This week on Totally Tintin, Ian and Dave take a look at Hergé’s exciting The Calculus Affair. Secret agents, superweapons and shattering glass!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
This week on Totally Tintin, Ian and Dave take a look at Hergé’s exciting The Calculus Affair. Secret agents, superweapons and shattering glass!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Last time I read through this one I was really struck by how good the color was on the helicopter chase sequence. It’s a fantastic shift from night to early dawn to morning all done exclusively through color, really a fantastic job. Any idea who was responsible for that?
Les, all the artistic choices were either made by or approved by Hergé, but the main colourist at this time was Josette Baujot,who was with the Studio from its inception in 1953 to 1979.
Looking forward to the new podcast: “Definitively Dedrick”!
Also, “I haven’t driven a tank since our moon trip”? But Tintin, that was about a month ago…
One of my favourite, this one – tightly plotted, nicely paced and fantastically detailed settings. Good episode, guys!
This was the first Tintin book I read. My teacher had to stop me from constantly borrowing it from the library ( I was 11 ) . . still love this book. Fascinating to hear all the background details on the Herge studio . . did I hear you say there were 50 people working at the studio? The mind boggles to think what they were all doing. Anyway, great show as always.
One of my favourites!
I do remember as a kid I felt the last chase scene was disappointing, just how many times can our heroes get lucky? I would try to imagine other ways they could’ve escaped.
The Bordurian weapons are drawn deliberately as generic as possible, the tank turret is unlike anything the Soviets and their satellite nations were using at the time, more resembling but not quite Western tank designs. Similarly the artillery piece (most likely a dedicated anti-tank gun, although it could be a field gun with anti-tank capabilities) has elements of German or Soviet designs.
Incidentally, Mr.Bird was one of the artillery guns crew, which is why Ian thought there was something familiar about them. After escaping France he enlisted in the Bordurian Foreign Legion to hide out as joining the French Foreign Legion was obviously not an option.
The poor quality of Communist-produced goods was a pretty standard gag at the time, but I wish it had been better established before the tank sequence.
I do like what you were saying about the covers involving the readers by showing the back of the main characters heads, seeing what they are seeing. This is also a feature of Japanese manga, making the character (and thus the reader) the emotional center of the action to the point in action sequences the character “stands still” while the background is a mass of speed lines. This is one reason why manga has such popular appeal around the world. I believe I am paraphrasing Scott McCloud (or Macleod) here…
I’m half-Swiss, and I cannot see them renumbering a room that isn’t 122 to say that it was. Unless the tourism francs we’re going to be extremely lucrative.
Why is calculus a science reference?
Calculus is a branch of mathematics.
Begin the debate!
http://euclid.trentu.ca/math/sb/misc/mathsci.html
That is just nonsense. You might as well argue leather shoes are ducks because they are both made up of atoms.
Ducks.
One of the things I particularly love about this story is the way in which night is very gradually transitioned to daylight from pages 32 to 34. It’s very subtle and unless you’re paying attention, you hardly realise that night has become day. Delightful.