The Black Island

In this Tintin adventure, Tintin is embroiled in a conflict between the Chinese and the Japanese occupying China in the late 1930s. There are several close shaves with death, lots of masquerading, car chases and dramatic declamations. Oh yes and a cameo by Dupont and Dupond. No Captain Haddock, alas!

I borrowed this because it was mentioned in Agent Sonya, by Ben Macintyre, and Hergé’s portrayal of the Chinese in this volume was supposed to be more nuanced and less racist than his portrayals of cultures in other volumes (e.g., the Congolese, Native Americans). It is true that Chang, a young boy Tintin meets while heading from Shanghai to Hou Kou, gets a fair bit of screen time, and Tintin sticks up for a rickshaw driver who is being bullied by an asshole white guy, but I couldn’t help wincing at the drawings of the Japanese bad guys (the buck teeth veered into caricature).

In terms of the drawings, I found the dialogue hard to read, because the characters’ heads kept blocking the speech bubbles, requiring some weird hyphen placement, and the writing itself was a bit thin and spidery.

I may read another Tintin, but I will probably skip to one featuring Captain Haddock, because he is my favourite. ( )

My review, as posted in Tintin Books

I seem to have a much more complex relationship with this album than many do. As a child, I never enjoyed "The Black Island" (and I read Tintin every day for a while) - in fact, it was one of a rare few albums that I didn't try and adapt into a play (pretentious child that I was). I guess I didn't appreciate the Hitchcock feeling, and I found the climax with the gorilla "silly". I suspect it is partly because, as I'm not British, this album had no special sway over me compared to any other "foreign setting". "The Black Island" wasn't exotic like [b:The Blue Lotus|146144|The Blue Lotus|Hergé|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172178189s/146144.jpg|1928886], nor did it possess the wealth of characterisations like, say, [b:The Secret of the Unicorn|179174|The Secret of the Unicorn (The Adventures of Tintin)|Hergé|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172468324s/179174.jpg|1275077]. Perhaps I don't enjoy a book that relies so much on Snowy's physical comedy, or perhaps I just associated it too much (for some intangible reason) with the similar homespun chase of the (far superior) [b:The Shooting Star|146107|The Shooting Star (The Adventures of Tintin)|Hergé|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172178127s/146107.jpg|173095].

As an adult, I can appreciate it somewhat more: the texture of the Scottlish landscape, for example. I'm still not overly fond of this work though. It probably has more to say to British people, particularly those who grew up in the '60s and '70s, because you always read reviews by people saying "I never realised Tintin wasn't British!". To those of us born and raised in the post-modern world, this is one of only 24 Tintin albums, and by far not the best.

On the other hand, Tintin gets to show off his legs in a kilt, which is great fun! It's particularly nice to see someone get the better of Tintin. In this case, Ranko's owner sees Tintin (after a close shave with death) and goes crazy, saying "I've seen a ghost!". This is a typical Herge formula from the time, but this time - the villain is faking it, and gets one up on Tintin! Already, Herge is messing with the formulas he has cleverly devised, and that's why we love him. ( )

Somehow Tintin passed me by as a kid. The books were there in my local library alongside the Asterix ones, but I never wanted to check them out and read them. No idea why that was.

However, my seven year old son did want to read them, probably because he saw the movie first. So having devoured The Secret of the Unicorn and Red Rackham's Treasure he wanted to read the rest of Tintin. So I took him to the library and we borrowed Tintin and the Black Island.

It is an entertaining and engaging story. Tintin is an action hero and despite the setbacks he saves the day. It isn't all action though, there's loads of humour all through the book, almost every page has at least one gag, many of which are visual and in the background.

Anyway, we liked it so much we've used the online catalogue to order up some of the other Tintin stories that our local library doesn't have on its shelves. ( )

The art is pretty cool and there's a lot of slapstick humor. Not my favorite.

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2206408.html

The Black Island is a bit of a step backwards for Tintin; he is shot and wounded ion the first page, and then chases a group of forgers to Scotland by a series of improbable incidents involving various means of transport and defeats a gorilla in a ruined castle, all the while hindered by the bungling detectives Thomson and Thompson (who in fairness get some good lines here). One wonders why anyone would go to the trouble of forging Belgian francs in Scotland (or indeed anywhere at all); the basic plot, of a criminal conspiracy being unmasked, is awfully similar to Cigars of the Pharaoh and Tintin in America, though the story is on safer ground by mocking the British rather than Arabs, Indians or native Americans. Not really one of the classics. ( )