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Have you ever noticed that, in the last few Tintin books, Hergé used far more thought bubbles than before?

I recently re-read all the books in order, which was great for seeing how the characters, storytelling and style changed over the years. One thing that really surprised me was how the final books – Flight 714 to Sydney and Tintin and the Picaros in particular – are absolutely full of thought bubbles. This obviously has a major impact on the way the stories are told, so I thought I'd compare the number of thought bubbles included in the last 5 completed Tintin books:

The Red Sea Sharks: 3 thought bubbles
Tintin in Tibet: 9
The Castafiore Emerald: 9
Flight 714 to Sydney: 60 (!)
Tintin and the Picaros: 30

(It's worth mentioning at this point that, although Flight 714 to Sydney features lots of telepathic communication by the character Mik Kanrokitoff, this is always presented in speech bubbles rather than thought bubbles.)

So there's clearly a pattern. The question is – why?

Had Hergé pushed the limits of storytelling within a 62-page comic book so far that he had to use thought bubbles to save time and keep the story moving?

Was his growing use of thought bubbles influenced by his well-documented interest in spiritualism and the paranormal?

Or – and I hate to say it – is this a sign of how his declining enthusiasm for Tintin may have negatively affected his storytelling? Hergé at his best is a master of "show, don't tell", while this reliance on thought bubbles is more a case of "tell, don't show".

Thanks for reading, would be glad to hear other people's take on this!

It is an interesting exercise to read all the books in chronological order. There does appear to be a slight shift in the last three books, and this becomes noticeable on reading them in order.

I had always thought that the brilliant and understated Bob de Moor was having more input at this time. Herge still had total control but, was perhaps leaving Bob to express ideas a little more.

An interesting observation, but I wonder if it is based more on an issue of being discreet about one's thoughts.

I have always found it a bit odd how characters in Herge's stories tended to voice their thoughts, whether alone or in the presence of others. Take the scenes on page 22 of "Sceptre" when Tintin voices suspicion of Alembick when sitting next to him on the plane or walking right behind him on the airfield. There is also the scene in "Blue Lotus" (page 3) when Tintin voices suspicion of the Chinese visitor to India - though, like Alembick, the visitor does not appear to have noticed the remarks.

Voicing one's thoughts, even when one is alone, was pretty standard with Herge - like when Tintin voices them when breaking into Muller's office (page 44) or explores the bunker (page 48). (He even voices them when hiding from Muller (page 45).)

By the final books, however, Herge may have decided that the characters should be more discreet, especially in the presence of others. Who knows? maybe some parents wrote to complain about how children would openly voice their dislike of people "like Tintin does" and not expect them to notice. :)

That is probably why, in "Flight 714", Haddock wonders, in thought, how Carreidas is beating him at Battleships (page 10); or Tintin is getting suspicious of Spalding (page 11), but uses thought bubbles rather than voicing them as he did with Alembick.

At least Herge did not go the way of American comics where thought bubbles have been replaced by text boxes expressing the characters' thoughts or feelings, like in "Batman" or "Spider-Man". I've often thought that that made the characters more like zombies than people.

One thing to consider here is that thought bubbles were developed later than speech bubbles. Speech bubbles were a novelty - at least in Europe - when Hergé created Tintin (he hadn't used them for Totor) and thought bubbles were an even later invention. For a long time, some comic strips - "Li'l Abner" comes to my mind - put the text within brackets in the speech bubbles if it was something the character was thinking. So, maybe Hergé didn't know about thought bubbles until the late 1950s?

An interesting observation!

Certainly, we see Tintin engaging more and more with moral themes, symbolism, allegory, and the complexity of our world, in the later adventures.

Jean-Marie Apostolidès, in her fascinating novel "The Metamorphoses of Tintin", breaks she breaks the albums into three main phases (p. 191 in my copy).

The primary adventures are simpler like children's books. They do nothing but reflect the geographical position of the stories: Soviet Union, Congo, America, Black Gold etc...

The second series of adventures "work out a balance between transcendent and worldly values" and "highlight the mystical dimension of the world that can be revealed only in esoteric knowledge acquired through an initiation process involving a journey to outer space or to a distant, sacred past." In this context, it could well be argued that thought bubbles become more of a necessity in these later adventures.

However, Apostolidès suggests that 'The Calculus Affair' marks the third phase of these albums that "bring us back to earth, but to a world that Hergé henceforth presents as run by the logic of 'wheeling and dealing'..."

Trafficking, violence, revolution and even the hostility of the natural world impose dictate the mystery of the narratives by imposing their own laws upon our favourite heroes. The characters in these last adventures are never in control of their own narrative, which is perhaps why they may be seen as having become so personal to Hergé despite his efforts to ease himself away from the stresses of the Studios.

Although I would add here that 'The Blue Lotus' also reflects features of Apostolidès' third point, and that 'Tintin in Tibet' sees Tintin confront certain myths apparent in earlier volumes, thereby bridging the gap between all three phases of the adventures, as it were.

In any case, taken in three parts, you might suggest that many of the later adventures become increasingly existential and rely heavily on the characters' internal thoughts and concerns as their minds are made alive.