Red Rackham's Treasure – Hergé, 1943-44 ★★★

Let’s Hear It for the Deaf Man

You’ve spent the last year pursuing bad guys, getting knocked out and kidnapped, escaping, dodging an attack dog, and putting aside whatever it is you supposedly do for a living. Now it’s time to collect your reward: Some old guy who can’t make out a word you say.

At least there’s quality time on a tropical island. Look out for sharks!

Red Rackham’s Treasure marks the halfway point in the “Adventures Of Tintin” series, and serves a dual purpose: satisfactorily wrapping up a solid two-parter and – more satisfactorily – introducing Professor Cuthbert Calculus.

This eccentric man of science, inventor of a carnivorous clothes brusher and a wall-mounted attack bed, completes the core six Tintin characters alongside Tintin, Captain Haddock, Snowy, Thomson and Thompson. After auditioning a series of one-offs to fill the role of loopy professor in past stories, Hergé finally found one with legs.

In fact, adding Calculus is the main item on the agenda in Red Rackham’s Treasure; at times the only item. As a story, it moves in fits and starts; sometimes not at all. The result is a comic adventure short on thrills but very long on charm.

Professor Calculus arrives fully formed in Red Rackham's Treasure, including his trusty pendulum, which turns out useful in the treasure hunt. Image from http://costumeplaybook.com/comic-books/adventures-of-tintin/2969-professor-calculus-costume/.

We pick up where The Secret Of The Unicorn left off. Now in possession of global coordinates that lead to hidden treasure, Tintin and Captain Haddock plan an oceanic expedition. A villain from the prior book lurks somewhere, but of more immediate concern is someone who wants in the expedition and is as deaf to rejection as to everything else.

Professor Calculus is my least favorite of the Big Six, but it is immediately clear how he improves the series chemistry. He’s the egghead that trots out some Rube-Goldberg comedy as well as genuinely clever contraptions, like a one-man shark submarine spotlighted here. Plus he’s a solid comic foil for Haddock, a man of many words now at a loss for same:

“You can’t come aboard! We aren’t interested in your machine!”

“Tomorrow?”

“No not tomorrow! Never!

“Today? Good. I’ll go and fetch it at once.”

Haddock loses his patience with Professor Calculus for the first but definitely not last time early in Red Rackham's Treasure. Image from http://en.tintin.com/personnages/show/id/19/page/0/0/cuthbert-calculus.

Calculus’s main point of characterization here is deafness. It is a matter of wonder: How a man so bent on inventing things never got around to a hearing aid. The more it goes on, the more I sense Calculus is willfully deaf, choosing not to hear what he doesn’t want to.

His rise to prominence among the Big Six comes very quickly, and somewhat at the expense of Thomson and Thompson, onetime authority figures reduced here to stooges manning the air pump (and not even being told when they can stop). T&T’s actual mission in Red Rackham’s Treasure is protecting Tintin from one of the Bird twins who threatened him in The Secret Of The Unicorn and has since managed an off-screen escape, but [spoiler alert] the guy never shows up.

Thomson and Thompson make themselves useful in typically menial fashion late in Red Rackham's Treasure. Image from http://alienexplorations.blogspot.com/2017/04/traces-of-adventures-of-tintin-red.html.

Visual splendor is another plus in Red Rackham’s Treasure: On an uncharted isle, Tintin and his group explore underwater reefs and a thickly-overgrown jungle. Memorable artifacts include a stone carving apparently depicting Haddock’s formidable ancestor in mid-rant. Parrots also keep alive Sir Francis’s memory with their unique Haddock-derived cries, carried from generation to generation:

“Pockmark!” “Freshwater swabs!” “Bully!” 

Even better is when Haddock gets angered by this and responds with force: “Here’s a coconut to cut your cackle, iconoclasts!” 

The parrots' serenade. You can tell from the way their eyes are drawn they just love the chance to heckle real people for a change. Image from http://en.tintin.com/albums/show/id/36/page/0/0/red-rackham-s-treasure.

Calculus’s shark submarine is another nifty illustrative flourish, both in terms of its design (reminding me of the Flying Tigers then zipping over China) and the way it opens up an undersea world to our eyes. Hergé by this point was not only a fine kinetic illustrator (a strength of his as early as Tintin In The Land Of The Soviets) but an immersive one, too: The island’s fauna and flora are exceptionally well-detailed, giving the setting real physicality as well as beauty.

What our tale doesn’t have, interestingly enough, is much in the form of conflict. Once a minor shark problem is under control, the gang settles into pure exploration mode (not the last time they do in the Tintin series). The result is a second half that, while a true sequel, is tonally very different from the antic, adversarial Secret Of The Unicorn.

There are the parrots. Briefly some monkeys get ahold of a rifle. But no nautical-battle flashbacks occur this time. Human bones are found, and mention is made of cannibals who once lived on the island. But nothing is done with this idea, either. Apparently these cannibals died out generations ago, leaving only traces behind.

The Unicorn is found. A rare example of illustration recycling: The two orange fish in the foreground also appear in the exact same poses on the book cover. Image from https://www.jigidi.com/jigsaw-puzzle/AN8Q809T/Tintin-in-Red-Rackham-s-Treasure.

Really, the one commonality between the two books, apart from the author and key characters, is the matter of this pirate treasure itself. Its resolution is roundabout but clever, too, with plenty of false scents along the way.

Many small things crop up for Tintin and Haddock to concern themselves with for a page or two, only to be forgotten. Even more than Secret Of The Unicorn, this is a book dependent on diversions. Time is spent on a hunt for diving equipment, superstitious willies from Haddock, a stowaway mystery, and a bomb scare.

The book actually begins with another detour, regarding what happens when the press gets ahold of the story of this treasure hunt. “Journalists! They’re always the same!” Haddock vents to Tintin, equally peeved. [Apparently it slipped his mind he’s a journalist, too.]

According to Wikipedia, one secret to Red Rackham's success was Jacques Van Melkebeke, above, a painter and writer as well as a cartoonist, who suggested story ideas to his friend Hergé. Image from https://www.lambiek.net/artists/v/van-melkebeke_jacques.htm.

Even the search for the island is a labored process. The idea of a completely uncharted island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean is one we are assured by Haddock “sometimes happens” when they are small enough. The search soon becomes tedious even for him:

“Thousands of thundering typhoons! Where’s that miserable island got to?”

Yet this island when found is large enough to sustain an ecosystem of its own, and apparently at one time human habitation, too.

Once they reach the island, curiosities continue mounting. Are they looking in the right part of the island? What’s the deal with that giant wooden cross? And what will Haddock do with all the rum he finds in the wreck of the Unicorn?

Late in Red Rackham's Treasure, Haddock makes peace with the parrot colony. Apparently the rum did wonders for his temper. Image from https://www.pinterest.com/pin/338966309435714063/.

The resolution is the only part of the story that will be familiar to viewers of the 2011 Steven Spielberg film The Adventures Of Tintin, which despite an adaptation credit for Red Rackham’s Treasure, takes more of its storyline from The Secret Of The Unicorn and The Crab With The Golden Claws.

I kept wondering as I read this when Sakharine would show up with his cane-sword to menace our hero as in the movie. Yet when Sakharine does turn up here, it is as a harmless spectator on the final page. His Daniel Craig-voiced character is only a villain in the movie.

Secret Of The Unicorn is really a one-man show; for once in a Tintin adventure, that man is neither Tintin nor Haddock. The introduction of Professor Calculus makes for a fun ride, however frivolous even by Tintin standards. Add to it nifty visuals, large dollops of humor, and shrewd yarnspinning, and the result is a book that adds to the Tintin series’ already-impressive longevity.

As Calculus observes at the conclusion: “All’s well that ends well.”