My first comic in the series of Tintin. Review on The Adventures Of TinTin, The Broken Ear - Herge

I was fond of comics in my childhood. Dhruv, Nagraj and Doga were my superheroes and I liked to read their comics. But when I found that the comics can be read only in half an hour or in an hour, then l left this habit and go for the novels. It does not mean that I don’t like to read comics. I like it, but I am not fond of it.

Recently, I got a chance to read a comic in the series of Tintin – The Adventure of Tintin – The Broken Ear by Herge. Tintin is a fictional character penned by Herge in his comics. Herge is a pen name of Belgian cartoonist Georges Remi.  Tintin is a young boy and a Belgian reporter. He is aided by his faithful fox terrier dog Snowy.

The series first appeared in French on 10 January 1929 in Le Petit Vingtième, a youth supplement to the Belgian newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle. The success of the series saw the serialized strips published in Belgium's leading newspaper Le Soir and spun into a successful Tintin magazine. In 1950, Herge created Studios Herge, which produced the canonical series of twenty-four Tintin albums. The Adventures of Tintin have been adapted for radio, television, theatre, and film.

On 10th January 2014, Tintin turns 85. It is really a landmark birthday of him. The series has been admired for its clean, expressive drawings in Herge’s signature clear line style. Its well-researched plots straddle a variety of genres: swashbuckling adventures with elements of fantasy, mysteries, political thrillers, and science fiction. The stories feature slapstick humor, offset by dashes of sophisticated satire and political or cultural commentary.

The story of this comic is related to Fetish, an old wooden fetish. An old wooden fetish was missing from “Museum of Ethnog” by a very mysterious way. Tintin and Police both investigate this case, but they could not find anything towards it. Next day, it was found that Fetish was in its place. Tintin examined the Fetish. He read the books related to Fetish and found that the fetish come into existence and the Fetish that was missing from the museum, both are different. The original Fetish had a broken ear while the new one which was now exist in a museum, had both ears.

In the meantime, an accident happened in the city in which an artist was found dead. A fetish was found on his bed which looks like the fetish of the museum. Tintin found that it is a murder not an accident. Tintin found that the witness of the murder was only a pet parrot of the artist. Tintin hurried to get the parrot, but someone else takes him away. Somehow Tintin traced the 2 goons who have the custody of parrot.  The parrot told the name of the murderer to goons and Tintin hear the same from the window.

Tintin followed the murderer to a ship for South America. The murderer of the artist was found disappeared from the ship after some days. Tintin helped police find out the real culprit – same two goons. Tintin found the real fetish from the luggage of the murderer. The Govt. of San Theodoros wants to give the award to Tintin for this heroic work. But due to unfortunate, Tintin lost the real fetish and stuck in a huddle of govt. and rebels. The rebels come in power of San Theodoros. The General of Rebels, ranked Tintin a colonel.

In a conspiracy against Tintin, Tintin had been forced to leave the San-Theodoros by hook and crook. Later running for the life from soldiers of the San-Theodoros, Tintin found himself in a forest. The forest belongs to a group of tribal. Tintin life again entraps in a huddle due to tribal people.

The Author of this comic gave some humor in this comic by using parrot, two fool goons and some humorous act of Tintin also. In this comic you can find thriller, murder-mystery, adventure, political-changes, revolution etc. Comics are always for entertainment and fun. It always gives a smile on your face through some humorous face, acts and dialogues. But the message presented by the series of Tintin comics is that nothing is over than the law. No one can run far after doing a crime.

Tintin as a reporter done a good job in this comic and the all credit for his characterization and implementation will go to the author. The dog, snowy, helped many times Tintin in this adventure.  The other characters are also fulfilling their role in the comic.

As a reader of murder-mystery type novels, I really enjoyed it. Hope you will also enjoy it. I will read some more adventure of Tintin in the future and will back to this platform again.

Regards

Rajeev Roshan