Tintin Forums

there's a French only Dupond et Dupont story, I can't remember what it's called and I think it was drawn by De Moor, try searching around this sight for more info. I'm not sure if this is a different to the "gorillas of the High speed motorboat" thread that was around for a while

This from Tintin and the Reporters book regarding land of black gold
to further explain what blueblisteringbarnacles has already alluded to...

In 1939, when Herge was developing his plot of Le Petite Vingtieme, neither calculus nor haddock were yet part of Tintin's team. When he returned to the story in "tintin" magazine (in 1949), the author tried to find roles for these characters who in the meantime had become part of his family...the sailor's sudden breaking into a maze of bunkers remains quite inexplicable...so as to give haddock a more marked prescence, the cartoonist later added a brief sequence for the book...at the start of the story, the reader learns that the gallant captain has neen mobilized...curiously, Herge retained for the adventure the context of international tension that had existed in 1939.

So Herge was in the middle of Black Gold when WWII broke out...and he came back to it 10 years later and a lot of things had to be changed, explained or be accounted for ..including the appearance of Calculus, down to the changing the vehicle that the thompsons drive in: to a JEEP because of its poplularity during WWII..this of course is consistant with herge's obsession with detail...

theres more that I can post later regarding this buts its very interesting how WWII threw a wrench in the tintin production machine...(not to mention the lives of millions...)

I'll have a crack at this :)

After being posted to Wadesdah Haddock had been given orders through Naval Intelligence to arrest Professor Smith. Obviously Intelligence were on to Smith. In addition Haddock had somehow got wind of Tintin's presence in Wadesdah and was on his trail. The evidence:

1.) Senhor Oliveira meets Snowy on the way back from Prof Smith's fort although, as he says, he'd left him locked in his house. Haddock must have released Snowy from Oliveira's house.

2.) Haddock appears with a number of military police at Prof. Smith's fort with the words "Tintin! Open up! it's me!" and "Found you!"

3.) In attempting to explain his presence there the Captain appears quite smug, remarking "just imagine..." and "would you believe it, I..." clearly chuffed with himself over his "important" naval mission.

As we all know, the Captain has a full time, hard working guardian angel. One could easily say that this angel guided the Captain to his friend Tintin.

How? I agree with most members on this. It could be a completely new title. As Tintin goes to Tibet to look for his lost friend Chang, Haddock can go in search of Tintin and we could call the title "Haddock in Arabia"

He could have found out many ways of course, perhaps he overheard something from a prisoner unaware of his connection to Tintin

Rik

He could have found out many ways of course, perhaps he overheard something from a prisoner unaware of his connection to Tintin


Perhaps Captain Haddock overheard Bab El Ehr's, Smith's, or Skoil's men (weren't they all intertwined in the plot to overthrow Ben Kalish Ezab?) at the port without knowing who they were. He is nowhere as dumb as the Thompson Twins...

When Hergé release the first version of "black gold" in 1940, Tintin is alone. Haddock has'nt create like Calculus. When the WW2 arrive, the storie was stopped at page 26.

Is it an illusion that I feel that from Page 6 top row 3rd frame onwards , there is a transition from Herges earlier drawings to his later (finer and more detailed) style of drawing.What do the others think ??

"Is it an illusion that I feel that from Page 6 top row 3rd frame onwards , there is a transition from Herges earlier drawings to his later (finer and more detailed) style of drawing.What do the others think ??"

You are partially right. There are three versions of "Black Gold".
1)In "Le Petit Vingtième", 28 pages published. The story stopped at today's page 27, third row, 4th picture. The Speedol Star arrives at Caiffa and some Jewish people thougt Tintin was one of their friends, Finkelstein.
2)in 1950, first color version. The Speedol Star arrives at Haifa and members of the Jewish organisation Irgoun thought Tintin was their friend Salomon Goldstein.
In this version, the drawing are the same(till page 27) as in the first black and white version with the exception of some minor changes.
3)in 1970, second color version. The Speedol Star arrives at Khemkhâh and the Jewish organisation doesn't exist anymore.
In this version, drawings are changed from page 6, 4th row till page 19 (included).
There is indeed from page 6 (but not from top row) a transition from Herge earlier drawings to his later but only because the story was changed before the first publication in United Kingdom in 1970. The French version was also adapted.

All the above is most interesting, and I'll now try and explain how Haddock's arrival in Wadesdah might also be a 'rhetorical device' designed to suggest 'distortion', as its sets off some of the widest spatiotemporal faults in the corpus...

As you know, Haddock's unseen passage starts and ends with explicit spatiotemporal data:
- an immediate mobilization (p.3, A4)...
- a prolonged absence...
- a sudden presence in Wadesdah (p.54, B2)...
Imho, if this 'unseen passage' is so much noticed and discussed about, it's mainly because it's the most ...'clearly delineated'...

As already said on another thread, space could stand for an unseen passage's substitutions, very much space-occupying sometimes, as shown by Tintin while he was in ...India (The Blue Lotus, p.1, C2 of the B&W edition), namely http://www.editorialjuventud.es/img/tintin/84-261-2762-2img2.jpg

Time could stand for an unseen passage's
- transpositions, quite time consuming sometimes, as shown by Tintin's trouble to decipher the strange Morse message during his India-Shanghai own unseen passage (see Lotus p.19, C2) - because the data have to be put back in their timely original order...

- time could stand also for discontinuous transmissions containing nulls, namely data that have to be ignored when read, or trivial data that have to be 'cross-matched' with other trivial data...
Haddock's speech interruptions every time he tries to tell Tintin about his presence in Wadesdah (Land of Black Gold, p.54 C2-4, p.55 B2+C1, p.56 C4 & p.62 C4) could stand for that, imho...


As said in the beginning, all the above goes with various 'spatiotemporal faults', that are magnified a lot:

1 unreal duplications (such as those found in America, Cigars, Rackham, Crystal, Prisoners, Tibet, Emerald...) occur soon after Abdallah's kidnapping, reportedly committed by 'Bab El Ehr' (p.37, A3):
- the Emir sends 300 horsemen (p.38, C2) on the bandits' tracks, which will anyway lead to his son, wherever is his place of confinement and whoever are the villains (i.e. lead to Wadesdah)...
- Tintin describes this warriors' troop as 'useless' (p.39, A3) and is thus very clairvoyant indeed, as the 300 seem to vanish* in the desert during their 20 kilometers' ride from the palace to Wadesdah (p.40, B1)...
- the warriors' 'disappearance' is implicitely asserted by Tintin asking the Emir 'to send men to Wadesdah' (p.48, B3)...
- the warriors' duplication is confirmed by the Emir (p.54, D3) soon after Haddock's arrival, and later seen (p.55, B3)...

2 unreal speeds (such as those of the 'Puss Moth', 'Pachacamac', 'DC-3', 'Carreidas 160'...):
- though the sand trail & the Emir's car are very fast (p.56, D2) and the distance from the palace to Wadesdah is 20 km only, Haddock needs over two hours' drive to cover the longest part (p.60, C1) of these 20 km, at the unreal speed of about 5mph, with a car that didn't need any repair even after it was damaged by Tintin's bullets (p.58, A5)...
I doubt Haddock needs much time to change a wheel for a flat tyre (p.58, A5), but who knows?
- Tintin does even worse with the jeep -in good state of repair, as he needs a two hours' drive to drop Muller at the police station + rush with the Thompsons to the hospital, via the smallest part of the 20 km's or 12 miles' distance, at the unreal speed of about 1mph...

How come? Wherever is their common starting point in the desert, both cars need 2 hours to cover the 12 miles, hence the sum of their respective speeds must be about 6mph...
Why would the author so systematically and carefully inscribe accurate 'time and space' data that can't fit together?

3 other unreal speeds include the Thompsons' too fast hair growth (p.60, D3) & their too slow recovery (p.62, B2), whereas Calculus' estimated their hair symptoms would cease rapidly (p.62, A5)...


Haddock's prolonged absence & the magnified spatiotemporal faults in the Black Gold could be meant to counterbalance the 'lacking' Indians + unseen transmission system, both usually clearly delineated in the albums** with obscure passages & spatiotemporal faults...
Such 'lacks' might however just be latent:

- about unseen Indians: Smith (p.40, A4) & Tintin (p.41, C1!) are 'archeologists' interested in the ancient Middle East civilisations, among them age-old Empires such as Alexander the Great's (B.C.) & the Sassanids' (A.D.), that included part of ...India, namely [/i]Indians[/i], a passion of Professor Paul Cantonneau...

- about unseen transmission system: an 'unseen passage' (or message) could be as latent as the Indians in this album; it should be linked with Cantonneau's other passion, namely stars (see related threads) and might be infered by cross-matching various 'trivial' internal data met in the corpus...



* in the Soviets (p.3, C1), 'only' 218 passengers vanish...

** such as Cigars, Lotus, Brocken Ear, Unicorn, Flight 714, Emerald, Picaros, etc. (see other threads)...

I didn't notice those! Here were my reasons:

Anyway, I thought that the Captain had plenty of time in between to set sail and to find Tintin (Tintin was at sea for several days, then spent ~2 nights in the desert, then spend a number of days with Oliveira da Figueira, and then actually went into Muller's house the following day...that's a process of several weeks). What prevented me from noticing the spatialtemporal issues?

As for the other stuff (Which I personally think should be on another thread)...

1. Regarding the horsemen, that looks like a very clever plan on part of Tintin! There are several military strategies from imperial China that use this theme of fake distractions to make the enemy think they're going the other way (there are at least 2 that I know of...). The horsemen don't vanish, but reappear later in the adventures. They probably left with the son after Muller was defeated.

2. I don't know about desert terrain, but I could imagine that the sand makes traction very difficult, which means that travel would be very slow.

3. It is much easier to get sick than to recover. Naturally, it would have been easier for the twins to get really long beards and then wait until after the Moon mission to recover.

How legitimate were these reasons?