The Secret Word is “Kruzitürken”The first image I recall of Tintin is the cover of this book. In the background, the ruins of an old castle are surrounded by crow-like gulls. In the foreground, a boat speeds away from me, its pilot leaning at the stern and clearly making speed from the wake behind his boat and the billowing of his kilt.
And
between them, in the middle of the cover, a small white dog stares directly at
me, his face clearly communicating fear, his eyes asking, almost imploring:
“What on earth is he getting me into this time?”
The answer can be summed up in one word: Adventure. The Black Island is not just a Tintin adventure, it may well be the Tintin adventure for how it brings together suspense and comedy and marries it to charming, atmospheric imagery. From craggy beaches to hectic aerodromes to country roads where ambushers await our hero, pages pop with energy and ambition. For both artist and scenarist, The Black Island is where it all comes together for Hergé.
Okay, not everything. I keep picking up these books
sequentially expecting Captain Haddock to make his first appearance, only to
keep realizing he is still a book or so away. Many other Tintin regulars are also
still to arrive; here, other than boy reporter and dog, only Thomson and
Thompson show up, as friendly foils who arrest Tintin early on. The Black Island also introduces a
recurring villain, Dr.
Müller, a mustachioed German physician who leads a group of no-goodniks in
menacing Tintin before Tintin uncovers their secret plot.
When
foiled by Tintin, which happens multiple times, Müller’s response is a unique
oath: “Kruzitürken!” I Googled this term and
discovered it really is a curse of sorts, used by Bavarians in olden times in
reference to the Ottoman Turks and their Protestant allies. Clearly German, Müller
and his Russian allies are a force up to no good, as we learn from the evil
doctor himself when Tintin first falls into their clutches:
“It was a mistake
to meddle in our affairs. I shall now have to dispose of you. Fortunately, I
happen to be medical superintendent of a private mental institution: rather a
special institution. Not all my patients are insane when they are admitted but
after eight hours of…special treatment, they are unlikely to recover.
Müller
then places a call to order “treatment B” be given to Tintin, who by now has
already gotten loose.
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| Starting off with a bang: Tintin meets trouble at the end of the first page of The Black Island. Rest assured: He won't need the next 61 pages to recover. Image from http://www.comicscube.com/2011/08/gateway-comics-discovering-tintin.html. |
The Black Island is constantly in
motion that way, drawing as it does on the mystery writing of British novelists
like Agatha Christie and John Buchan as well as Alfred Hitchcock, whose
adaptation of Buchan’s The 39 Steps
has much in common with this comic.
It
is fitting, therefore, that so much of The
Black Island, and all its second half, is set in the United Kingdom. Being
as this was my first exposure to Tintin, I took it for granted that Tintin
himself was British, rather than Belgian. I guess I missed the significance of
the ferry ride he and Snowy take across the English Channel early in this
adventure, so impressed was I by his journey through cozy pubs to the moors
of Scotland, where the isolated island of our title stands sentinel along a
rugged coastline.
The
only blemish on The Black Island
comes at the start. After an opening page where Tintin runs over to a
sputtering plane making an abrupt landing in a field, and is shot by the
plane’s mechanic for his troubles (“Too bad for him! You know our orders”),
Tintin becomes the target of a labored scheme to get him in trouble with the
law. The object: keep him from learning more about the plane and its occupants.
Why
they trouble themselves is hard to gauge, and how Tintin gets set up by them
downright silly. Finding themselves on a train with an unsuspecting Tintin, two
other members of this criminal ring fake an assault and manage to get Tintin
arrested for it – by pulling an emergency brake and running away. Hello, idiot
plot!
This
episode does give Thomson and Thompson an excuse to appear, arresting Tintin
and refusing to believe his explanations.
“What
else can we do, Tintin?” Thomson observes (you can tell him apart from his
partner because his moustache flares outward while Thompson’s is straighter.)
“The evidence is all against you.”
You’d
think by now these guys had built up enough of a relationship with our hero to
extend some trust his way, but such perspicacity wouldn’t quite be Thomson and
Thompson, would it?
Fortunately,
Snowy is on hand to help Tintin get out of his cuffs while the detectives nod
off, and we are off on Page 5 as Tintin chases down his adversaries. After
that, the story settles in rather cleverly in Hergé’s
logical, action-packed fashion all the way through to the end.
One
of the best things about The Black Island
rests in its development of Snowy. The wire fox terrier really comes into his
own here as a unique partner in Tintin’s adventures, bailing out his master
several times, yet still very much the canine throughout. Several times he
leads Tintin on a promising scent trail, only to wind up picking up a bone.
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| The trick in life isn't finding bones, but keeping them: A series of panels from Tintin and Snowy's walk through an English countryside in The Black Island. Image from https://them0vieblog.com/2011/10/07/tintin-the-black-island-review/. |
The Black Island also gives Snowy
a chance to enjoy another favorite treat, Scotch whiskey, namely the fictitious
“Loch Lomond” brand which would become a mainstay of the series. Snowy’s initial
encounter with Loch Lomond is entirely accidental, as he joins Tintin on a
train car which just happens to be leaking drops of the hard stuff. Snowy finds
this quite to his liking, rolling on his back and letting the drops fall square
into his mouth. Before Tintin realizes it, he’s got a drunk dog on his hands:
You ought to be
ashamed of yourself!...Disgusting!...You’re worse than a mongrel from the
gutter!
Seeing
Tintin lecture the pup in double-vision, as Snowy does, is a comic highlight.
But Snowy is more an asset than a liability, both for master and story. In
addition to aiding Tintin’s escape from Thomson and Thompson, Snowy bravely
enables Tintin’s rescue from Müller’s burning manor, and later helps Tintin out
of a couple more tight spots.
Darren at a terrific review site called The m0vie blog points out, “this story does not represent the first
time that he’s intervened to save Tintin’s life, but he does so with
astonishing frequency here...”
Darren further notes how Tintin alternates
between singing Snowy’s praises and upbraiding the dog for, well, being a dog,
which ironically works at making us like Snowy more for what he has to put up
with. I flash again on that image of Snowy’s face on the book’s cover.
A
funny thing about that cover: It so dominates one’s initial impression of The Black Island that the fact our title
subject comes into play only after more than 40 pages of set-up can be a bit of
a surprise when you notice it. By this time, we have seen Tintin uncover the
mystery of Müller, embark on a high-speed chase, and survive two crashes, the
second aboard a plane which takes him at last to Scotland.
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| Even smaller moments in The Black Island reveal the author's wit and visual flair. Here we get a clever use of panels to depict a scene where firefighters attempt to retrieve a stolen key from a magpie's nest. Image from https://them0vieblog.com/2011/10/07/tintin-the-black-island-review/. |
Later
Tintin adventures would more often take place in fictional countries; The Black Island is a holdover to
earlier adventures in this way. Müller was based on an actual German agent of
the Third Reich; though this link is not directly mentioned, it is hinted at,
and deserves notice given how it shows where Hergé’s
loyalties lay in the then-brewing international conflict. Sure, a couple of Müller’s
allies are Russian in origin, but perhaps Hergé
was presciently forecasting the German-Soviet pact under which World War II
began. Great Britain may not have been as spy-riddled as The Black Island suggests, but the constant skullduggery sets up a
terrific yarn.
Once
Tintin and Snowy make landfall on the island, having ignored an old villager’s
warnings of “a terrible beast” living there, Hergé’s
artistic abilities and his sense of space and perspective come into their own. Every
panel reveals a new perspective on the castle and the levels beneath that,
while unique, cohere to what we have seen before. As pretty as the pictures
are, the craft beneath them is stunning, too.
After making their way through a winding staircase of
ancient, crumbling construction, Tintin and Snowy find themselves atop a high
tower to appreciate what Tintin calls “a magnificent view.”
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| The ruins of the castle, Craig Dhui, seen as Tintin and Snowy approach the Black Island. Image from https://www.websta.one/tag/georgesremi. |
Then
they hear something coming up the stairs after them, a danger that this time
will turn out not to be human. What can our intrepid pair do?
Being
Tintin and Snowy, they naturally make another of their incredible escapes, and
in the process kick off one of the series’ most exciting and hilarious extended
action sequences. Every time you think the pair have boxed themselves into a
corner, they find a way of getting out and turning the tables on their
adversaries.
The Black Island was twice revised
for commercial publication, the second time apparently to make the U. K. settings
more authentically convincing. Planes were also updated, important to the story as not only
Tintin but Thomson and Thompson make use of them.
At
one point, Tintin watches the detectives make a surprise entrance on a televised
airshow. The television was another story element that was revised, twice, television
being a novelty in the 1930s but common technology by the 1960s. Originally,
Tintin was to have been surprised at the sight of a television in Dr. Müller’s
lair; by 1966 he takes the contraption more in stride.
Little
else feels outdated or out-of-place in this story. That timelessness, though
perhaps not easy to appreciate, is another factor which keeps The Black Island at the forefront of
Tintin adventures.
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