rossn
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Post by rossn on Apr 1, 2017 15:40:58 GMT -5
Well, it's only been two or three weeks since my review of The Blue Lotus was posted, but I'm glad that you're excited to see a new review. I plan on taking my reviews of Tintin at a bit more of a leisurely pace than I did with my Star Wars ones. There are only 24 books to review, after all, and I'm already a quarter of the way through the series, so I feel as if I can take my time a little bit more and not feel pressured to churn them out. I'm not talking about months between reviews or anything, but you probably shouldn't be surprised if 2 or 3 weeks slip by between books. Sorry, didn't mean to sound impatient. Just enthusiastic at another review. I completely understand pacing your reviews. I was looking through my own copy to see if there was anything I'd missed, but yeah he does just seem to let it happen. Very weird. Personally I prefer it to Tintin in America (while conceding the artwork isn't as good) but they definitely feel like siblings. What's weird is that we see one of the very few times where Tintin's nerves get the best of him (getting drunk when facing the execution.) Again that could be played for drama but this book plays it for dark comedy. I know him mostly from the mention he gets in Bill Bryson's book 1927 but there is also a film that is coming out soon or is already out about his search for the lost city of Z. The actual death of the villains (and their damnation to hell) is an uncommon event in Tintin. It sure spooked me when I was little! Glad I'm not the only one who thought that!
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rossn
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Post by rossn on Apr 1, 2017 9:55:33 GMT -5
The Broken Ear (French: L'Oreille cassée) Original publication dates: December 1935 – February 1937 First collected edition: 1937 (partially redrawn colour edition published in 1943) Author: Hergé Tintin visits: Belgium (Brussels), France (Le Havre), San Theodoros (Los Dopicos), Nuevo Rico (Sanfacion, Arumbaya village) Overall rating: Yay, it's back! I think I like The Broken Ear more than you Confessor, even if I have to concede a lot of your points to its flaws (that Tintin might have been able to save Tortilla never occurred to me before.) The art in many places is unimpressive by the standards of Tintin, with the jungle background actually degenterating into a blank green 'wall' in places. It is a shame too because the setting is both interesting and with the period nicely pulpy - one wonders if Tintin and Indiana Jones ran into each other in South America. That said I will forgive a lot because as you note this book is both hilarious and thrilling. Really with the satire and pacing in a lot of ways it is like Tintin in America with better characters. I've mentioned before but this book seems to have an unusually big supporting cast - General Alcazar, Alonso and Ramón, Pablo, Ridgewell and my favourite the luckless Colonel Corporal Diaz. It gives the story a grand sprawling feel that is rather charming in some ways. One of the aspect I like is that Alonso and Ramón are as much the victim of events as Tintin is, getting conscripted into the San Theodoran army or getting paranoid over the number of Tintin lookalikes that seem to be aboard their ship. Of course despite being a very funny comedy this is also the darkest Tintin story. In some ways the two might be linked; had the tone been as serious as Tintin and the Blue Lotus this would have been a rather grim and harrowing tale - two murders, two deaths by drowning and Corporal Diaz being killed by his own bomb (probably the single darkest joke in the whole run.) To say nothing of the war of course. I wonder if Ridgewell was based on Percy Fawcett?
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rossn
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Post by rossn on Mar 25, 2017 10:16:11 GMT -5
Catching up with these insights. I agree wildfire2099 that there is a lot to like about the Wheel storyline. That sort of 'fringe' territory always really interests me in Star Wars - I have and cherish the short story collections set in the Mos Eisley Cantina and Jabba's Palace that showcase civilian life in the GFFA (usually very, very shady civilians of course but still.) Then there's the fleet.. they refer to it as THE Imperial Fleet... so the Rebels have a network of bases, and the Empire only has one Fleet.. and it's hanging around an uncharted planet that isn't on any star maps? How does that make any sense? Yeah Star Wars writers seem all over the place with how big the Empire is actually meant to be. In general the Marvelverse version feels a bit smaller than the later EU version where the writers tended to treat the title 'Galactic' as literal.
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rossn
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Post by rossn on Mar 16, 2017 12:24:49 GMT -5
Hmmmm...see, I actually like it that we don't get to see any of the same aliens that we saw in the films. One of my big annoyances in the prequel films, and an awful lot of expanded universe material as well, is that we perpetually see the same 20 or so alien species again and again. It's a big galaxy out there and, really, there should be countless different races populating the space lanes. Writers/artists continually re-using the alien races we saw in the films has the subtle and unintended consequence of making the SW galaxy seem like a much smaller place than it is. Oh, I don't agree at all. You talk about countless species, but what about by far the biggest offenders: humans? We see them everywhere in the GFFA. Now I don't have a problem with the idea humans (or aliens that are visually indistinguishable from humans) are the single most common 'humanoid' species, but surely they aren't the only species that can exist on more than one planet? To be honest I'd probably have preferred a higher proportion of non-humans in the Marvel run, where, unlike in the films 'makeup' was free. Having 'stock' aliens is a great way to combat an excessive emphasis on humans. It turns the setting from 'humans and various aliens who are mostly confined to one planet' to 'common species in the Galacitic Republic/Empire like humans, Twi'leks, Rodians and so on, less common species like Hutts and 'one planet only' species who are mostly primitive (like Ewoks or Sand People) or isolationist. Plus I like a lot of the canon species.
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rossn
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Post by rossn on Mar 14, 2017 18:15:00 GMT -5
Very cool to hear your thoughts wildfire2099!
I liked the Aduba-3 storyline a lot but it is hard to objectively argue with a lot of the flaws. I agree Chewie is a bit too much here, and I'm glad I'm not the only one who wished the Marvel run had been less stingy showing 'canon' aliens (though part of that might be growing up a fan of the old Expanded Universe which liked to use Rodians, Twi'leks, Mon Calamari, etc.)
The Western vibe rather suits Han. Brian Daley ran with that a bit in his Han Solo Adventures, really playing up the idea of being quick on the draw for instance.
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rossn
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Post by rossn on Mar 14, 2017 17:26:03 GMT -5
In fairness Slam_Bradley you might find The Blue Lotus is closer to what you want, not necessarily to quality (though it is of higher quality than Tintin in America) but tone. Tintin books come in more comedic and more serious shades. The Blue Lotus is a more serious adventure. I'll get there. Luckily Confessor isn't pumping out reviews at the rate Shax is over on Atari Force. And I still can't keep up. Cool. One of the weird things of course is that Confessor is reviewing a series than ran for nearly fifty years (1929 to 1976, or even 1983 if you count the unfinished album Hergé was working on at the time of his death.) While there was only one main writer/artist (with assistants) throughout, that is a long time. The Calculus Affair (1956) for instance is a Cold War story. The Broken Ear (1937) and Tintin and the Picaros (1976) are set in the same fictional country but even aside from the art differences one is definitely 'Thirties' and one is definitely 'Seventies'.
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rossn
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Post by rossn on Mar 14, 2017 10:28:56 GMT -5
In fairness Slam_Bradley you might find The Blue Lotus is closer to what you want, not necessarily to quality (though it is of higher quality than Tintin in America) but tone.
Tintin books come in more comedic and more serious shades. The Blue Lotus is a more serious adventure.
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rossn
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Post by rossn on Mar 13, 2017 22:01:04 GMT -5
I think part of the problem is, as already mentioned, a character can be so radically different under a different writer (and artist) as to be totally different characters with the same name - just look at the original Superman of the late 30's and compare him with the Silver Age Superman.
To take a non-comic example Daffy Duck has been under different writers a completely off the wall lunatic, a cunning trickster, a greedy coward with a chip on his shoulder, an out and out villain and a combination of all the preceeding. Fans of one interpretation are far from guaranteed to like another version, even if both are objectively good - they just appeal in different ways, potentially to different audiences.
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rossn
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Post by rossn on Mar 11, 2017 21:07:02 GMT -5
Yeah, the nighttime scenes in this book are especially nice. Agreed! I particularly like the series of panels on pages 12 to 13 with Tintin going through the afterdark streets of Shanghai in search of a house with a lit lantern. Wonderfully eerie and atmospheric. Good point. I think Hergé was experimenting with a larger and more complex supporting cast with this book: aside from Rastapopoulos, Mitsuhirato and the Thom(p)sons we also get Dawson, Gibbons, Wang Chen-yee (and family) and, above all, Chang. Each of these characters appear in multiple sections and have their own subplots unlike, say, Tintin in America which seemed to a lot more 'one page' or 'one panel' gag characters like the drunken sheriff. We see a similar 'ensemble' in The Broken Ear. I was actually thinking of the relative luxury Tintin's other Chicago foe Al Capone enjoyed at Eastern State Penitentiary: In fairness it only looks a 'bit' like Smiles but I was wondering if that was due to the older art in The Blue Lotus.
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rossn
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Post by rossn on Mar 10, 2017 18:00:54 GMT -5
The Blue Lotus (French: Le Lotus bleu) Original publication dates: August 1934 – October 1935 First collected edition: 1936 (partially redrawn colour edition published in 1946) Author: Hergé Tintin visits: India (Gaipajama), China (Shanghai, Hukow) Overall rating: Great review of a genuine classic Confessor. When I was young part of the reason I liked The Blue Lotus so much was the strong period feel of the story. A lot of Tintin stories are timeless but this, in a good way, can only be set in the 1930s and that gives it a real sense of history. It also allows Hergé some great vehicles - a suitably intimidating Japanese armoured car or battleships lit by moonlight are immediately evocative. Really the art throughout is just stunning. The scene of the Thom(p)sons in full Manchu-era garb walking down the street is one of my favourite panels in the whole series. Funny, clever and gorgeous art all at once. While you rightly mention the Japanese and British imperialism there is also a very unpleasant American villain (well two counting Rastapopoulos). Gibbons the businessman must be one of the most repellent characters in the franchise precisely because his afwulness is so down to earth and realistic; he isn't a career criminal or a spy, just a monstorously petty and self entitled racist. Speaking of Americans, is that man in the glasses listening to the radio reporting the railway bombing meant to be Bobby Smiles? We even see what looks like a reinforced steel door behind him suggesting a prison cell.
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rossn
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Post by rossn on Mar 5, 2017 18:27:57 GMT -5
Finally had time to read this today. Thus far I've only read the first two Tintin's...which I'm assured are not the way to go. But Tintin just wasn't a thing in rural Idaho in the 70s when I was growing up. I read a LOT of books from the first half of the 20th Century. Including a lot of pulp stuff. And Yellow Peril lit. So I'm able to look at books like this within the tenor of the time. And I actually have studied Belgian colonialism a reasonable amount, given my son Nathan's interest in the subject. That said...this is a tough ride, for a number of reasons. The casual racism has been addressed. As has the animal slaughter. And again...I'm a bit immune to this. I come from a family of hunters. And I spent a lot of my youthful reading time perusing the likes of Field & Stream and the writings of Robert Ruark, including his big-game safari tales. But the shooting of the antelopes shows very poor sportsmanship and the blowing up of the Rhino was bothersome. Poor Snowy. Does he spend the rest of the series being the Dog Hostage and being abused at every turn? And Tintin is kind of a boastful tit. I'm pretty sure this will change, but he doesn't strike me as being a particularly sympathetic hero at this point. The antics aren't quite as cartoonish as those in Soviets, as I recall from when I read that book. And I mean cartoonish in the Tex Avery/Disney animated shorts of the time. Keep going Slam_Bradley, things get better fairly rapidly. The big-game hunting is pretty much limited to Congo - as I mentioned above, by the time of Cigars, Tintin is much more wildlife friendly. He also loses a lot of his earlier smugness and becomes more humble; most later books have hero stumble into an adventure in progress rather than pompously declaiming he'll clean things up. We'll also see him a bit more emotionally vunerable too - in The Broken Ear he looses his nerve facing an execution and actually gets drunk. The cartoonishness fades away over the early books. As for Snowy his role tends to vary in the early books between being snarky comic relief and plucky sidekick, but actually being a Dog Hostage is pretty infrequent. His 'screentime' changes too - in The Broken Ear (which has an unusually big supporting cast) he gets demoted to being an extra but the very next story, The Black Isle, has maybe his biggest role in the series. One thing I would stress is that most of with English as a first language only read Land of the Soviets and Congo relatively recently - as Confessor has noted for literally decades Tintin in America was the earliest book translated into English. So who knows if any of us would have stuck with it had we begun with exploding trains and dynamited rhinos!
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rossn
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Post by rossn on Mar 5, 2017 13:43:52 GMT -5
That's interesting. In my late '60s copy, which is the same redrawn version we see here, the book in the man's hands is Tintin in the Congo! Huh, that is weird! It does make more narrative sense mind you since Tintin in the Congo came earlier! I know it's childish, but the "native" dialogue, which the South American rain forest tribe uses in The Broken Ear, and its obvious double meanings, never fails to have me in stitches. Heh. We'll get to it fairly soon and can talk about it properly but I do think The Broken Ear is a bit underated.
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rossn
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Post by rossn on Mar 5, 2017 11:53:12 GMT -5
Well, yeah...that's certainly true enough. Tintin's treatment of the elephants is basically an 180 degree about face from the way he treated wild animals just two books earlier. Yeah it certainly fits the character we know and love better than the bloodthirsty Congo trophy hunter. I think in future the only time we see Tintin hostile to wildlife is when it is attacking him (or someone else around him.) That's fair, and I think you are right that he isn't as memorable a personality as some of the more developed villains even in the other early books (Alonso and Ramón for instance are more obviously 'real people') but he is very creepy in style. It is very weird because The Blue Lotus has some of that black humour and The Broken Ear has lots so this entry seems a bit of an odd man out in some ways, like Hergé was still trying to get the balance between high adventure, slapstick and more sophisticated humour right, with Cigars obviously swinging much more towards adventure and (to a lesser extent) slapstick.
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Post by rossn on Mar 3, 2017 12:26:18 GMT -5
Cigars of the Pharaoh (French: Les Cigares du Pharaon) Original publication dates: December 1932 – February 1934 First collected edition: 1934 (redrawn colour edition published in 1955) Author: Hergé Tintin visits: Gibraltar, France (Marseilles), Italy (Naples), Greece (Piraeus), Egypt (Port Said, Cairo, The Valley of the Kings), Saudi Arabia, India (Bombay, Gaipajama) Overall rating: Great review Confessor! I like Tintin in America and agree in some ways it is certainly funnier than this book but all the same this is the first of what I think of as the 'Golden Age' of Tintin. As you say we get in one go the introduction of the Thom(p)sons and Rastapopoulos. I'd argue that Tintin's character undergoes a slight shift here too; there were times in the earlier books when he came across as priggish and even smug; he seems more modest somehow, maybe because he just stumbled into an adventure rather than setting out as a crusading reporter. I agree being able to speak 'elephant' is a bit silly, but it must be nice to see Tintin as a friend to animals after Tintin in the Congo? As I mention before the fakir is for me the single most eerie character in the franchise, a wonderfully creepy and otherworldly character. The Rajaijah Juice is genuinely frightening as a weapon too. The Maharaja of Gaipajama seems to be the prototype for later rulers Tintin meets like Muskar XII or Mohammed Ben Kalish Ezab. It might be a stretch since Gaipajama is (presumably) part of British India but would it count as the first of Hergé's fictional countries? Oliveira de Figueira is one of my favourite minor recurring characters in the series, though his finest hour doesn't come until Land of Black Gold. I'd say the only issue I have with the book, and maybe the only area the otherwise more primitive Tintin in America is better, is that the wonderfully black comedy and satire Hergé uses is largely missing. According to wikipedia the gunrunner character who rescues Tintin is a thinly disguised Henry de Monfreid, but since he doesn't do anything funny I don't think it counts. Everything is played either straight (often very effectively, as in the eerie dream sequence) or quite broad (as you note bouncing on a fat man's belly!)
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Post by rossn on Feb 25, 2017 9:45:51 GMT -5
I was checking wikipedia and apparently the Blackfeet/Blackfoot tribe are a real Native American Indian people though Redskin City is fictional. I guess this means at least part of Tintin's adventures probably took place in Montana.
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