A Young Vic Production
HERGÉ’S ADVENTURES OF
TINTIN
Co-produced by BITE: 05, Barbican
Resource Pack
3
stories. In June, he began the second
Tintin
adventure,
Tintin in the Congo
(then the colony of Belgian Congo), followedby
Tintin in America
and
Cigars of the Pharaoh
.In 1932, he married Germaine Kieckens, the secretary of the director of the
Le XXe Siècle
. They had no children,and would later divorce in 1975 when Hergé began a relationship with a young illustrator, Fanny Vlamynck.The early
Tintin
adventures each took about a year to complete, upon which they were released in book form by theCasterman publishing house. Years later Hergé would express embarrassment over the old fashioned, colonial attitudesexpressed in these early works. For instance, an infamous sequence in
Tintin in the Congo
has Tintin giving a geographylesson to native students in a missionary school. "My dear friends," exclaims Tintin, "today I am going to talk to you aboutyour country: Belgium!" In a later edition, the scene was changed into an arithmetic lesson. Hergé would continue revisinghis stories in subsequent editions, including a later conversion to colour.
World War Two
The Second World War broke out on September 1st, 1939 with the German invasion of Poland. Hergé was mobilized as areserve lieutenant, and had to interrupt Tintin's adventures in the middle of
Land of Black Gold
. Nevertheless, by thesummer of 1940, Belgium had fallen to Germany with the rest of Continental Europe and
Le Petit Vingtième
, in whichTintin's adventures had hitherto been published, was shut down by the German occupation. However, Hergé accepted anoffer to produce a new Tintin strip in
Le Soir
, Brussels' leading French daily, which had been appropriated as themouthpiece of the occupation forces. He had to leave
The Land of the Black Gold
unfinished, due to its anti-fascistovertones, launching instead into
The Crab with the Golden Claws
, the first of six Tintin stories which he would produceduring the war.As the war progressed, two factors arose that led to a revolution in Hergé's style. Firstly, paper shortages forced Tintin tobe published in a daily three or four-frame strip, rather than two full pages every week which had been the practice on
LePetit Vingtième
. In order to create tension at the end of each strip rather than the end of each page, Hergé had tointroduce more frequent gags and faster-paced action. Secondly, Hergé had to move the focus of Tintin's adventuresaway from current affairs, in order to avoid controversy. He turned to stories with an escapist flavour: an expedition to ameteorite (
The Shooting Star
), a treasure hunt (
The Secret of the Unicorn
and
Red Rackham's Treasure
), and a quest toundo an ancient Inca curse (
The Seven Crystal Balls
and
Prisoners of the Sun
).In these stories, Hergé placed more emphasis on characterization than on the plot, and indeed Tintin's most memorablecompanions, Captain Haddock and Cuthbert Calculus (in French, Professeur Tryphon Tournesol), were introduced at thistime. Haddock debuted in
The Crab with the Golden Claws
and Calculus in
Red Rackham's Treasure
. The impact of these changes were not lost on the readers; in reprint, these stories have proven to be amongst the most popular.In 1943, Hergé met Edgar Pierre Jacobs, another comics artist, whom he hired to help revise the early
Tintin
albums.Jacob's most significant contribution would be his redrawing of the costumes and backgrounds in the revised edition of
King Ottokar's Sceptre
. He also began collaborating with Hergé on the new
Tintin
adventure,
The Seven Crystal Balls
.
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tintin
do you have any doc for siemens masterdrive? thanks!