Tintin in the Land of the Soviets Author: Herg? | Language: English | ISBN:
0316003743 | Format: PDF
Tintin in the Land of the Soviets Description
From Publishers Weekly
This new facsimile reprint of the very first adventure of one of the world's most beloved cartoon characters shows Tintin's creator, the famed Belgian cartoonist Herge, just beginning to learn his craft. The story was originally created in 1929 for a children's supplement in the Belgian newspaper Le Vingtieme Siecle. Readers meet Tintin, intrepid red-headed boy reporter, along with his dog, for the first time as they set off to Russia to investigate the evil doings of the Soviets. Herg‚ later apologized for the heavy-handed anti-Soviet satire on almost every page. The Soviets are generally portrayed as corn-stealing murderous scum; among other things, Tintin is tortured by thoroughly caricatured Chinese employees of the Soviet secret police. These stereotypes and others like them are a part of that time period, although they've been cited as evidence of Herge's racism. Setting aside the political context, the book is a valuable documentation of the rough and underdeveloped work of Herge's early years as a cartoonist. Years later, he developed the clear line-drawing style that's influenced generations of European cartoonists. However, while his simple b&w penwork from this period is often clumsy, Herge's ability to tell a good story is well developed. Tintin rockets from one death-defying scrape to another in a whirlwind of chase scenes. He is dragged behind cars, blown up by explosives, frozen, tortured, shot, chased by a tiger and more, all in the course of a few pages. This is an enthralling look at the early work of one of the greatest cartoonists of all time.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
About the Author
Hergé, one of the most famous Belgians in the world, was a comics writer and artist. The internationally successful Adventures of Tintin are his most well-known and beloved works. They have been translated into 38 different languages and have inspired such legends as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. He wrote and illustrated for The Adventures of Tintin until his death in 1983.
- Age Range: 10 and up
- Grade Level: 5 and up
- Series: The Adventures of Tintin: Original Classic
- Paperback: 144 pages
- Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers (December 1, 2007)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0316003743
- ISBN-13: 978-0316003742
- Product Dimensions: 11.6 x 8.6 x 0.4 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Tintin is sent by his Brussels newspaper to expose the true conditions of life in Bolshevik Russia, and counter the propaganda spread by Soviets and their Western fellow-travellers. Together with his faithful fox terrier Snowy, Tintin finds famine, child hunger, bureaucratic incompetence, industrial failure, bogus propaganda, state terror, gunpoint elections and massive embezzlement of the people's wealth by the government. Naturally, the Soviets aren't terribly keen for such information to leak out, and attempt to dispatch our hero at every turn - trying to bomb, shoot at, torture and freeze him in the endless snowy Steppes.
'Tintin In The Land Of The Soviets' is the first Tintin adventure, written in 1929 for a Catholic newspaper edited by a priest who would become a Nazi collaborator. The book's propaganda is crude - as the translators point out, Herge never visited Russia, and based his 'facts' on a contemporary, reactionary book by a Belgian consul - and leaves a sour taste in the mouth. It's not that what he shows wasn't accurate - his Soviet Russia is a totalitarian nightmare, swarming with vicious secret police; a place where citizens had their property stolen and labour abused; where starvation, torture and murder was rife; where more state effort went into destruction than construction. The book is filled with booze-sozzled goons are frightening precisely because they have a power they don't deserve. A lingering superstitiousness undermines this brave new world, and the images are full of delapidation and things crashing and falling apart - nothing can possibly work in such an environment. The 'Wizard of Oz'-like scene where a guide shows gullible English communists industrial marvels that are really two men billowing smoke and rattling sheet metal, is horribly accurate.
For a long time I owned all the Tintins depicted on the back cover of "The Adventures of Tintin" and thought I had it all, until I learned about the existence of 3 other titles: "Tintin in the Congo," "Tintin Et L'Alph-Art" (his very last unfinished work), and this one, which happens to be his very first Tintin Adventure. Naturally, I quickly obtained all three.
This being the very first Tintin ever, it is a remarkable work and is a must have for any Tintin lover. However it is not the Tintin you would expect. First of all, this hardbound edition contains a photocopy of the original black and white strips. There is no color edition. It contains almost twice the number of pages as regular Tintins, so it is a good deal for the money. The Tintin and Snowy look somewhat different from the ones we know. In fact, Tintin starts out this adventure without his famous tuft of hair, so you need to read it to find out why his hair sticks up like it does now. The artwork is less detailed and less elaborate than we're used to. Nevertheless it retains a air of elegant simplicity that makes it a masterful work of art.
Another major difference is the rapidity of the action. At that time, Herge was writing this adventure strip by strip for a weekly Belgian newspaper, unlike later adventures when he created it page by page. The adventure therefore moves much more quickly in order to keep readers interested in getting the next edition. Because of this some of the action appears unreal and much is left to impossible coincidences. Nevertheless, nearly all the action "tricks" that Herge uses to rescue Tintin in later adventures can be found here. Police chases, encounters with trains, mobsters, etc. are also prevalent.
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