Explorers On The Moon – Hergé, 1952-1954 ★★★★

Fantasy Becomes Prophesy

The fantastical aspect of Explorers On The Moon is not what Hergé did with his extraterrestrial adventure, but what he didn’t do.

No moon men. No cities hidden beneath lunar craters. No princess kidnapped by green-skinned space pirates from John Carter’s Mars.

No, Hergé plays it straight. The result: more of a mind flip now than some cosmic fairy tale would have been then, as he pretty much nails what a moon flight entails before anyone ever went and did it.

Even now, it offers a useful primer about space exploration, and in the process serves up some clever story twists that challenges and deepens what we expect from a Tintin adventure.

The story opens immediately after the finale of the prior volume, Destination Moon. Tintin and his comrades aboard the rocket launched to the Moon in the final panels of that book remain unconscious after a jolting liftoff. Restored to consciousness, they must handle the tricky calibrations that will allow a clean landing on the lunar surface – if they can survive the antics of Captain Haddock and a couple of stowaways.

“Moon-Rocket to Earth…The Captain has suddenly taken it into his head to jump out of the rocket…Tintin has gone out as well, to try and help him.”

So in addition to man’s first attempt at a moon landing, we also get the first-ever space walk!

Tintin takes in a cratered moonscape after disembarking from the rocket. This is one of several standout panels both in capturing a lunar feeling and a sense of spatial dimension. Note those shadows! Image from http://en.tintin.com/albums/show/id/41/page/0/0/explorers-on-the-moon.

I am not the first reviewer to note how Explorers On The Moon feels more grounded than other Tintin adventures. This is ironic given the fact they spend most of it thousands of miles above terra firma. Hergé is always very clear about what is happening and why, paying off the investment he made with the visionary if plodding prior installment, Destination Moon.

At the same time, there is a continual sense of fun that keeps our story entertaining as well as involving.

The book basically divides into two parts. The first is getting there, the flight to the Moon. Tintin backs up his friend Professor Calculus piloting the rocket by manning the radio and helping deal with sudden emergencies, like an oncoming asteroid and the sudden appearance of Thomson and Thompson, accidental stowaways whose presence jeopardizes the rocket’s precious oxygen reserves.

The effects of weightlessness effect the entire crew in a scene from Explorers On The Moon recreated for a 1992 pop-up book. Image from https://wonderland100.com/sales/explorers-on-the-moon.

Hergé has much fun here with the imagined difficulties of space travel, like managing weightlessness. How does one stand on the deck of a bridge when the power cuts out? How will Captain Haddock drink his whisky? This could be routine material as we await the lunar landing, but it holds up rather well by itself.

Even the science babble from Calculus, which began to grate after a while in Destination Moon, works here setting up story points:

“Now, what do we do to prevent ourselves crashing on the Moon? Quite simply, we turn our rocket completely round, nose to tail. To do this, first we cut out the main motor, and start up an engine giving directional thrust…If all goes well, this will allow us to land quite gently on the Moon.”

The second half of the story deals with the title situation itself, Tintin on the Moon. Tintin and Snowy explore an underground cavern (and fall into a crevasse of moon ice, a tiny bit of fantasy in 1954 borne out as fact by scientists in 2018.) Thomson and Thompson punctuate their own moon walk with an impromptu moon dance. Some mysterious doings back at the rocket suggest all may not be well beyond the constant threat of asteroids and the oxygen issue.

Thomson and Thompson enjoy the effects of weightlessness with a little aerial ballet. Image from http://sayhellospaceman.blogspot.com/2015/03/tintin-explores-on-moon-1954.html.

In sum, Tintin fans get the usual thrills and gags we expect and love, while at the same time the book takes a more serious approach to what is happening than Tintin adventures of the past. This is one Tintin with a body count, and some disturbing personality shifts that play constructively with our expectations.

Calculus, who became an overbearing know-it-all in the last volume, seems to have a death wish this time out. At best, you get the feeling this learned fellow is flying by the seat of his pants. At worst? How would you like to hear this captain’s message on your next flight:

“If everything goes as I hope, then the equipment responds to the radar’s direction and prevents a collision with the meteorite. Otherwise… Otherwise it’s even simpler: we collide with the meteorite and are completely pulverized!”

No wonder everyone is so on edge.

In addition to their rocket, Tintin and the team make use of a reconnaissance tank to more safely explore the Moon, under the light of a full Earth. Image from a 1950s jigsaw puzzle box featured at https://emint.com/floor_items/explorers-on-the-moon/.

One constant throughout the book is the artwork. It is exquisite. While there are elements of the story that don’t conform to subsequent understandings of how a moon landing actually works (like the idea of landing a complete rocket on the lunar surface, rather than detaching a smaller capsule), the visuals conform very closely to the actual images from moon landings in decades to come.

One of the best visuals occur early in the story, when a drunk Haddock finds himself orbiting the asteroid Adonis, a real near-Earth celestial body (hopefully not-too-near its next close trip around, in 2036!) Tintin affects a rescue with spacesuit and rope, and we see just how tricky a feat this is with Hergé’s command of dimensions and his depiction of space’s vast and gloomy depths. It presents a chilling interlude.

Tintin prepares to lasso Captain Haddock as Adonis's gravitational pull begins to take effect. Image from https://www.writeups.org/tintin/. 

I do wonder about some of the choices Hergé made with this volume. Having everyone be knocked out from the g-forces of liftoffs and landings shows practical knowledge of the physics involved, but why would anyone go up on a rocket that would leave you unconscious for the most critical portions of the flight? The element of treason, a carryover from the prior volume, lends some useful suspense but isn’t going to fool anyone paying attention. It does offer a uniquely tragic dimension to the story, so it does work fine that way.

Otherwise, I don’t have many complaints about this one. Even the antics of Thomson and Thompson, which seemed to reach their sell-by date in the prior volume, serve this time as true comic relief given the high stakes everyone else is playing for. Captain Haddock is an unfortunate afterthought this time out, working through his addiction issues badly, but Tintin is much more central, and happily so. We see him deal with bad guys, save the day a few times over, and even pull a Neil Armstrong by being the first member of the crew to walk on the Moon:

Tintin: There! Look at the Earth! Our good old Earth. It looks four times bigger than the Moon does, when we see it at home.

Haddock: Let’s hope we’ll be able to get back there one day.

One thing Haddock won't miss about moon travel is the way it interferes with his drinking. Image from https://www.chegg.com/homework-help/questions-and-answers/image-adventures-tintin-explorers-moon-herg--shows-captain-crew-s-living-quarters-rocket-n-q40112964.

I really love the small touches about this part of the trip, like when Tintin notes the stars don’t twinkle in the Moon’s sky the way they do back on Earth. Of course, there’s no atmosphere on the Moon to make them twinkle; credit Hergé for knowing this and calling it out.

I don’t need Hergé reinventing the comic-book adventure every time out in order to appreciate him. Some of my favorite Tintin stories are far less ambitious and maintain a better balance between humor and thrills, but it is sweet to have this one milestone example of ambition and consummate craft to remind us just how great he was when it came to raising the bar.