Prisoners Of The Sun – Hergé, 1946-49 ★★

Tintin's Most Overrated Adventure?

Sweeping vistas of the snow-capped Andes. Realistic depictions of ancient Incan architecture and every kind of South American animal you can imagine, from bullish tapirs to ornery llamas. Crypt-like hideaways tucked behind imposing waterfalls.

Prisoners Of The Sun boasts all this splendor and more. Graphically, it is a stepping-up point for “The Adventures Of Tintin” the same way The Blue Lotus had been back when the series was just getting started. Storywise, though, author Hergé is content to put Tintin and his buddies through the motions. That could just be my take, as Prisoners is one of the best-regarded of Tintin books.

But it shouldn’t be.

Prisoners Of The Sun returns Tintin to South America, this time to an actual country [Peru] in search of Professor Calculus, kidnapped in the prior volume, The Seven Crystal Balls. Tintin soon discovers Calculus has been kidnapped by members of a secretive tribe of Peruvian Indios, the Quichuas, for the crime of having worn a sacred Incan bracelet.

Can Tintin and Captain Haddock save the good professor from being sacrificed?

The first issue of Tintin magazine, published in September 1946, also introduced what would be his first post-World War II adventure, "Le Temple Du Soleil" (later published in complete form as Prisoners Of The Sun). Image from https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Prisoners_of_the_Sun.

Of course they can. It’s a Tintin book, after all. But after the setup of The Seven Crystal Balls, which played against series conventions to (mostly) good effect, wrapping the adventure up in the pat way Prisoners Of The Sun does proves a letdown.

For starters, there’s the comic relief. Captain Haddock is always good for a laugh in a Tintin book, but Prisoners Of The Sun features him in the role of a nuisance rather than sidekick. He’s always stumbling about, tripping over himself while making matters worse for everyone.

“Sea-gherkins! ...Ectoplasms! ...Poltroons! ...Politicians! ...Doryphores! ...Terrorists!”

At least the guy still knows how to vent. But watching him handle matters so dunderheadedly, in essence taking the role of Thomson and Thompson while those detectives are shunted off to Europe, is a diminishment of Tintin’s most valuable character.

Prisoners Of The Sun is a very popular Tintin title. In 1996, it even was the basis for a Nintendo video game. Above is a scene not in the book. Image from https://www.video-games-museum.com/en/game/Adventures-of-Tintin-The-Prisoners-of-the-Sun/33/2/8453.

The central storyline of Seven Crystal Balls revolved around seven archaeologists who are left in comatose states. Very little of this shows up in Prisoners Of The Sun, and then only as an afterthought, making this a sideways sequel. The business of this story is concentrated on Professor Calculus, who was abducted in Crystal Balls’ second half.

Why was that? Apparently he picked up and put on this ancient Incan bracelet he found while strolling in a garden. “Your friend dared to wear the sacred bracelet of Rascar Capac,” is how it is explained.

One of the coolest panels in the entire Tintin series. But in stopping Tintin in mid-exploration, it kills what there is of a story dead in its tracks. Image from https://theslingsandarrows.com/the-adventures-of-tintin-prisoners-of-the-sun-2/.

If I were the Inca in charge of dispensing justice, I would put to death the minion who dropped it there, rather than some curious bystander, but Incan law doesn’t seem all that fair. As we come to learn, the punishment for every kind of offence at the Temple of the Sun is human sacrifice by immolation.

It’s nothing personal with these guys:

“But it is not we who will put you to death. It is the Sun himself, for his rays will set alight the pyre for which you are destined.”

There is a kind of reductivist quality to the story that gets on my nerves. When Tintin and Haddock arrive in Peru, by plane in order to get there before the ship Calculus was taken away on, police prove unhelpful. At the town of Juaga, where their investigation leads, locals give them the silent treatment.

“No sé! No sé!... They’re the only words they know, the stubborn South American centipedes,” Captain Haddock complains.

Haddock doesn't get along with anyone in Peru. Richard Nixon had an easier time visiting the country than this guy. Image from https://margot-quotes.livejournal.com/210098.html.

How does Tintin manage to crack this nation-wide kidnapping conspiracy? By helping a Quichua boy, Zorrino, who is being bullied by the only two non-Quichuas in all of Peru. After Tintin makes short work of these bullies, Zorrino divulges his country’s prize secret, this hidden fortress devoted to preserving Incan culture and killing anyone in the world who happens to put on one of their old bracelets.

Oh, and one of the Temple leaders observes Tintin help Zorrino and later gives him this medal, telling Tintin how impressed he is by Tintin’s character and that the medal could help him out in a future jam. Yeah, it’s pretty contrived.

Contrivance is a part of Tintin stories, even good ones. But the nature of the conspiracy against Calculus, the odd way it plays out, the transition of the Incans from cold-hearted murderers to lawful caretakers of their culture; all spring from a story dictated less by plot concerns than finding excuses for drawing something splashy and engaging. A series of jungle encounters with snakes, alligators, and so forth which run on over several pages brought unhappy flashbacks of Tintin In The Congo.

Prisoners Of The Sun never sinks as low as that musty relic. The art is much better, and Hergé remains a master of maintaining forward momentum, the secret sauce of the whole franchise. Prisoners just doesn’t seem at all well-thought-out as prior adventures.

Tintin has a menacing dream in Prisoner Of The Sun. The art in this volume is consistently high, however flat the story. Image from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoners_of_the_Sun. 

Haddock is annoying hapless, as noted. Thomson and Thompson spend a lot of the story walking around Europe with a dowsing pendulum, far removed from the main story. Calculus is MIA by necessity. Even Tintin’s wire fox terrier Snowy, a constant companion in this story, is given little to do but look on mutely at his master.

My gut tells me Hergé was still recovering from those accusations of Nazi collaboration which dogged him during the making of Seven Crystal Balls. He had also lost the services of Edgar P. Jacobs, a gifted scenarist who did much of the plotting for Seven Crystal Balls and no doubt would have brought the same, careful approach to winding up that story here.

Around this time, Hergé was also suffering from a nervous breakdown and strains in his marriage. Long vacations from the office brought grumbling from his new venture, Tintin magazine. Tintin may not have lost his innocence, as Hergé claimed he had in a letter to his wife. But the link between character and creator seems fuzzier than before.

Tintin finds himself on a scenic if deadly train ride in the first half of Prisoners Of The Sun. Image from https://www.lambiek.net/artists/h/herge.htm.

That’s the only excuse I can give for the weak way Prisoners Of The Sun resolves itself. The action devolves into a strange standoff between Tintin and the Incan chieftain, called simply “Inca.” Inca, also impressed by Tintin’s service to Zorrino, lets Tintin choose the time of his execution. Then Tintin happens to spot a scrap of newspaper lying on his cell floor…

Did you ever read A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court? Yeah, well, so did Hergé.

Hergé had a lot on his mind in the late 1940s, and it shows. If he couldn’t quite bring himself to engage with his young hero the same way he had before World War II, he had yet to develop a more amusingly grandiose sensibility that would make later Tintin volumes, however less innocent their creator, still joys to read. Prisoners Of The Sun captures an artist in transition; for me, a painful one.