Books: Tintin: The Seven Crystal Balls / Prisoners of the Sun

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The Seven Crystal Balls
By Hergé
1948





Available now from Islington Libraries
You can reserve this item for free here:
http://www.library.islington.gov.uk/TalisPrism/

Prisoners of the Sun
By Hergé
1949





Available now from Islington Libraries
You can reserve this item for free here:
http://www.library.islington.gov.uk/TalisPrism/


Ok - I'm gonna be honest - pretty much the only reason I'm writing about these Tintin books rather than any others is because they're (probably) going to be the ones that Peter Jackson's Tintin sequel is going to be based on (see: the internet). But - hey - it's all good right? And at least it's not Asterix! [1]

My main memory of reading this books the first time round is the fear. There's this one moment in The Seven Crystal Balls (as mentioned by Noah Berlatsky in that Hooded Utilitarian link below) that gave me the total and absolute creeps - even looking at it now in the daylight I can still feel a faint chill moving down my back - and I'm back to being 11 years old hiding over the covers and trying to erase the images from my mind as I try to get to sleep.

But all that's by the by - because it doesn't really matter how scary those few panels are - what about the rest of the books surrounding it?

My theory about Tintin (and I don't know if there's anything out there that backs me up on this) is that in some respects he's the proto-James Bond. To explain: As hard as it may be to believe nowdays in the world of EasyJet - but there was once a point when it wasn't possible for the average person to travel aboard to exotic and far-off locales and so - a big part of the thrill of Bond (the books and especially the films) was that it was the nearest that the man on the street [2] would get to seeing Jamaica, Hagia Sophia, Miami Beach or whatever. Looking over the Tintin books - it seems that maybe there was a lot of that sort of thing was going on with everyone's favourite boy reporter. I don't know of any other character that has travelled so widely: Russia! The Congo! America! South America! Nuevo Rico! Shanghai! Scotland! Syldavia! The Sahara! Morocco! The West Indies! Iceland! Khemed! The Moon! Tibet! The Red Sea! The Lesser Sunda Islands! San Theodoros! [3] and of course - Marlinspike Hall (which apparently exists in England, Belgium and New York).

In these two books (after some detectiving around and getting all the elements of the plot into place) the destination for our intrepid band of heroes is Peru. Of course to my jaded mind Peru doesn't seem much of a exotic destintion (hell - what is nowadays?) but I'm guessing for those good folks back in the late 1940s it was up there with space travel - whilst nowadays to my jaded eyes - hanging out with llamas and climbing mountains these feels a bit like hanging out with Michael Palin (albeit with a little more slapstick).

Of course - because this is Tintin I feel almost duty bound to mention racism - and yep - towards the end there's a big point twist that doesn't really scan [4] relying as it does upon the idea that non-westerns wouldn't have any idea about how astronomy works which - sorry Hergé - it's the kind of thing that passes you by as a kid but doesn't really past the plausibility test now.

So - all in all - I'd say that there's better Tintin books out there and definitely ones which will give you much more bang for your reading buck. Except - it does still have those creepy panels so maybe it's worth a little peek just for that? I'll leave it to you to decide.

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[1] Joke. I'm not going to wade into the whole Tintin versus Asterix thing because as a child I read and enjoyed both (altho - truth be told: I've read all the Tintins but probably only about 1 third of Asterix) and while - yeah - Asterix can be a lot more cerebral (all those references!) and the wit is a lot sharper (even back then it was always much more likely that I''d find myself laughing with an Asterix book rather than a Tintin one - because let's face it - slapstick just isn't that funny in cartoon form) Tintin just feels more streamlined and elegant and built for much more adventurous purposes - and if I have to choose between a horse and cart and a rocket then - sorry guys - I'm going to go with the rocket every time (it goes into space!).

[2] Ha. Everytime I think of the "man on the street" I think of the Sid Vicious line. I'm not linking to it - but feel free to google it.

[3] Some of these places may be made up.

[4] On the Adventures of Tintin wikipedia page it puts this down to the influnce of Mark Twain - and Hergé's attempt to protray "Incas in awe of a latter-day 'Connecticut Yankee'." But whatever.

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Links: The M0vie Blog Review of The Seven Crystal Balls / The M0vie Blog Review of Prisoners of the Sun, Hooded Utilitarian Article: Tintin and the Racist Dream, Sean T Collins Review of the Seven Crystal Balls.

Further reading: Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn / Red Rackham's Treasure, Tintin: Destination Moon / Explorers on the Moon, The Photographer.

All comments welcome.