The Broken Ear – Hergé, 1935-37 [Revised 1943] ★★★½

Thrills and Giggles in South America

Street fights. Car crashes. Terrorism. Violent government overthrows. Murder by gas. Murder by drowning. Death by bomb. Devils escorting doomed souls into hell.

Is this a children’s comic book, or a Mickey Spillane novel?

The sixth installment of the legendary Tintin comic-book series might seem at a glance something of an outlier if the body count is any indication. But in most ways, The Broken Ear is an engaging tale and the best of both worlds as represented by author Hergé’s Tintin work to date. It has the cohesiveness of the prior entry in the series, The Blue Lotus, but also the engaging loopiness of the entry before that, Cigars Of The Pharaohs.

While not perfect, it does feel like an advancement that way, the first Tintin with its recognizable formula in full gear. Humor had been part of the series before, but The Broken Ear plays more like a straightforward comedy than past installments did, with plenty of slapstick, cliffhangers, and a running satire of international events.

The story starts in Tintin’s homeland and quickly moves to South America, namely San Theodoros, first of many fictional countries to appear in the world of Tintin. The case involves a missing carving, the Arumbaya Fetish, stolen from an ethnographic museum. A second break-in restores the missing object, but Tintin realizes it is not the real Arumbaya Fetish, just a copy. A murder and a chatty parrot send him to San Theodoros to uncover the crime. But many resent Tintin’s nosiness, and plan him harm.

Another narrow escape. As The Scriptorium Daily blog notes, flirting with the ridiculous was a Tintin trademark that adds to the overall fun. Image from http://scriptoriumdaily.com/tintin-top-ten/

The story has elements of The Maltese Falcon, as noted in its Wikipedia entry. The best-known, Humphrey Bogart version of that film came out in 1941, years after The Broken Ear had appeared in both serial and its original black-and-white book form, but the Dashiell Hammett novel had been adapted to screen twice before that, the first time in 1931. So an influence is certainly possible.

I was also reminded of the 1923 Harold Lloyd comedy, Why Worry? Set in a fictitious South American country, Harold finds himself struggling to stay alive as revolution bursts out comically all around him. Eventually he enlists the aid of a “wild hermit” to help him gain the upper hand, restore order, and emerge triumphant.

Ridgewell, a missing British explorer, shows up late in The Broken Ear to help Tintin out. Based on a real-life explorer, Percy Fawcett, Ridgewell makes another appearance in Tintin And The Picaros. Image from https://alastairsavage.wordpress.com/2016/09/21/the-lost-city-of-z-by-david-grann/ridgewell/. 

No doubt Why Worry? was something Hergé would have known of; it was the first of many films that launched Lloyd as an international star.

But Hergé had his own thing going, too. The Broken Ear doesn’t feature many signature characters. Thomson and Thompson make a quick appearance investigating the fetish theft; and the book does mark the first appearance of General Alcazar, ruler of San Theodoros, a Tintin ally in later books but more of a problem personality here. Captain Haddock, Professor Calculus, Nestor, and Bianca Castafiore still wait in the wings. Mostly The Broken Ear is a self-contained affair.

And that’s fine, when the story moves along as assuredly as it does here. You get the crime in the first page, and from there the story is off and running.

The humor shows up early and often, as when Thompson and Thomson quiz a museum official with their typical double-talk:

Thomson: My mind is made up. This letter is anonymous. Nobody knows who wrote it!

Thompson: To be precise: I agree. An anonymous letter nobody wrote!

After figuring out the returned fetish was not the original, as it does not have the titular broken right ear, Tintin sets off to figure out why the object would be stolen in the first place. It’s not a valuable item, yet someone went to great trouble to nick it. When Tintin learns of the mysterious death of an artist named Balthazar, who specialized in recreating this very kind of artwork, he sets off to investigate. In time, this devolves into a drawn-out but rather amusing series of encounters with a suspicious character to take possession of the dead artist’s parrot.

Of course, parrots are a staple of the Tintin series, as they menace poor Snowy both in the earlier Tintin In The Congo and later on in The Castafiore Emerald. Here, the parrot not only gives Snowy a source of comic annoyance, but is cleverly incorporated into the central plot.

Hergé also gets double value from a pair of villains, Alonso Pérez and Ramón Bada, who not only menace Tintin while chasing after the parrot, but serve up more comedy in the process. Not so much as to detract from the plot, mind; just enough to make them enjoyable heavies. Bada is an expert blade-hurler, but tends to keep missing Tintin a few inches to the right. The way Pérez keeps dinging his partner over this almost makes you feel sorry for the guy.

“All you need to do is aim a little more to the left: that way you hit the bulls-eye.”

Actually Pérez proves no better with a gun when he tries to shoot the parrot for biting his finger. The Broken Ear is that kind of story.

Eventually we move via ocean liner to the main setting of our story, San Theodoros, where violent overthrows are a weekly occurrence. Tintin sets out to find the fetish, but discovers himself standing in front of a firing squad instead. Not cruel men, the officer in charge of the firing squad offers Tintin some liquor to reduce the sting of death. This leaves Tintin quite plastered, and shouting his support for the rebel commander. Lucky for him there’s another overthrow, and the rebel commander, Alcazar, rewards brave Tintin with a job as his aide-de-camp.

Colonel Diaz: But…don’t you think, General, it might be wiser to make him a corporal? We have only forty-nine corporals, whereas there are already three thousand four hundred and eighty-seven colonels. So…

General Alcazar: Enough!! I shall do as I like! I’m in command! But since you consider we are short of corporals I will add you to their number. Colonel Diaz, I appoint you corporal!

Thus Tintin adds another enemy to his growing list.

The plot is rather lather-rinse-repeat that way, somewhat static as the mystery of the fetish gives way to Tintin negotiating Alcazar’s mercurial psyche. Alcazar’s idea of letting off steam is to shoot a gun at a subordinate who beats him at chess, Alcazar’s joke being that the gun is full of blanks.

General Alcazar and Tintin settle down to matters of state, in one of The Broken Ear's rare quiet moments. Image from https://them0vieblog.com/2011/10/06/tintin-the-broken-ear-review/

Tintin plays along, even helping Alcazar escape assassination, but winds up on the general’s bad side when he tries to avert a war between San Theodoros and neighboring Nuevo Rico over oil, a conflict prompted by the interference of Western capitalists.

The biggest drawback with The Broken Ear as I see it is the art: It’s perfectly serviceable, but not as distinctive as is found in either Cigars or Blue Lotus. No splash pages punctuate the action, while the San Theodoros countryside feels somewhat dull, if not as much so as the African setting of Tintin In The Congo.

Hergé’s art does complement the action, and action is something The Broken Ear has in abundance. As noted above, there are explosions, rebellions, car-chases, and close escapes galore.

One of many cliffhangers of The Broken Ear. Could this really be the end of Tintin? Given its only page 39, I think not. Image from http://www.readaboutcomics.com/2011/02/21/tintin-and-the-broken-ear/

Some curiosities, too. On page 3, for example, we see Tintin actually taking down a witness statement, a rare glimpse of him actually working his trade as boy reporter. The introduction of evil capitalists is a carryover from Tintin In America, where it was a dominant theme. Here the idea is more cleverly handled and moves the story along, rather than stops it dead.

Most everything about The Broken Ear except the art is a change for the better as far as I’m concerned. The pacing is brilliant, and the set-pieces each have their own flavor. I’m convinced Hergé stole one of the best bits, how Tintin travels in disguise aboard the ship en route to San Theodoros, from Alfred Hitchcock’s Young And Innocent, but it’s a fun ploy that shows Hergé knew how to steal from the best.

There is even a nice bit of business where one of the villains is caught by Tintin, who shows him mercy and thus wins himself a needed ally for the rest of the adventure. The Broken Ear is like that throughout, menacing but charming, setting a tone for the rest of the series.

Pérez and Bada don’t get off as easy; our last image of them shows the pair being led off to hell after one tangle too many with our beloved hero. It was the most controversial panel of the original story, and replaced back in 1937 with another that avoided divine judgment. The original panel was restored in 1943 for the color edition. Hergé was writing for a conservative Catholic publication, and I suppose thought some moral was called for. But he was never this heavy-handed again.

Welcome to Hell, boys! At least you get to keep your trenchcoats. Image from https://them0vieblog.com/2011/10/06/tintin-the-broken-ear-review/

If there is a downside to The Broken Ear, it may be its lightness of tone in most respects: Comedy dominates for the most part, and the resolution with the mad hermit is hurried. For all the death and destruction on display, you don’t get the same sense of high stakes you do with other entries. San Theodoros is charming, especially when we meet the tribe behind the original fetish, but the investment isn’t quite there. Tintin leaves the country as much of a mess as when he arrived.

But Hergé was building his muscles as a yarn-spinner, an element which became stronger as the series went on. Add to that the generous dollops of amusement, and you have an early winner from a comic artist who went on to greater glories.