This week on Totally Tintin, Ian and Dave go on a treasure hunt and find the delightful Red Rackham’s Treasure. Undersea adventures, shark submarines, and the first appearance by Professor Calculus – what’s not to love! Yo ho ho and a bottle of two hundred and fifty year old rum!
Here is a sample page of Dupont et Dupond, Détectives. This ran daily through late September to mid-November in Le Soir with a script by Paul Kinnet and spot illos by Hergé. It’s an interesting one-off. If you’re interested, you can read the whole series here. (Please note: it’s in French)
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Thanks for the shout out!
I like these Tintin’s without an enemy. The whole evil super villain smugly hatching sadistic schemes gets quite tedious. But I think the non-appearing “villain” of this book, Mr.Bird, does serve a purpose… other than brings the Thompson’s onboard. It does give the story some tension, albeit far in the background, that he might show up and something might go seriously wrong. Most importantly there is the gag near the end where Tintin and Haddock lie in wait for whomever (presumably Bird) is making the sound of footsteps (the captain, incidentially, appears to have armed himself with a partisan, less a useful weapon and more of an officers badge of rank in the 16th-18th centauries) but it turns out the intruder is our good friend Calculus.
I can’t help you with the doorbell, sorry… is a poop deck really what I think it is?
The South pacific Islands were in fact notorious for cannibalism, as recently as 2011 a German tourist was supposedly eaten by cannibals on an island near Tahiti.
Hi Colin!
While the South Pacific Islands were known for cannibalism, Red Rackham’s Treasure is somewhere off the coast of Haiti. I don’t think the islands in the Caribbean had an infamous history of cannibalism, but I could be wrong!
The poop deck was actually a deck at the rear or stern of the ship – usually over the captain’s cabin.
I suppose the continuing non-appearance by Max Bird gives all the remaining Tintin books a subtle tension.
Oops, sorry, I got my islands mixed up!
Apperently the word cannibal comes from the corruption of Island Carib, a people who dominated the Caribbean when the Europeans showed up. Early European settlers spread legends of Carib’s cannibalism, although this is now disputed. By Tintin’s time there were few Caribs left, mostly scattered around the Caribbean. In 1903 the British created a Carib Territory on Dominica.
Going West I suppose they could’ve taken the scenic route through the Panama and Suez Canals but that would’ve been a long way round!
I must say, that is the most friendly looking shark-submarine I’ve ever seen!
More friendly than this one… http://hiconsumption.com/2013/03/shark-submarine-by-seabreacher/
I know I‘m a little bit late, but the mysterious second doorbell is a light switch
Ah! Thanks for clearing that up!
This is why Prof. Calculus is named Tournesol in the French original: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papier_de_tournesol?wprov=sfti1
I love how you can see Tintin wake up in the cellar of Marlinspike after being kidnapped. The thugs handed literally tugged him in nicely with a blanket 🙂