The Seven Crystal Balls – Hergé, 1943-48 ★★★

Tintin’s Weird Tale

If any installment of the Tintin series had a right to flop, it was this. While author Hergé was writing it, he found himself suddenly unemployed and arrested for Nazi collaboration. Overnight, he went from pop star to criminal. Also, his mother died.

But The Seven Crystal Balls did not flop; just the opposite. It could be argued the book was the best thing to happen not only to “The Adventures Of Tintin” but Franco-Belgian comics; it helped launch a magazine under the “Tintin” banner that became the mothership for a bevy of comic artists and opened a door for Edgar P. Jacobs, a Hergé collaborator who, after his uncredited co-write here, launched his own milestone franchise, “Blake And Mortimer.”

A leading expert on Tintinology, Benoît Peeters, calls The Seven Crystal Balls “the most terrifying” of Tintin books and the most influenced by Jacobs, whose adventure stories were more adult and less whimsical. A story summary bears this out:

Darkness predominates in this typical moody series of panels from The Seven Crystal Balls. Image from https://www.tumblr.com/search/seven%20crystal%20balls.

Seven scientists returning from an expedition to uncover pre-Columbian artifacts in South America are struck down one-by-one by a coma-inducing malady brought on by a sinister, ghostly force. Tintin and his mates are completely baffled, even more so when an Incan mummy kept by one of the explorers disappears in a ball of flame.

It all falls into place with ancient prophesy: “There will come a day when Rascar Capac will bring down upon himself the cleansing fire. In one moment of flame he will return to his true element; on that day will punishment descend upon the desecrators.”

The seriousness quotient is raised in this one, and in a different way than a prior Tintin book, The Shooting Star. Surrealism in that book was certainly unsettling, if rather giddy; here the mood is bleaker. Our heroes seem up against a supernatural adversary against whom Tintin is left powerless and confused.

The story reminds me of a weird tale from a pulp magazine of the prior decade. Not quite Lovecraft; that would be too bleak. But I flashed on Robert E. Howard’s classic horror yarn, “Pigeons From Hell,” which similarly employs otherworldly revenge and a macabre fate set around an old house, not quite as stately as the one Tintin finds himself in at this book’s climax, but similarly dark and spooky.

Strange doings outside a mysterious house. Even armed guards are not enough to stop whatever lurks beyond. Image from https://www.books4kids.net/en/p/323/the-seven-crystal-balls.

The action in Seven kicks off with appropriate foreboding, when Tintin and his dog Snowy read a newspaper article about the Sanders-Hardiman Expedition returning home after two years in Peru and Bolivia. They are bringing back much treasure, including a solid-gold Inca crown, a “borla.”

“Why can’t they leave them in peace?” asks a man sitting next to Tintin. “What’d we say if the Egyptians or the Peruvians came over here and started digging up our kings?”

The man references the fabled curse of King Tut, which showed up in a much earlier Tintin adventure, Cigars Of The Pharoah. Once the question of wrongful cultural appropriation is raised, it is only a matter of time before someone, or something, sets about righting the wrong.

One of many fantastic panels in The Seven Crystal Balls, this depicting a confused Captain Haddock bumbling his way onto a magic show. Even jokes are eerie in this one. Image from http://alienexplorations.blogspot.com/2017/04/traces-of-adventures-of-tintin-and.html.

The Seven Crystal Balls boasts some incredible graphic art, the best in the series since The Black Island. Visual highlights includes an opera stage, a night-darkened forest, and Marlinspike Hall, where Tintin’s friend Captain Haddock now resides, quite well off since the events of the prior volume, Red Rackham’s Treasure.

One much-touted single panel depicts the scientists, unconscious and under observation in a hospital ward. All at once, they begin to scream and writhe, as if under the torturing influence of a demonic spell.

“Quite inexplicable,” a doctor muses.

Another inexplicable moment. Is it just a dream, or Rascar Capac's revenge? Image from https://them0vieblog.com/2011/10/13/tintin-the-seven-crystal-balls-review/.  

One might think a book featuring people suffering such torments would offer less humor than your typical Tintin tome. But Hergé seems to anticipate this possibility, and compensates with pumped-up comic business involving both Captain Haddock (who has become a dandified toff attached to a new monocle) and detectives Thomson and Thompson:

“This is Thomson…No, without a P, as in Venezuela”

In fact, there is a lot of comedy in The Seven Crystal Balls, including numerous pratfalls taken by Haddock; a tumble or two by the newest regular character, Haddock’s butler Nestor; Snowy’s scrap with Marlinspike’s resident cat; and even a cameo from Bianca Castafiore, whose performance is interrupted by Snowy’s commiserative howls.

Tintin and Captain Haddock (with his fancy monocle) watch Bianca Castafiore perform, shortly before Snowy turns her performance into a duet. Image from https://www.pinterest.at/pin/357543657898931901/

Thomson and Thompson are especially notable for the number of times they bungle simple assignments here, like watching a window. Twice we see them leave their post for minor distractions and allow another scientist to be sent off to slumberland.

My take is the comedy elements detract somewhat from the story; not something I’d expect to say of a Tintin adventure except The Seven Crystal Balls is not your usual adventure. It takes itself more seriously, making for an odd disparity in tone you don’t expect.

At times, The Seven Crystal Balls approaches the brilliance of prior entries, such as The Blue Lotus for mood and The Black Island for storycraft. At the same time, its darkness sets it apart. An image of an Incan mummy crawling through the casement of Tintin’s bedroom, poised to strike, gives one chills you don’t expect in this series.

Ball lightning is about to strike Professor Tarragon's prize relic, setting off yet another mystery in The Seven Crystal Balls. Image from http://www.hilobrow.com/tag/herge/page/3/,

A problem with the book is it amounts to a two-part adventure in which this first part is all prelude, no payoff. Of the three two-part adventures in the Tintin oeuvre, this one is the most structurally incomplete.

The storyline amounts to several odd incidents which come together. At a variety show, when a clairvoyant tells a woman her husband, a photographer from the Sanders-Hardiman Expedition, is in imminent danger, the truth of her words immediately revealed. At one scientist’s house, a sudden ball of lightning forms indoors during a storm, which proceeds to wreak havoc on the evening’s guests.

The lightning ball gimmick, a far-fetched bit of pseudo-science, was used in a prior Tintin adventure, The Broken Ear. There, it helped Tintin out of a jam. Here it sows confusion and fear. This is one book where Tintin can’t seem to catch a break, or even a bad guy, even when he gets in a rare gun battle with one.

Tintin’s transition from detective to explorer is still a work in progress. In fact, this two-part tale may be the moment in which the baton is passed. Tintin is still very much the detective here; even being called “Sherlock Holmes” by Haddock, just before uncovering a vital clue.

A fine example of the attention to detail paid even in an otherwise nondescript scene, as Tintin makes his way to visit Haddock early in The Seven Crystal Balls. Image from http://tintinfashion.blogspot.com/2010/06/seven-crystal-balls.html.

In the next adventure, Prisoners Of The Sun, Tintin is an full-on explorer, which he remains for the run of the series. It is tempting, as some do, to pinpoint this two-parter as a kind of tipping point between a more innocent Tintin and someone grittier, but in fact there are lighter stories to come.

In fact, The Seven Crystal Balls is very much its own animal, even being the first in a two-part installment. Prisoners Of The Sun is quite different in tone, more genial and hopeful. The supernatural element is not dismissed but recast in a more humane manner.

Jacobs wanted to keep on collaborating with Hergé, but as a credited writer. Hergé said no and the rest is history. As a one-off, I quite like The Seven Crystal Balls. Still, I find I prefer the lighter Tintin stories where there is a certain knowing campiness to even deadlier proceedings. Seven is certain not of that camp.