Tintin in the Land of the Soviets Author: Herge | Language: English | ISBN:
0785909788 | Format: PDF
Tintin in the Land of the Soviets Description
Little, Brown is celebrating 100 years of Hergé with 3 titles never before published in the U.S. Join traveling reporter Tintin and his faithful dog Snowy, along with well-known friends such as Captain Haddock, as they embark on extraordinary adventures spanning historical and political events, fantasy and science-fiction adventures and thrilling mysteries. These full-color graphic novels broke new ground when they were first released and became the inspiration for countless modern-day comic artists.
- Hardcover
- Publisher: French & European Pubns (October 9, 1985)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0785909788
- ISBN-13: 978-0785909781
- Product Dimensions: 12.4 x 9.5 x 0.6 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.4 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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