Tintin Forums

I'd say The Blue Lotus, The Broken Ear, King Ottokar's Sceptre and The Calculus Affair, and to some extent Land of Black Gold.
But ultimatley it's between Blue Lotus and Calculus Affair.

The Blue Lotus, The Broken Ear and Tintin and the Picaros get my vote for the most politically charged stories.

King Ottokar's Sceptre first- it is, after all, a barely veiled criticism of the Anschluss- and Picaros second. We're left in absolutely no doubt at the end that Alcazar is just as much a tyrant as his enemy, but Tintin needed his help to rescue Castafiore and co. It's got to have the most bittersweet ending of any album.

Doesn't "Tintin in the Land of the Soviets" get a mention here? It suffered later for being too politically sensitive - anti-Communist in an era where leftist socialism was on the rise (quite a contrast to the United States). The Shooting Star also suffered due to political problems - the rival expedition being an Allied country while the scientists came from Axis or neutral countries.

Perhaps these stories get dishonourable mentions because of insensitivities, crudeness or the politics being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I would say The Blue Lotus takes top honours for its handling of politics. The Calculus Affair suffers because the Cold War angle is too forced (the way Syldavia behaves in this story is totally at odds with what happened before with no explanation given). Tintin and the Broken ear knocks spots off Tintin and the Picaros for the depiction of South American despotism. The former is far more realistic than the latter.

Soviet apart, I'd say the Blue Lotus, as it's the only one pointing at explicit "national baddies", political issues with non-fictionnal countries. It's the most precise and explicit political caricature in Tintin stories, far from the vague generic-communist-countries or generic-southamerican-countries that illustrate more general issues ("dictatorship in general" etc).

Tintin and the Picaros : Surely describing Alcazar as Fidel Castro and Kurvi-Tasch as Stalin.

There is a distinct disconnect from the earlier Tintin comics with their in-your-face politics (the exemplar is The Blue Lotus) with Herge’s politics stuffed in your face, and the later works. Thus, The Broken Ear has South American banana republics presented without subtlety, while The Blue Lotus demonises the entire Japanese race. Congo is completely unashamed in its casual racism. But in Tintin in America, which for some reason I haven’t seen anyone mention here, Tintin encounters crude American political corruption, mob violence, and the state’s persecution of the Native Americans.

For my money, Picaros is the best of the lot simply because the politics is implied, not thrust in one’s face, and because one isn’t drawn into a choice between an “evil” dictatorship and a “fairytale” monarchy (Ottakar’s Sceptre) or a farcical Cold War arms race (Calculus Affair). In Picaros, it’s pretty clear (especially to those who have read The Broken Ear) that Alcazar is no better than Tapioca; but it’s only right at the end that we are shown Alcazar's soldiers patrolling the same slums as Tapioca's did and we're left to draw the inference for ourselves.

The thing I can't decide is Tintin is a right wing or a left wing?

You would hardly call him a commy if you read Land of Soviets.
Picaros makes both sense.