where a continental earthquake will cause damage and loss of life on land from fires, damaged structures, and flying objects; a submarine earthquake alters the seabed , resulting in a series of waves, and depending on the length and magnitude of the earthquake, tsunami, which bear down on coastal cities causing property damage and loss of life. Submarine earthquakes can also damage submarine communications cables , leading to widespread disruption of

10033-700: The early 21st century, Little, Brown and Company (owned by the Hachette Book Group USA ) continues to publish Tintin books in the United States. Moulinsart 's official Tintin app in Apple 's App Store , launched with the release of the digital version of Tintin in the Congo on 5 June 2015, features brand new English language translations by journalist, writer and Tintin expert Michael Farr . The English-language Adventures of Tintin books were originally published with handwritten lettering created by cartographer Neil Hyslop. 1958's The Crab with

10160-475: The executive director of ICT Europe Tsering Jampa noted was "for many ... their introduction to the awe-inspiring landscape and culture of Tibet". In 2001, the Hergé Foundation demanded the recall of the Chinese translation of the work, which had been released with the title Tintin in Chinese Tibet . The work was subsequently published with the correct translation of the title. Accepting on behalf of

10287-410: The expedition's flag, thus winning the race. Tintin and Snowy (who followed on the plane) make camp on the meteorite while the Aurora ' s engines are repaired after developing trouble. The next day, he finds immense explosive mushrooms, and discovers that Phostlite accelerates growth: his apple core grows into a large tree while a maggot turns into a huge butterfly, and he and Snowy are menaced by

10414-430: The fictional state. In 1959, Hergé made a new list of changes to be made to the artwork in The Shooting Star , which included altering Bohlwinkel's nose, but the changes were postponed and never made. In 1957, the animation company Belvision Studios produced a string of colour adaptations based on Hergé's original comics, adapting eight of the Adventures into a series of daily five-minute episodes. The Shooting Star

10541-546: The final instalment of the series, Tintin and Alph-Art , was released posthumously. The series is set during a largely realistic 20th century. Its protagonist is Tintin , a courageous young Belgian reporter and adventurer aided by his faithful dog Snowy ( Milou in the original French edition). Other allies include the brash and cynical Captain Haddock , the intelligent but hearing-impaired Professor Calculus (French: Professeur Tournesol ), incompetent detectives Thomson and Thompson (French: Dupont et Dupond ), and

10668-539: The first time that Hergé had adopted such a perspective in his work; he had recently provided illustrations for Robert de Vroyland 's Fables , a number of which contained antisemitic stereotypes , reflecting the racism in much of de Vroyland's book. Similarly, his depiction of the character of Rastapopoulos , who was introduced in Tintin in America , has been cited as being based upon antisemitic stereotypes. When The Shooting Star appeared in Le Soir , Hergé featured

10795-403: The fissure again appears, again magma will rise up, and form new lithosphere crust. If the weakness between the two plates allows the heat and pressure of the asthenosphere to build over a large amount of time, a large quantity of magma will be released pushing up on the plate edges and the magma will solidify under the newly raised plate edges, see formation of a submarine volcano . If the fissure

10922-427: The independence he preferred; he was required to produce two coloured pages a week for Leblanc's magazine, a tall order. In 1950, Hergé began to poach the better members of the Tintin magazine staff to work in the large house on Avenue Louise that contained the fledgling Studios Hergé . Bob De Moor (who imitated Hergé's style and did half the work), Guy Dessicy (colourist), and Marcel DeHaye ( secretary ) were

11049-471: The meteorite's approach toward Earth caused a heat wave, while the meteorite itself proceeded to float on the surface of the ocean. In reality, no such heat wave would have been caused, while the meteorite would have plunged to the sea floor, causing a tsunami . He noted that the concept of madness was a recurring theme throughout the story, and that there was "an unreality in the whole adventure". Fellow biographer Benoît Peeters asserted that The Shooting Star

11176-400: The motion of the plates continue. When the rough spots can no longer hold, the sudden release of the built-up motion releases, and the sudden movement under the sea floor causes a submarine earthquake. This area of slippage both horizontally and vertically is called the epicenter , and has the highest magnitude, and causes the greatest damage. As with a continental earthquake the severity of

11303-528: The newspaper strips, which had come to appear weekly in Thursday supplements, two-page allotments of three tiers to a page. War shortages reduced the space for the strip by a third, and later the supplements disappeared completely; the comic appeared daily in the main newspaper as a four-panel strip. For publication in book form, Casterman insisted that Hergé must adhere to a new album format of four sixteen-page signatures, which gave sixty-two pages of story plus

11430-837: The nucleus. To this, Hergé added Jacques Martin (imitated Hergé's style), Roger Leloup (detailed, realistic drawings), Eugène Evany (later chief of the Studios), Michel Demaret ( letterer ), and Baudouin Van Den Branden (secretary). As Harry Thompson observed, the idea was to turn the process of creating The Adventures of Tintin into a "veritable production line, the artwork passing from person to person, everyone knowing their part, like an artistic orchestra with Hergé conducting". The studios produced eight new Tintin albums for Tintin magazine, and coloured and reformatted two old Tintin albums. Studios Hergé continued to release additional publications until Hergé's death in 1983. In 1986,

11557-473: The observatory telescope and was thus magnified greatly was initially termed Aranea Fasciata ; he saw this as an intentional satire of the threat to Europe posed by fascism. The Adventures of Tintin The Adventures of Tintin ( French : Les Aventures de Tintin ; [lez‿avɑ̃tyʁ də tɛ̃tɛ̃] ) is a series of 24 comic albums created by Belgian cartoonist Georges Remi, who wrote under

11684-433: The opera diva Bianca Castafiore . The series has been admired for its clean, expressive drawings in Hergé's signature ligne claire ("clear line") style. Its well-researched plots straddle a variety of genres: swashbuckling adventures with elements of fantasy, mysteries, political thrillers, and science fiction. The stories feature slapstick humour, offset by dashes of political or cultural commentary. "The idea for

11811-543: The paper's reporter Léon Degrelle . Although Hergé wanted to send Tintin to the United States, Wallez ordered him to set his adventure in the Soviet Union , acting as antisocialist propaganda for children. The result, Tintin in the Land of the Soviets , was serialised in Le Petit Vingtième from January 1929 to May 1930. Popular in Francophone Belgium, Wallez organised a publicity stunt at

11938-499: The paper's ultraconservative ideology. The Adventures of Tintin had been syndicated to a Catholic magazine named Cœurs Vaillants ( Brave Hearts ) since 1930, and Hergé was soon receiving syndication requests from Swiss and Portuguese newspapers, too. Hergé wrote a string of Adventures of Tintin , sending his character to real locations such as the Belgian Congo, United States, Egypt , India , Tibet , China , and

12065-717: The pen name Hergé , was employed as an illustrator at Le Vingtième Siècle ( The Twentieth Century ), a staunchly Roman Catholic, conservative Belgian newspaper based in Hergé's native Brussels . Run by the Abbé Norbert Wallez , the paper described itself as a "Catholic Newspaper for Doctrine and Information" and disseminated a fascist viewpoint. Wallez appointed Hergé editor of a new Thursday youth supplement, titled Le Petit Vingtième (" The Little Twentieth "). Propagating Wallez's sociopolitical views to its young readership, it contained explicitly pro-fascist and antisemitic sentiment. In addition to editing

12192-487: The pen name Hergé . The series was one of the most popular European comics of the 20th century. By 2007, a century after Hergé's birth in 1907, Tintin had been published in more than 70 languages with sales of more than 200 million copies, and had been adapted for radio, television, theatre, and film. The series first appeared in French on 10 January 1929 in Le Petit Vingtième ( The Little Twentieth ),

12319-578: The people". In 1999, the issue of Tintin's politics was the subject of a debate in the French parliament; this event prompted the British weekly newspaper The Economist to publish an editorial on the matter. Tintin in the Congo has been criticised as presenting the Africans as naïve and primitive. In the original work, Tintin is shown at a blackboard addressing a class of African children: "My dear friends. I am going to talk to you today about your fatherland: Belgium". Hergé redrew this in 1946 to show

12446-529: The plate boundary as follows. Some of the main areas of large tsunami-producing submarine earthquakes are the Pacific Ring of Fire and the Great Sumatran fault . The older, and denser plate moves below the lighter plate. The further down it moves, the hotter it becomes, until finally melting altogether at the asthenosphere and inner mantle and the crust is actually destroyed. The location where

12573-589: The reader to tour them in text through the insertion of a travel brochure into the storyline. Other fictional lands include Khemed on the Arabian Peninsula and San Theodoros , São Rico , and Nuevo Rico in South America, as well as the kingdom of Gaipajama in India. Apart from these fictitious locations, Tintin also visits real places such as Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the United States,

12700-438: The series contains the key to understanding literature itself. McCarthy considered the Adventures of Tintin to be "stupendously rich", containing "a mastery of plot and symbol, theme and sub-text" which, influenced by Tisseron's psychoanalytical readings of the work, he believed could be deciphered to reveal a series of recurring themes, ranging from bartering to implicit sexual intercourse that Hergé had featured throughout

12827-642: The series in his books Tintin et les Secrets de Famille ("Tintin and the Family Secrets"), which was published in 1990, and Tintin et le Secret d'Hergé ("Tintin and Hergé's Secret"), published in 1993. The first English-language work of literary criticism devoted to the series was Tintin and the Secret of Literature , written by the novelist Tom McCarthy and published in 2006. McCarthy compares Hergé's work with that of Aeschylus , Honoré de Balzac , Joseph Conrad , and Henry James and argues that

12954-562: The series itself became a defining part of the Franco-Belgian comics tradition . The Shooting Star has received a mixed critical reception and has been one of the more controversial installments in the series due to the perceived antisemitic portrayal of its villain. The story was adapted for both the 1957 Belvision animated series, Hergé's Adventures of Tintin , and for the 1991 animated series The Adventures of Tintin by Ellipse and Nelvana . A giant meteoroid approaches

13081-762: The series. In 1983, French author Benoît Peeters released Le Monde d'Hergé , subsequently published in English as Tintin and the World of Hergé in 1988. English reporter Michael Farr has written works such as Tintin, 60 Years of Adventure (1989), Tintin: The Complete Companion (2001), Tintin & Co. (2007) and The Adventures of Hergé (2007), while English television producer Harry Thompson authored Tintin: Hergé and his Creation (1991). Literary critics , primarily in French-speaking Europe, have also examined The Adventures of Tintin . In 1984, Jean-Marie Apostolidès published his study of

13208-688: The series. Reviewing the book in The Telegraph , Toby Clements argued that McCarthy's work, and literary criticism of Hergé's comic strips in general, cut "perilously close" to simply feeding "the appetite of those willing to cross the line between enthusiast and obsessive" in the Tintinological community. The earliest stories in The Adventures of Tintin have been criticised for animal cruelty; colonialism ; violence; and ethnocentric , caricatured portrayals of non-Europeans. While

13335-487: The spirit of European values", arguing that Hergé was adhering to "a utopian vision that, in 1942, smacks of pro-German propaganda". Literary critic Tom McCarthy believed that The Shooting Star represents the apex of the "right-wing strain" in Hergé's work. He highlighted the instance in which Tintin impersonates God in order to give commands to Philippus as representing one of various occasions in The Adventures of Tintin where "sacred authority manifests itself largely as

13462-430: The strip cartoonist's recognised means of denoting a dream, deliberately confusing the reader". He felt that the "flow of the narrative is less accomplished" than in other stories, with "spurts and rushes followed by slower passages, upsetting the rhythm and pace". Literary critic Jean-Marie Apostolidès psychoanalysed The Shooting Star , describing it as "the final attempt of the foundling [i.e. Tintin] to rid himself of

13589-409: The supplement, Hergé illustrated L'extraordinaire aventure de Flup, Nénesse, Poussette et Cochonnet ( The Extraordinary Adventure of Flup, Nénesse, Poussette and Cochonnet ), a comic strip authored by a member of the newspaper's sport staff. Dissatisfied with this, Hergé wanted to write and draw his own cartoon strip. He already had experience creating comic strips. From July 1926, he had written

13716-545: The two oceanic plates actually meet become deeper and deeper creating trenches with each successive action. There is an interplay of various densities of lithosphere rock, asthenosphere magma, cooling ocean water and plate movement for example the Pacific Ring of Fire. Therefore, the site of the sub oceanic trench will be a site of submarine earthquakes; for example the Mariana Trench , Puerto Rico Trench , and

13843-544: The type of space suit that would be used in future Moon exploration , although his portrayal of the type of rocket that was actually used was a long way off the mark". The Moon rocket is based on the German V-2 rockets. In his youth, Hergé admired Benjamin Rabier and suggested that a number of images within Tintin in the Land of the Soviets reflected his influence, particularly the pictures of animals. René Vincent ,

13970-402: The weekly British children's comic Eagle in 1951 with the story King Ottokar's Sceptre . It was translated in conjunction with Casterman , Tintin's publishers, and starts by describing Tintin as "a French boy". Snowy was called by his French name Milou . The process of translating Tintin into British English was then commissioned in 1958 by Methuen , Hergé's British publishers. It

14097-538: The world. From 1966 to 1979, Children's Digest included monthly instalments of The Adventures of Tintin . These serialisations served to increase Tintin's popularity, introducing him to many thousands of new readers in the United States. Atlantic Monthly Press , in cooperation with Little, Brown and Company beginning in the 1970s, republished the albums based on the British translations. Alterations were made to vocabulary not well known to an American audience (such as gaol , tyre , saloon , and spanner ). As of

14224-510: The wrong character. The detectives usually wear bowler hats and carry walking sticks except when sent abroad; during those missions they attempt the national costume of the locality they are visiting, but instead dress in conspicuously stereotypical folkloric attire which makes them stand apart. The detectives were based partly on Hergé's father Alexis and uncle Léon, identical twins who often took walks together, wearing matching bowler hats while carrying matching walking sticks. Bianca Castafiore

14351-467: Was "more parodied as a financier than Jew". Conversely, Lofficier and Lofficier asserted that both anti-Americanism and antisemitism were present, and that it is the United States and International Jewry who were the "ruthless opponents" of Tintin. Nazi apologists and revisionists such as French Holocaust denier Olivier Mathieu used The Shooting Star as evidence that Hergé was an antisemite with Nazi sympathies. To graphic novel specialist Hugo Frey,

14478-415: Was "of great power and brilliant construction". Elsewhere, Peeters wrote that the book was "notable for the entry of the fantastic into Hergé's work". Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier deemed the antisemitism a "sad moment" in the series, awarding the story one out of five stars. Nevertheless, they felt that the "pre-apocalyptic ambiance is stark and believable", and that the giant mushrooms on the meteorite were

14605-400: Was a "remarkable correlation" between the antisemitic nature of Le Soir 's editorials and The Shooting Star 's depiction of Jews. Within months of the story's publication, legislation was passed to collect and deport Jews from Belgium to Nazi concentration camps . Thus, The Shooting Star reflected trends in the Belgian political situation at the time. However, the story was not

14732-430: Was a joint operation, headed by Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper and Michael Turner, who worked closely with Hergé to attain a translation as true as possible to the original work. Due in part to the large amount of language-specific word play (such as punning) in the series, especially the jokes which played on Professor Calculus ' partial deafness, it was never the intention to translate literally; instead they strove to fashion

14859-655: Was careful to obtain as much data about ships as possible in order to make his portrayals more realistic. The design of the Aurora was based on the RRS William Scoresby , while that of the Peary was most likely based upon another Antarctic ship, the RRS Discovery . The seaplane on which the expedition travels was based on the German Arado 196-A . Hergé nevertheless later criticised his own efforts in this area, saying that if Aurora had been

14986-466: Was considered a self-imposed exile, he ultimately decided to return to his occupied homeland. For political reasons, the Nazi authorities closed down Le Vingtième Siècle , leaving Hergé unemployed. In search of employment, he got a job as an illustrator at Belgium's leading newspaper, Le Soir ( The Evening ), which was allowed to continue publication under German management. On 17 October 1940, he

15113-673: Was instigated by publisher Casterman and Hergé's estate managers Moulinsart , who decided to replace localised hand-lettering with a single computerised font for all Tintin titles worldwide. On 1 June 2006, the Dalai Lama bestowed the International Campaign for Tibet 's Light of Truth Award upon the Hergé Foundation, along with South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu . The award was in recognition of Hergé's book Tintin in Tibet , Hergé's most personal adventure, which

15240-497: Was known for her "shrill" singing of opera), and, in the post-war comics, on Maria Callas . Other recurring characters include Nestor the butler, Chang (or Chang-Chong-Chen) the loyal Chinese boy, Rastapopoulos the criminal mastermind, Jolyon Wagg the infuriating (to Haddock) insurance salesman, General Alcazar the South American freedom fighter and (on and off) President of San Theodoros, Mohammed Ben Kalish Ezab

15367-441: Was made editor of the children's supplement, Le Soir Jeunesse , in which he set about producing new Tintin adventures. In this new, more repressive political climate of German-occupied Belgium , Hergé could no longer politicize The Adventures of Tintin lest he be arrested by the Gestapo . As Harry Thompson noted, Tintin's role as a reporter came to an end, to be replaced by his new role as an explorer. In September 1944,

15494-504: Was no longer allowed by the German authorities to continue publishing; Le Soir , in contrast, was allowed to stay open under the administrative control of the occupying military government . Le Soir Jeunesse serialized most of The Shooting Star 's immediate predecessor, The Crab with the Golden Claws , but ceased publication due to paper shortages in 1941. The Adventures of Tintin was then moved to Le Soir itself, where The Crab with

15621-475: Was renamed Marlinspike Hall. When it came time to translate The Black Island , which is set in Great Britain , the opportunity was taken to redraw the entire book. Methuen had decided that the book did not portray Great Britain accurately enough and had compiled a list of 131 errors of detail which needed to be put right, such as ensuring that the British police were unarmed and ensuring that scenes of

15748-424: Was the eighth story to be adapted and was a single twenty-minute episode. Directed by Stéphane Bernasconi, the series has been praised for being "generally faithful" to the original comics, to the extent that the animation was directly adopted from Hergé's original panels. Bohlwinkel was tactfully kept nameless in the adaptation and his arrest is shown. In 2010, American cartoonist Charles Burns authored X'ed Out ,

15875-460: Was the series standard (as opposed to first being published in a black and white newspaper strip reproduction format that all prior books had done). Casterman published the album in September 1942. Unlike the previous books in the series, because it was printed immediately in colour, it did not need to be totally redrawn. The 177 daily strips from the original serialisation were not enough to fill

16002-471: Was the sixth to be adapted in the second animated series; it was directed by Ray Goossens and written by Greg , a well-known cartoonist who was to become editor-in-chief of Tintin magazine. In 1991, a second animated series based upon The Adventures of Tintin was produced, this time as a collaboration between the French studio Ellipse and the Canadian animation company Nelvana . The Shooting Star

16129-423: Was unlike his prior work. He observed that the character of Professor Phostle was a prototype for Professor Calculus, introduced later in the series. Michael Farr asserted that the apocalyptic setting of the story reflected the wartime mood in Europe. He characterises the opening pages of the story as being "unique in [Hergé's] work for the feeling of foreboding they convey", adding that "Hergé daringly eschews

#273726