Tintin and the Picaros (French:
Tintin et les Picaros)
Original publication dates: September 1975 – April 1976
First collected edition: 1976
Author: Hergé
Tintin visits: Belgium (Marlinspike), San Theodoros (Tapoicapolis, Hotuatabotl, Arumbaya village).
Overall rating:
Plot summary available here.
Publisher's synopsis:
Tintin, Snowy, and Captain Haddock must travel to San Theodoros to clear their names after a series of events sees them accused of attempting to overthrow the military dictatorship of General Tapioca. Tintin once again joins his old friend, the deposed General Alcazar, in order to bring an end to a treacherous plot that could spell doom for the young reporter and all his friends. Comments:
Tintin and the Picaros is significant for being the last Tintin adventure that Hergé completed before his death on 3rd March, 1983. Originally published as a weekly comic strip in
Tintin magazine between September 1975 and April 1976, the story was first collected into the familiar 62-page album format in 1976. It's publication came some eight years after Hergé's last Tintin book,
Flight 714, which represented the longest wait between stories since the series began back in 1929. This slow down in the publication of new adventures had been caused by a number of factors, including much of Hergé's time being taken up with his new hobby of art collecting, his wanting to take things a little easier now that he was in his late 60s, and his waning interest in Tintin.
Tintin and the Picaros sees the boy reporter returning to the South American country of San Theodoros in order to rescue the opera singer Bianca Castafiore and her entourage, along with the bumbling detectives Thompson and Thomson, from General Tapioca's regime. The book begins with Tintin providing an exposition-heavy recap of recent developments and a whistle-stop history of San Theodoran politics, including how Tapioca's regime overthrew Tintin's old friend General Alcazar, with financial and logistical help from the Bordourian dictator Kûrvi-Tasch. Incidentally, the "Picaros" mentioned in the book's title are Alcazar's rebel soldiers – the word means "scoundrel" in Spanish.
With Tintin once again involved with the Banana Republic politics of San Theodoros,
Tintin and the Picaros feels very much like a sequel to 1937's
The Broken Ear, in which Tintin first got embroiled in the revolutionary rivalry between Tapioca and Alcazar. Of particular note is the fact that we finally get to see Tapioca in this book. He had been mentioned in
The Broken Ear,
The Seven Crystal Balls, and
The Red Sea Sharks, but had not actually been seen until this panel...
We also learn that Alcazar has gotten married since we last encountered him and is now every inch the henpecked husband, with his ferocious wife Peggy thoroughly annoyed to be living in a jungle with her husband's band of rebels...
Note too, in the above panels, that Calculus seems genuinely enchanted by the old battleaxe. As I noted in my review of
The Castafiore Emerald, the professor is the only cast member in The Adventures of Tintin who ever displays any attraction towards the opposite sex. Oh, and in case you were wondering, he is most definitely still carrying a torch for Castafiore herself.
With the Bordurians providing backing for Tapioca's regime, it's little surprise that the General's head of security turns out to be none other than the monocle-wearing Colonel Sponz, who we last saw in
The Calculus Affair – although he goes under the name of Colonel Esponja here. Esponja is out for revenge against Tintin, and the imprisonment of Castafiore and the Thom(p)sons Twins is nothing more than bait to lure the young reporter into his clutches.
There are certainly a lot of returning characters in
Tintin and the Picaros. As well as the aforementioned Alcazar, Sponz, Castafiore, and the Thom(p)sons, we get the return of Jolyon Wagg, Pablo, Ridgewell, and the Arumbaya tribe. This plethora of familiar characters, along with the return to San Theodoros, gives the story a slightly "recycled" feel; there are no new locations, no new characters (with the exception of Alcazar's domineering wife), and no new threats. As such, it's hard not to feel as if Hergé is resting on his laurels and relying on the familiar to carry the story. On the other hand, the book is a rather nice, cosy read precisely because of all the returning characters and mentions of earlier escapades. So, for me, the abundance of returning characters and familiar locations is definitely a double-edged sword.
Tintin himself retains the new look that Bob de Moor gave him in the Michel Régnier-penned 1973 animated film
Tintin and the Lake of Sharks. Gone are his signature plus-fours (golfing trousers), and in their place, a pair of tan flares and a cool looking sheepskin-collared jacket. This new, hip, flare-wearing and motorcycle riding Tintin is even seen sporting a CND sticker on his crash helmet on the book's opening page...
That Tintin should be wearing the emblem of such a left-wing organisation as CND is indicative of how much the character had evolved since his staunchly right-wing debut in
Tintin in the Land of the Soviets. When asked about this transition, Hergé remarked that the character's support of nuclear disarmament was a natural progression, since Tintin had always been against war. It's tempting to ponder how much this transition from right to left-wing politics for Tintin reflected Hergé's own shifting political mindset.
Although Tintin certainly appears more hip and fashionable by mid-70s standards (he's even shown practising yoga at one point), I feel as if his attire dates the story in a way that his plus-fours wouldn't have. I mean, yes, plus-fours hadn't been popular since the 1930s, but they were actually kind of timeless, simply because Tintin had worn them for so long.
There are some changes to the boy reporter's character too – most noticeably that he doesn't immediately want to rush off overseas to adventure when he hears that his friends are in trouble. It is Captain Haddock and Professor Calculus who are desperate to rescue Castafiore and the Thom(p)sons, and even though Tintin is sure that his friends are walking straight into a trap, he opts to let them leave for San Theodoros without him. Not only is this an utterly shocking development for long-time readers of the series, but it also seems very out of character to me. Certainly it is markedly less heroic than the bravery and unwavering faith that Haddock showed towards the boy reporter in
Tintin in Tibet. I don't know why Hergé felt the need to deconstruct the core of Tintin's character like this, but the youngster's apathy towards his friend's safety leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Haddock too undergoes a transformation (and I don't just mean that we finally learn that his Christian name is Archibald!). Unbelievably, Haddock is suddenly no longer able to enjoy whiskey...
The reason for this unlikely turn of events is down to Calculus having slipped a new pill he's been working on into Haddock's food, in an attempt to cure the Captain of his alcohol addiction. I'm kind of torn over the merits of this change. On the one hand, Haddock's alcoholism has always been played very much for laughs, and his newly acquired aversion to whiskey is certainly the root of many of this book's most amusing moments. But on the other hand, Haddock's love of whiskey is such a cornerstone of his character that it seems a shame to remove it. As the story progresses, there's no indication that the effects of Calculus's pill will ever be cancelled out or wear off, and Calculus himself seems to indicate that the change is indeed permanent. Certainly Haddock is still unable to consume whiskey in the following unfinished adventure,
Tintin and Alph-Art, so Hergé clearly meant for this change to stick.
By the end of the book, Snowy, who has long been shown as being rather partial to a drop of whiskey, has also ingested Calculus's pills, when he ate food laced with them (as did Tintin). So now, neither Haddock or Tintin's canine companion will be able to enjoy whiskey again, which brings to an end years-worth of alcohol-related comedy and enjoyable character moments from the pair. This, along with Calculus using his medicine to cure the drunken Arumbaya tribe and Alcazar's Picaros freedom fighters, gives
Tintin and the Picaros a very deliberate and rather preachy subtext about the evils of alcohol, I feel.
There's also something extremely distasteful about Calculus experimenting on his friends without their consent. The professor electing to "cure" Haddock of his alcoholism, without seeking his approval first, is accurately described by the Captain as, "a monstrous attack upon the freedom of the individual!" I, for one, concur! But there's a bigger, more deliberate design behind all of this, I believe. Social attitudes towards alcohol consumption and towards alcoholism especially had changed markedly since Haddock's debut back in 1941. I think that this seemingly permanent change to Haddock's character and the book's rather "preachy" anti-alcohol message – along with the changes to Tintin's attire – were Hergé's attempts to modernise the cast of his books for their journey through the final quarter of the 20th century. Sadly, this journey would barely be started before the author passed away.
Before we move on from the subject of Hergé updating The Adventures of Tintin for the 1970s, I just want to mention that on page 13 we get our first look at hippies in the world of Tintin. Far out, man...
The plot of
Tintin and the Picaros is pretty exciting overall and certainly holds the reader's interest right through to the end. The civil war in San Theodoros is still somewhat ambiguous from a moral standpoint, just as it was in
The Broken Ear. In addition, it appears that the only reason Tintin is on Alcazar's side against Tapioca is because he knows the General. There's no attempt on the author's part to distinguish Alcazar as inherently better or a fairer ruler than Tapioca. Neither do the Picaros appear to be fighting for any specific cause or to achieve any particular benefit for the people of San Theodoros: they're just fighting to return Alcazar to power because that's the side they're on. The General himself, meanwhile, seems to mainly be fighting to give his wife a palace and all its attendant finery.
In earlier adventures, Hergé had used rapier-sharp satire to cynically comment on the nature of politics, but here, Tintin's duel motivations for fighting alongside Alcazar are that they are friends and that it's the best way to save Castafiore and the Thom(p)son Twins. However, there seems little chance that this coup d'état will achieve any real, lasting change in the country. Almost inevitably, Tapioca's forces will rise again, which implies that the on-going cycle of insurgency and revolution will never end. The only heroic part that Tintin – that perennial goody-goody – has to play in all this is in ensuring that Alcazar's revolution will be a bloodless one. Unlike in some of the older Tintin stories, such as
King Ottokar's Sceptre or
The Land of Black Gold, the boy reporter's actions do not leave San Theodoros a better place.
Nowhere does Hergé make this more explicit than in a brilliantly devised couple of panels (one on page 11 and one on page 62), in which we see armed police patrolling through the slums of San Theodoros, while the ordinary people of the country look bewilderedly on. The only thing that changes, depending on who's in power, is the propaganda on the government-sponsored billboards. The implication is crystal clear: for the poor people of this country, it is pretty much irrelevant who is in power...
I must say that, despite Hergé's waning interest in Tintin, the artwork in
Tintin and the Picaros is, if anything, even more sumptuously detailed than ever before. Just picking any page, almost at random, amply demonstrates this. Here's page 14, for instance; just look at all the detail Hergé and his team pack into each panel...
There are also lots of smaller character moments in the artwork too. For example, I love how we get to see Calculus taking a bath, while still wearing his bathrobe! This is, of course, perfectly in keeping with the professor's eccentric personality. I guess that his book was just
so engrossing that he forgot to remove his robe...
There's also a particularly nice touch when Hergé inserts "cameos" of iconic cartoon/comic/film characters during the San Theodoran carnival scenes. For example, on page 54 there's a half-page panel featuring members of the carnival crowd dressed as Asterix, Mickey Mouse, and Zorro...
I wonder too if the kilt-wearing gentlemen, the fellow in traditional Chinese dress, and the cowboy sherriff and Native American in the above panel are intended to be references to the earlier Tintin adventures
The Black Island,
The Blue Lotus, and
Tintin in America respectively?
Then on page 59 we get "cameos" of Groucho Marx and Donald Duck...
And one other "cameo" that I spotted was Snoopy in a panel on page 60...
Those were all the characters that I could identify. Have I missed any?
Overall,
Tintin and the Picaros is a fun story and quite an exciting read. But, as I mentioned earlier, while it's nice to be back in San Theodoros, there's a palpable sense of having been there, done that. The transformation of Tintin into a more passive, less heroic and – dare I say it – more selfish character doesn't sit well with me at all. I mean, yes, ultimately he does save Castafiore and the Thom(p)sons from execution, but he certainly seemed reluctant to help them at first – something that is particularly unforgivable when you consider that, after all, they were only threatened because Tintin's enemies wanted revenge against him. In addition, the fact that Tintin ultimately effects little real change for the people of San Theodoros is another thing that rankles slightly. I get that Hergé is making a comment on how revolutions in various Banana Republics never seem to change things for the ordinary people of these countries, but, I don't know...if Tintin is rendered passive and basically ineffectual as a hero, then what's the point of following his adventures?
Ultimately, although the artwork is beautiful – perhaps some of Hergé's best ever, in fact! – and the story is a fun romp, there's something rather unsatisfying about this book. As such, it feels like a slightly anti-climactic finale to The Adventures of Tintin.