The Calculus Affair – Hergé, 1954-1956 ★★

Plate-Spinning Replaces Plotting

Creative juices are an unreliable source of energy. Just when you most expect them to flow, they have a habit of letting you down.

This is my theory of what happened to Hergé when it came time for him to follow his two-part spectacular about Tintin landing on the Moon. He went for the same thing, a blend of theoretical science and engaging fantasy served up with lots of character-based comedy, but this time just winged the plot.

It doesn’t quite work, making The Calculus Affair an adventure where, for all his polish and craft, I felt Hergé running close to empty.

We open on a stormy night in Marlinspike Hall. Captain Haddock is alarmed when various priceless, fragile objects inside his home are shattered, as if by lightning. Yet it seems something other than nature is at work. Soon after, his housemate Professor Calculus unexpectedly departs for Geneva. Tintin becomes worried:

“Captain, something tells me the Professor’s in danger there in Geneva. I’m going over to join him.”

Haddock, Tintin and Snowy disembark in Switzerland. Do you suppose Hergé got Swissair to pay an endorsement fee? Image from https://www.bdaddik.com/en/comics-collectible-canvas/417-framed-canvas-tintin-swissair-plane-the-calculus-affair-23525-100x100cm-2352500000003.html.

So just like that, it’s off to Geneva for our core trio of Haddock, Tintin, and Snowy. Will they be too late to save Calculus?

You expect crazy things to just happen in Tintin stories, but not since Tintin In The Land Of The Soviets did I ever feel so rushed reading one of his adventures. Hergé’s reliance on plate-spinning over story development has never been so blatant, not since he stopped writing exclusively for children.

The first bad sign for me reading The Calculus Affair is the excessive annoyance comedy gags we get in its initial pages. We get a new character, persistent salesman Jolyon Wagg, who barges into Marlinspike and immediately makes himself at home.

Jolyon Wagg makes his big entrance early in The Calculus Affair. Though he never figures in the main plot, Wagg dominates the book more than anyone who does. Even the Captain seems to wilt in his presence. Image from http://en.tintin.com/personnages/show/id/17/page/0/0/jolyon-wagg.

Wagg laughs at Haddock in all the wrong places and makes clear he’s attached himself to the Captain like a limpet mine:

“Is that whisky you’re drinking? You can pour one for me while you’re about it. Not that I like the stuff, I’m just thirsty, that’s all.”

Wagg keeps coming back to the story on the oddest of pretexts. He even happens to catch a radio distress call the Captain makes in the middle of an air chase and refuses to help, oddly claiming Haddock is just trying to pull a fast one on him.

Wagg was apparently Hergé’s own take on the nasty side effects of his own celebrity, how it attracted human leeches and invaded his privacy. Unlike any non-villain in the Tintin universe, Wagg is thoroughly unpleasant; the more he appears, the more you wish he would go away.

This may have been Hergé’s point, but why belabor it so?

One close shave comes when bad guys blow up a house where Tintin and Haddock search for Calculus. It serves its purpose by making you turn the page, but makes no sense and is completely forgettable well before the story is over.

The more I read, the more I realized he didn’t have much else to offer. There are a ton of dead ends and false alarms in The Calculus Affair, bits that allow the author to end one page on a cliffhanger only to show it was nothing at all when you flip to the next panel.

A sinister laugh is revealed to emanate from a radio Haddock accidentally turned on. A “Hands up!” cry that surprises Tintin and Haddock comes from our old pal Wagg, playing a trick. A sudden screech of an oncoming car is revealed as Detectives Thomson and Thompson, inept as ever applying the brakes. Gags are a Tintin staple, but not as overused as they are here.

The more the plates spun, the more I was reminded of Broadway critic Walter Kerr’s line back in 1966 about a flop called “The Star-Spangled Girl”: “Neil Simon…hasn’t had an idea for a play this season, but he’s gone ahead and written one anyway.”

Professor Calculus is either an evil genius or the most gullible fool in The Calculus Affair. I can't think of which possibility depresses me more. Image from http://en.tintin.com/albums/show/id/42/page/0/0/the-calculus-affair

Thomson/Thompson’s role in the stories had been diminishing, but here Hergé is at a total loss as to what to do with them, and it shows. Their main function is explaining what became of a minor character seen lurking at Marlinspike in the opening, a dead-end bit in itself.

Past Tintin adventures can be goofy; Land Of Black Gold and The Broken Ear are camp send-ups of the usual formula, and I love them for it. But they aim for a playful tone. The Calculus Affair is presented as heavier fare, but lacks the sense of the direction of more dramatic entries like Explorers On The Moon or The Seven Crystal Balls.

I found the comedy interludes both weak and intrusive. Am I supposed to be genuinely worried for Calculus when I see him manhandled by men in trenchcoats, or be entertained at Tintin’s predictable failure to catch up with him?

The central oddity of The Calculus Affair is the character of Calculus himself. When we finally find out what he’s been inventing, it proves to be a dangerous weapon with the ability to destroy entire cities. Calculus in fact has been practicing by destroying Marlinspike Hall.

What has the professor been cooking up? Perhaps a giant hearing aid... Say what you will of its patchy story, The Calculus Affair looks great. Image from http://sdalblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/panel-of-week-tintin-calculus-affair.html.

This isn’t in keeping with the Tintinworld I have come to know. Nor is the revelation that the nation Haddock was working for in the prior adventure, Syldavia, is now bent on kidnapping Haddock to use him to build his weapon for them.

The political intrigue, which involves Syldavia and its mortal enemy next door, Borduria (both of which were introduced back in King Ottokar’s Scepter), is confusing, perhaps intentionally so. Ever the neutralist in the shadow of the Cold War, Hergé was expressing skepticism about taking sides. But weren’t the Syldavians good guys back when Tintin saved their king? Why are they roughing him up now?

Illustratively, there are compensations, like several expanded panels drawn in a sprawling “Where’s-Waldo” style in which numerous activities happen all at once. Opera star Bianca Castafiore gets one of her best turns in the series, aiding Haddock and Tintin at a vital moment.

Hergé’s most inspired extended sequence is a visit by Tintin and Haddock to Borduria, which proves a country where the mustache is king. Not only is facial hair enshrined on their flag, but also in their language as an accent mark (e. g. Marshal Kûrvi-Tasch, their imperious ruler). As a send-up of Stalinism, this works both as satire and as a source of menace for our heroes, and supplies the story with its one stand-out sequence near its end.

Even the cars have mustaches in Borduria. Stalin had been safely dead for over a year by the time The Calculus Affair got around to mocking him. Image from https://www.books4kids.net/en/p/314/the-calculus-affair.

Doing some research on The Calculus Affair reveals most everyone who takes Tintin seriously enjoys this book much more than I do. Benoît Peeters, a leading authority on Hergé, calls it “a masterpiece of the classic strip cartoon.” Over at the“The M0vie Blog,” a Tintin review site I admire, it is praised as a sign “Tintin is finally growing up.” Slings & Arrows gives it five stars, noting its“realism.”

Different strokes, to be sure.

The Calculus Affair is not terrible, just patchy and off. As a story, it isn’t really about anything more than keeping the franchise moving forward to feed its legions of well-earned fans. What you have here plays less as adventure than installment, with a flat and sudden ending that signifies nothing of any purpose has been accomplished anyway.

No, you can’t go back to the Moon, and you don’t have to knock it out of the park everytime out. But neither do you want the guy to bunt. The Calculus Affair serves up the usual ingredients in the usual proportions, but this is one time the recipe failed to come together, at least for me.