The Calculus Affair (French:
L'Affaire Tournesol)
Original publication dates: December 1954 – February 1956
First collected edition: 1956
Author: Hergé
Tintin visits: Belgium (Marlinspike, Brussels), Switzerland (Geneva, Nyon), France (Cervens), Borduria (Szohôd, Fortress of Bakhine).
Overall rating:
Plot summary available here.
Publisher's synopsis:
No more travels or adventures; no more careering all round the world. I've had enough of it!" says Captain Haddock. But danger threatens - Unscrupulous Bordurians kidnap Professor Calculus, and Tintin, Snowy and the Captain are soon on the trail again. It is no easy task to rescue the Professor and save his fantastic invention. Spies are everywhere, and Calculus lies deep in the fortress of Bakhine. But the Bordurians have Tintin to deal with. Comments: Beginning in December 1954, and running until February 1956 in the pages of
Tintin magazine, Hergé's follow-up to Tintin's moon adventure was a return to the detective/espionage stories that were more usually associated with the series.
The Calculus Affair is essentially a Cold War thriller, and you really get a sense of Hergé being back in his comfort zone and enjoying telling a mystery/detective story again. The adventure offers a distinct change of mood too, from the post-War optimism of the moon books, with their promise of a brighter, nuclear-powered future, to a much more paranoid Cold War era setting.
The Calculus Affair also represents a return to the single volume story format, which would continue until the series' end.
Something else that I want to note, just before we get into the review proper, is that I sort of consider this to be the beginning of the third and final phase of The Adventures of Tintin. First, you had the earliest, almost proto-Tintin stories, from
Tintin in the Land of the Soviets through to
Cigars of the Pharaoh. Then you had what I would call the classic middle-period, where Hergé really found his "voice", both as an author and as an artist (and this period would run from
The Blue Lotus though to the two-part moon adventure). Now, with
The Calculus Affair, we begin a period of slightly more reflective, more experimental, and more personal adventures for the boy reporter. The central characters seem slightly older here too, and, what with having had all those earlier adventures and travelled to the four corners of the globe and beyond(!), it's little wonder that Tintin and Captain Haddock somehow seem a little more world weary in this book and those that follow.
The Calculus Affair tells of Tintin, Snowy and Haddock's attempts to rescue Professor Calculus from kidnapping attempts by sinister agents from the rival European countries of Borduria and Syldavia. The Professor has developed a sonic weapon that is capable of destroying objects (and, potentially, whole cities!) with sound waves, and Communist Borduria is competing with Syldavia for the device's secrets across the Cold War frontier. In the course of this book, our heroes travel from Belgium to Switzerland and then on to the fictional Balkan state of Borduria, which we last saw in
King Ottokar's Sceptre. The professor's sonic weapon is clearly an analogy for the atomic bomb, which both America and Russia had been testing and stockpiling in the post-War years. As such, Hergé is definitely reflecting his times with this change of mood from the optimism of the moon two-parter, to something altogether darker and more paranoid.
The use of ultrasonics as a military weapon was actually pioneered by the Nazis in World War II. So, the German manual (complete with a V-2 style rocket on the cover, which is somewhat similar to Calculus's moon rocket from the last adventure) that Tintin comes across in the course of his investigation is an entirely plausible publication...
As for why Calculus, who is quite clearly a pacifist, has developed such a potentially destructive ultrasonics machine, well, that's never really explained. I guess that the device could have potential uses in both the demolition and earth moving industries, but other than that, I'm struggling to think of a decent peacetime use for this machine. In fact, the possibility that such an instrument could ever be used for a deadly purpose seems to have utterly escaped Calculus, since it's not until the final page of the adventure that he concedes that many governments might "want to use my invention for war-like ends."
In any case, the machine isn't ever fully developed and remains a prototype, which is just as well, given the Bordurian and Syldavian military's interest in it. I really like the fact that Hergé demonstrates such wonderful contempt for the military officials who would seek to drive the development of such a weapon of mass destruction towards completion...
Note that Hergé has the speaker above commiserating with his audience of military officials over the fact that they haven't just witnessed the destruction of a real city! Hergé clearly isn't a fan of the warmongering military-industrial complex and definitely isn't sheepish about saying so. So, hats off to him for that!
As for the artwork in
The Calculus Affair, well, this is prime, late period Hergé, so it goes without saying that the art is phenomenal. I've read online that Hergé actually visited Switzerland, with camera and sketchpad in hand, in order to ensure the accuracy of the Swiss setting. He even went so far as to reconnoitre the exact spot where a vehicle would leave the road during one of his high speed car chases...
Hergé was also careful to get all the details in the uniforms of the Swiss police, army servicemen, and rail inspectors correct, along with authentically depicting the various tram, coach and car models seen in the story. The realism that he injects into his artwork is simply staggering. In this respect,
The Calculus Affair very much continues the new artistic pinnacle that Hergé had achieved in the two moon adventures – and in fact, the art here may be even better than it was in
Destination Moon and
Explorers on the Moon. There's just so much confidence in Hergé's drawing by this point in his career, and the sumptuous detail and authenticity he pours into many of the panels is wonderful to behold. I particularly like the detail of Haddock's reflection in the polished convex surface of Calculus's sonic weapon below...
At one point, there is a large panel depicting spectators gathered outside Marlinspike Hall, once the news of strange goings on at Haddock's stately home breaks in the national media. This panel is a wonderful character study (complete with a sneaky cameo by Hergé – bottom right, talking to the man with the pipe, in front of the tent). You can really "feel" the excited, gossipy atmosphere of this scene and almost smell the uncouth, voyeuristic throng...
There's a similarly impressive large panel later on in the book, depicting a car chase through a busy market, with a trail of destruction left in its wake...
But it's not all creeping Cold War paranoia in this book. As with most Tintin stories, there's plenty of comedy in
The Calculus Affair too, and the art delivers that humour beautifully. One stand-out gag for me begins in the scene where Haddock, Tintin and Snowy are hitch-hiking, without much success, towards the town of Cervens...
But the pay off for this joke comes several pages later, with Haddock's comments towards another hitch-hiking couple, now that he and Tintin have finally gotten a ride...
For me, it's the delicious "humanity" of this scene that makes it so funny. Haddock's selfish attitude towards the two hitch-hikers, when he's in a car, is completely at odds with his earlier indignant outrage at passing motorist's reluctance to pick him and Tintin up. It's funny because that's such a human reaction, and I'm sure we've all been a little bit guilty of acting like this when the shoe is on the other foot.
There is also the start of what will become a recurring joke in the series, when calls to Mr. Cutts the butcher start accidentally coming through to Marlinspike Hall. The confusion arises from Haddock's stately home having the telephone number 421, while Mr. Cutts the butcher is 431. The annoyance that Haddock feels towards these unnecessary and inconvenient nuisance calls will be familiar to anyone who has suffered from this particular problem. Hergé, however, takes the joke a step further, by having the Marlinspike police station's number be 412, which is again quite close to Mr Cutts the butcher's...
Haddock's alcoholism is also played very much for laughs in this book. I must say, I do find the humour associated with the Captain's drinking problem to be slightly uncomfortable – I'm not sure you'd get away with this today! But on the other hand, it is how Haddock's drink addiction has always been depicted right from his very first appearance in
The Crab with the Golden Claws.
As usual, Hergé's English translators, Michael Turner and Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper, have some fun too, by giving the fascist leader of Borduria the name Kûrvi-Tasch (as in "curvy 'tache" [moustache]) – and he does, of course, have a splendidly curvy moustache! In the original French, the character was named Plekszy-Gladz ("plexiglass"), which isn't nearly as good a joke.
Hergé also introduces a new recurring character in
The Calculus Affair, the tedious insurance salesman Jolyon Wagg. Wagg appears in four out of the next five Tintin adventures and is intensely disliked by Haddock, although Wagg himself remains cheerfully oblivious to this fact, believing himself to be a great friend of the Captain's...
The thing about Wagg which I think is kind of clever, but also kind of risky on Hergé's part, is that he's annoying to the reader too! He's a boring, self-absorbed, and utterly irritating fathead. For me, he is the single most annoying character in the Tintin books -- but I think that's precisely the point! I think we're supposed to find him an annoying character. I feel as if Hergé
wants the reader to feel the same exasperated annoyance towards Wagg that his characters do. As I say, this is a rather brave creative decision because including such an intentional irritant could easily backfire, alienating the reader and spoiling the adventure. Personally, I think Hergé just about gets away with it...but only just.
Hergé also introduces the monocle-wearing Bordurian Chief of Police, Colonel Sponz, who, as a villain, is cut from very similar cloth to Colonel Boris (a.k.a. Jorgen), who was killed in
Explorer's on the Moon. Sponsz will return in the final completed book of the series,
Tintin and the Picaros.
Something else worth noting is that Haddock actually meets Bianca Castafiore, the "Milanese Nightingale", for the first time. Tintin has, of course, met the narcissistic, but kind-hearted opera singer on a number of occasions, but below is the Captain's first proper meeting with the talkative, absent-minded diva...
Haddock was definitely aware of Castafiore prior to this meeting though, because he and Tintin attended one of her concerts in the earlier book
The Seven Crystal Balls and he mentions her signature aria, "The Jewel Song", in
Destination Moon. But the pair's first face-to-face meeting is significant because Castafiore will become a recurring irritant for the Captain, with her constant inability to remember his name. Still, as self-absorbed, vain, and whimsical as Castafiore is, she proves herself to be a loyal friend to Tintin and Haddock, when she hides them both from Colonel Sponsz in her dressing room.
All in all,
The Calculus Affair is another superb instalment of The Adventures of Tintin. The artwork is sublime and the story has a fluent, well-paced, cinematic flow to it. There's plenty of action, plenty of laughs, and, as I mentioned earlier, a sense of the central characters being slightly older or more worldly-wise, which I enjoy. This is a Cold War era Tintin adventure through and through, and one with a deceptively sophisticated and mature narrative. But it's also, for this reader at least, one of the most enjoyable books in the series and comes highly recommended for anyone wishing to sample Hergé at the absolute top of his game.