Flight 714 – Hergé, 1966-68 ★

Hergé Don't Want to Play No More

Reading this reminded me of a childhood friend who grew suddenly disaffected by the games we played. Going through the motions with obvious contempt, he made clear what a drag he now found it all to be. That same sorry vibe hangs over this Tintin adventure.

The story has promise, a tropical adventure set in the south Pacific which introduces Laszlo Carreidas, eccentric tycoon whose comical nastiness serves as a recurring plot point. The art is splashy and sometimes even engaging, incorporating Hergé’s signature ligne-claire style with more shading and texture than usual.

But the more stuff happens, the more you realize the author doesn’t care about the book. Playtime is over; Flight 714 is the glum result.

The adventure is an accidental one for heroes Tintin, Snowy, Captain Haddock, and Professor Calculus. About to board Flight 714 to Sydney, Australia for the International Astronautical Conference (a callback to Explorers On The Moon), they meet their old friend Skut from The Red Sea Sharks, now flying a jet for Carreidas.

The island of Pulau-Pulau Bompa, where Carreidas' hijacked plane makes an unscheduled landing and the rest of the adventure is set. A makeshift runway has been set up to the left. Image from https://www.pinterest.com/pin/237776055306675254/.

Carreidas is established at once as a sneezy, self-involved bore, but because Professor Calculus amuses him, he practically forces the three men and their dog on his plane. All this threatens the plot of Spalding, Carreidas’ manservant, to waylay and kidnap his boss.

Spalding: Listen…You must contact the chief: old Sneezewort has invited three people to travel with us…friends of the pilot…met them accidentally. So it’s all off…Understand?

Walter: Too late, Spalding: everything’s fixed. Anyway, you don’t really imagine the chief’s going to change his plans for three stray hangers-on?…You have your orders; do as you’re told.

Before embarking on their flight, Carreidas (with yellow scarf) treats the gang to a toast. Being a cheap health-freak, his drink of choice is soda made with chlorophyll. Image from http://en.tintin.com/albums/show/id/46/page/0/0/flight-714.

What’s wrong with Flight 714? Hergé reportedly confessed his disdain for the whole Tintin enterprise by this time. He had grown as an artist and wanted to devote the rest of his life to abstract art, not cartoons.

Still, the book doesn’t start off badly. Carreidas makes a strong first impression, antagonistically comic, and the idea of being waylaid first by a millionaire’s whim and then by a kidnapping ploy aboard a high-tech aircraft is well presented.

Even before I ever read it, I was intrigued by the cover of Flight 714. I don’t know if it was the tiki masks in the foreground or the fact Tintin and Haddock are brandishing rather cool submachine guns, but it definitely was a grabber. Throughout the first half of the story, there are moments that suggest the same goofy humor that enlivened Land Of Black Gold, my personal favorite. What’s not to love?

Spalding (with red hair) has the drop on Carreidas while Haddock, Tintin, and others look on. Calculus doesn't quite know what's going on, a joke which continues for the rest of the book. Image from http://theslingsandarrows.com/the-adventures-of-tintin-flight-714-to-sydney/.

Let’s start with Spalding. Just the way he’s drawn is off, with a comically oversized jawline and exaggerated brush moustache, like Asterix’s Albert Uderzo took a hand in the artwork. Spalding is the instigator of the plot, yet after he hijacks the plane, he takes no further part in the story. Basically his role is to sneer and disappear, and make room for the real baddie of our story, old friend Basil Rastapopoulos, last seen making a wet exit in The Red Sea Sharks.

After a rather exciting landing on a remote Pacific island, Carreidas is confronted by Rastapopoulos, who explains what he is up to:

Rastapopoulos: It’s a bore, you know, to stop being a millionaire…When I went bust, I couldn’t face the sweat of making another fortune for myself. So I decided it’d be easier, and quicker, to take yours.

Carreidas: You’re mad.

Rastapopoulos: No, just well informed, that’s all. I know, for example, that you have on deposit in a Swiss bank – under a false name, of course, you always were a cheat – a quite fantastic sum of money…

Rastapopoulos gets help from another familiar Tintin villian, Alan, helping remove a gag. Herge said giving Rastapopoulos a pink shirt made it impossible to take him seriously as a villain, and indeed he's mostly used for laughs this time around. Image from https://www.pinterest.com/pin/525513850254141667/. 

Carreidas is a tough-love figure to be sure, as despicable in his own way as Rastapopoulos. The best part of the entire story occurs when both men are injected with truth serum and square off in argument over which one is worse.

Unable to stop himself, Rastapopoulos reveals he planned to betray all his associates, even the guy with the serum standing right there:

Rastapopoulos: Rich men, that’s what they think they’ll be, with the money I flashed under their noses. But they’ll be disposed of when I’m ready. Ha! ha! ha! The Devil himself couldn’t do better!

Carreidas: Pooh! You aren’t out of the nursery!

Rastapopoulos: Now let’s get this straight. Yes or no! Do you or do you not admit that I’m wickeder than you?

Carreidas: Never!…Never, d’you hear!…I’d sooner die!

A very cool head sculpture doubles as a secret door in an underground complex found on Pulau-Pulau Bompa late in Flight 714. It is meant to resemble an astronaut, suggesting alien activity in man's past. Image from http://ru.tintin.com/albums/show/id/193/page/0/0/714.

Something you may have noticed in this extended summary is an absence of any mention of Tintin, Haddock, and the others. They hover in the background, interacting with Carreidas and occasionally making comments, but generally serve as supercargo while first Carreidas and then Rastapopoulos take center stage.

Eventually, Hergé lets them escape their captors and rescue Carreidas, but before this part of the narrative goes anywhere, the storyline gets sidetracked by the author’s desire to introduce a topic that interested him greatly, but which never came up in the series before: Aliens.

It turns out this island is also a meeting place for a chosen group of scientists to communicate with beings from another planet. One of the scientists, Mik Kanrokitoff, introduces himself and explains how he has been telepathically feeding Tintin instructions on how to find his way to Kanrokitoff’s secret base. Then he can rocket them off the island before it suddenly, inexplicably blows up.

The character of Kanrokitoff (on right) was based on French writer Jacques Bergier (on left), who wrote about UFOs and the occult. According to Wikipedia, Bergier was pleased to with his inclusion in a Tintin story. Image from http://alienexplorations.blogspot.com/2012/12/prometheus-traces-of-tintin-and-flight.html.

The villains are finally disposed of by means of hypnosis, while everyone but Snowy has their memories erased. “I could tell them a thing or two!…But no one would believe me!” the pooch thinks.

As dissatisfying as past Tintin stories could be, with an overemphasis on plate-spinning or slapstick, none pull the rug out from under you quite the way Flight 714 does. Yet the E.T.-free lead-up is dissatisfying enough on its own. Haddock has nothing to do but play Battleship with a cheating Carreidas. Calculus carries the comic-foil load normally borne by the absent Thomson and Thompson, and does so by alternating between comic bouts of deafness and rage. It’s an exaggerated version of the character established in prior volumes, and awkwardly silly.

A flying saucer flies away at the end of Flight 714, leaving Tintin and company asleep and amnesic on a raft awaiting rescue. Only Snowy will know the score. Image from http://www.thelooniverse.com/strips/kuifje/714.html.

Complaining about silliness in Tintin is a strange place to find myself, but Flight 714 is a strange book. Listening to a great podcast over at the site Totally Tintin opened my eyes to its problematic art. Pleasant as they are at times, employing tunnels and lava to dramatic effect, the illustrations bear the unmistakable fingerprints of artists other than Hergé himself.

An absence of commitment from Hergé is Flight 714’s major takeaway. It’s his contractual obligation volume, except he wasn’t obligated to anyone to continue it. In fact, he could have handed over the reins of Tintin to his collaborators and the end result would likely have been much better. But apparently the only thing Hergé wanted less than create more Tintin books is watch someone else do the same. For the first time since Tintin left the Congo, the result is child’s play that succeeds only in making you feel very old.