As of writing it's inbetween my two summer vaccations in 2021 and used the first week to pretty much read all Tintin comics I had bought right before Midsummer. So I got 22 of 24 (or 25 if you count the comic based on Tintin in Shark Lake). Rather fun since it's been years since I read them last and some of them I've never even read. So for the first time I read the very first Tintin-album, Tintin in Soviet and... I can't really say it was worth it. In black and white and not updated to the later style and clearly well before the realism mind-set was put into place so it's rather convenient to just find a diving suit in a soviet prison so that Tintin can escape for example, or how he survives being frozen into an ice statue. Most things are rather absurd and the end is just abrupt since he's on his way to Moscow in a race car he got and crashes into the train back to Brussel so he just goes home to fanfares.
Couldn't get my hand on Congo and America, but it seems like Congo might be released again during autumn 2021 (a small update, I got it and has the same feel of things just happen without any real end goal just like Soviet). I've read them as a child back home and most people does't value them as highly since they suffer a bit like Soviet since it more things just happens, and not to mention the racism in Congo. No, most people agree that you start with Pharoes Cigars since it's beginning of the classic Tintin template. And it also introduces Dupont and Dupond... (Thomson and Thompson I guess in the english version... and this is way I got the Swedish translations) as well as Rastapopulus. The most fun of the classic albums to read was The Broken Ear since I've never read it before either, but saw it in the Nelvana series and boy does it change a lot. The bomber in San Theodores is gone from Nelvana, more time is spent in the Amazon with a rival tribe and witchdoctor and the bad guys are dragged to hell. Also, people dies like flies in this story and Tintin is in blackface.
My personal favorites of all the albums is one of the double albums, The Secret of the Unicorn/Treasure of Red Rackham or To the Moon and Back I and II. Depends if I'm more for a pirate story or a sci-fi one with a lot of cool gadgets. Although, one things bother me with these versions, and that is I could have sworn that there was a picture of the Unicorn as a schematic in the album I read as a kid, the same with Carreidas plane in Plane 714 to Sydney, but it isn't in this release. I know the plane exists at least since they show it on the wikipedia page for the album and it seems to be a picture created for a magazine so maybe it's a bit unofficial (although made by Hergés studio).
The last album was the unfinished Alpha Art, and it's hard to judge as well since it is not even halfway done and no notes on completion. I got the unofficial finished version just to see it in colour and the potential ending and it's a bit definite in this version since Rastapopulus finally meets his end and suddenly Tintin has a potential girlfriend in the end. So the series just ends here.
Of course there's a lot of adaptations, like the Belvision series from the 50's and 60's that was dubbed in Swedish mostly in the 70's. We had the Shooting Star and the first part of the Black Island recorded on VHS and was my first introduction to Tintin. I quite like the Shooting Star better in this version actually, first you have the dooms day vibe and chaos in the beginning before the meteor lands in the ocean, then the bad guys of the Perry expedition is really ruthless in this version. In the album they don't shoot at Tintin as he lands on the meteor, but here Tintin and Professor Calculus are saved by the rocks instead (and yes Calculus is part of this episode even though he wasn't introduced until the album afterwards, even the Dupont's have a lot of screen time here even though they don't show up in this album). And the spider is more creepy here, could be the two eyes and how it moves. It feels a bit more action oriented overall. Black Island have the same vibe from at least the episode I watched, and Haddock is crammed in from the start.
Belvisions most important contribution though is probably the film Tintin and Lake of Sharks. Didn't watch it until my family found it in a cheap bargain bin for DVD's and just had to get it. We had the album version of the film as well as an LP with the story. Although I guess those things are better than watching the movie. Although it had the return of the shark submarine, but it doesn't help a rather slow paced movie. Which makes the shorter audio and a more quick paced album the better version. Decent music though. Overall, the Belvisions aren't that great (with exception of the Mysterious Star, but it can be nostalgia). Otherwise watch the Nelvana-series instead, which looks more like the album art, have a better soundtrack, the voices are great and they follow the stories a bit better. The only complaint would be a bit of censoring when it comes to alcohol, and even though the voices are great the Swedish dub has a tendency to use the same voice actors for more roles so when Haddock is the same as Rastapopulos and other side characters, and many of the gags have disappeared in the adaptation (which is rather fair, but still) but they still keeps certain punchlines. For example in the Calcalus Affair where the sales man in the original brings his family and Calcalus mishears Haddock and tells the sales man he has scarlet fever driving him away. Why keep the scarlet fever joke if the punchline of driving the family away isn't there? Other things is much better story wise, for example the japanese agent in the Crab with the Golden Claw that is captured and Tintin find in Carabodjan's hold, making it more personal when the ship is said to have sunk.
Lastly we have the Spielberg and Jackson Hollywood movie... don't like it much. Might have been nice watching in 3D on the big screen, but cutting together several albums like that and make an innocent victim the bad guy is rather irritating. And the 3D-models, they move a bit weird and slow at times. And where is the sequel? It's been 10 years, where's the sequel?
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