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Title: Shooting Star by Herge ISBN: 0-316-35851-7 Publisher: Little Brown & Company Pub. Date: 30 May, 1978 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $9.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.83 (6 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Tintin tackles the end of the world and giant mushrooms
Comment: In 1942 the continent of Europe was totally embroiled in World War II, which may well explain why Herge offers up the most fanciful of Tintin's adventures. In fact, nothing else comes as close to "The Shooting Star," which begins with the world about to end because of a collision with a giant comet and ends with Tintin dealing with giant mushrooms. In between there is a race to find a meteorite that contains a new element of great scientific importance (another case of Herge's remarkable premonitions based on meticulous research no doubt). Tintin is aided and abetted in this adventure by Captain Haddock, who we first met in the previous tale, "The Crab with the Golden Claws." But I must say the supporting character who caught my attention was the seaplane pilot who helps our hero in the throughout the episode and in the thrilling climax. You do not usually see such as a realistic, levelheaded, intelligent person helping out Tintin. I find it to believe Herge did not even give this fellow a name, who more than makes up for the eccentric college of eggheads whom Tintin is trying to help. "The Shooting Stars" is one of the best Tintin straightforward adventures and his adversary is more often the elements than the bad guys trying to beat the good ship "Aurora" to the meteorite. The contrast of Herge's simple drawing of characters against more realistic backgrounds finds several excellent sequences in this story, the first to be originally printed in color.
Rating: 5
Summary: Herge's wartime Swiftian satire.
Comment: After a string of stories loosely based on mystery/crime plots, 'The Shooting Star' initiates the formula that would become fairly standard in the Tintin books to come: the science-fiction adventure, a kind of modernist Jules Verne. A huge meteorite flying past earth splinters a large fragment which lands near the North Pole. Containing a new metal called phostlite, named after the astronomer who detected it, Tintin and Snowy join an expedition of world-class scientists to lay claim to the rock, in a ship captained by one Haddock, now unlikely President of the Society for Sober Sailors (despite smuggling crates of whiskey for the journey). Their quest, however, is pre-empted by another expedition, financed by crooked Sao Rico banker, cigar-chomping (anti-Semitic caricature?), Bohlwinkel.
The first dozen pages of 'Star' are unequalled in literature for sustaining a nightmare mood of unaccountable suspense and anxiety (appropriate given the Occupation context [1941] in which the story was written). The meteor is introduced as both a speedily growing incandescence in the night sky, and by a melting heat afflicting the usually drizzly Brussels, the tar on the roads melting, armies of rats fleeing the gutter, car-tyres popping and mad prophets pronouncing millenarian judgements. The spangled blackness of the sky is offset by the dreamlike twilight blue that illuminates the streets. When Tintin rushes to the observatory, he finds the spanking, steely modern technology run by an eccentric gaggle of Dickensian relics, all black frock-coated dodderers, running around in the vicious circles of their own self-absorption, headed by the appropriately-named, anvil-headed Phostle. When he encourages Tintin to look into the giant, cannon-priapic telescope for himself, he sees a colossal spider heading towards the planet.
No work could keep up that sweat-making momentum, and Herge wisely lets the narrative dip, mixing comedy (including Haddock's pathetic attempts to sneak a nagan, Snowy's incessant raids on the kitchen, and the sight of the world's finest minds keeling over in green-faced sea-sickness) with race-against-the-clock suspense as our heroes strive to reach the meteor, despite various chilling sabotage attempts by their rivals. The meteor itself is a creation worthy of Swift, soon erasing memories of 'The Black Island'. The affirmative faith in science that propels the action is undermined by the instabilities of the sinking meteor, with its magnified lifeforms (including flies and spiders) and exploding toadstools (among the book's many great visual effects, the best is possibly the shrinking in successive frames of our hero as the mushroom enlarges). The massive apples that knock Tintin on the head may be an ironic allusion to the great Enlightenment hero Newton, who could be said to usher in modern science, and the famous fruit in the Garden of Eden (like Adam, or Columbus, Tintin explores virgin land), a warning against the dangers of pursusing too much knowledge (earlier predicted by the decline into madness of the scientist Philippus); nature will always fight back, in ever more aggressive and distorted forms.
Rating: 5
Summary: The most INTERESTING tintin book
Comment: No, not the best, but definately the most interesting. This book was written in war time, in occupied belgium, and is a key point in deciding whether or not Herge was a fascist. I wrote a short essay on this, and if anyone would like to read it, email me at [email protected].
This is definately a must for any tintin fan though.
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Title: The Crab with the Golden Claws (The Adventures of Tintin) by Herge ISBN: 0316358339 Publisher: Little Brown & Company Pub. Date: 30 June, 1974 List Price(USD): $9.99 |
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Title: The Secret of the Unicorn by Herge ISBN: 0316358320 Publisher: Little Brown & Company Pub. Date: 30 June, 1974 List Price(USD): $9.99 |
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Title: King Ottokar's Sceptre (The Adventures of Tintin) by Herge ISBN: 0316358312 Publisher: Little Brown & Company Pub. Date: 30 June, 1974 List Price(USD): $9.99 |
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Title: The Seven Crystal Balls (The Adventures of Tintin) by Herge ISBN: 0316358401 Publisher: Little Brown & Company Pub. Date: 30 September, 1975 List Price(USD): $9.99 |
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Title: Red Rackham's Treasure (The Adventures of Tintin) by Herge ISBN: 0316358347 Publisher: Little Brown & Company Pub. Date: 30 June, 1974 List Price(USD): $9.99 |
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