From: yngvar@krill.NoSubdomain.NoDomain (Yngvar Foelling)
Subject: Re: Tintin Cronology
Organization: University of Bergen, Norway
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 92 17:34:30 GMT

Thank God!  I thought that this group was American comics only.


In article <1dpsg1INNeeb@pollux.usc.edu>, akhale@pollux.usc.edu (Abhijit Khale) writes:

   [Arguments about Tintin's first meeting with Captain Haddock deleted.]

|> Anyway, the chronological order in which the books were written is
|> (I'm probably slightly off on some). 
|> 
|> Tintin in the land of the Soviets
|> Tintin in the Congo
|> Tintin in America
|> Cigars of the Pharaoh
|> The Blue Lotus
|> The Broken Ear
|> The Black Island
|> The Crab with the Golden Claws
|> King Ottokar's Sceptre
|> The Shooting Star ???
|> The Secret of the Unicorn 
|> Red Rackham's Treasure
|> The Seven Crystal Balls
|> Prisoners of the Sun
|> Land of Black Gold
|> Destination Moon
|> Explorers on the Moon
|> The Calculus Affair
|> The Red Sea Sharks
|> Tintin in Tibet
|> The Castafiore Emerald
|> Flight 714
|> Secret of the Picaros
|> 
|> There was also the film book 
|> 
|> Tintin and the lake of Sharks
|> 
|> I'm slightly uncertain about the position of the Shooting star, since I cant
|> remember if Calculus appears in it (if he does, then Shooting Star would
|> postdate Red Rackham's treasure). 

No, he doesn't, but there were several other nutty professors.
|> 
|> Herge's first works are ok, but not all that good. Blue Lotus is probably
|> the first which has a coherent plot, then he goes back to Broken Ear, which
|> has a very confused and bizarre plot. The series takes a quantum jump in qual-
|> ity with Black Island, and the quality continues till "Castafiore .."
|> [Castafiore is probably the funniest of the Tintin books].

I agree with the humour, but I didn't feel that "Castafiore" was that interesting,
plot-wise.  I mean, what kind of Tintin story stays put in the manor throughout
the entire issue?

|> Picaros is
|> just OK, and Flight 714 is bad. Tintin and the lake of Sharks was not
|> done by Herge and is a real loser (no Herge book, even Flight 714,
|> could be a real loser). 

"...Lake of Sharks" has never been translated to Norwegian, so I don't have it.
I suspected all along that I hadn't missed anything.
|> 
|> Continuity isnt that important to Tintin books, although its fairly consistent.
|> There are also a few two parters : Unicorn and Red Rackham, Crystal Balls
|> and Prisoners, the two Moon stories, which should be read in order (although
|> they're pretty good even if read out of order). 
|> 
"Cigars of the Pharaoh" and "The Blue Lotus" is also a kind of two parter,
although they don't depend much on each other.

I have one single problem with your list.  Captain Haddock does not appear in
"King Ottokar's Sceptre", so I assumed that it came before "The Crab".

I could add the list of names from the Norwegian translation, with full names
if given:

Title "Tintin"
Main character - Tintin
Dog - Terry
Captain - Haddock (In "Picaros" given first name Archibald. No wonder that he
    never uses it.)
Detectives - Dupond & Dupont
Professor - Tryphon Tournesol

Not very major, but may I also add:

Chronic unwanted visitor - Max Hansen (Sorry, I don't have his English, French
    or German name, but he was introduced in "The Calculus Affair".)

BTW, aren't the two detectives called Thomson and Thompson (with and without
"p") in English?

-- 
,---------------------------------.---------------------------------------.
| Yngvar Flling (yngvar@imr.no)  |   The opinions expressed are my own   |
| Institute of Marine Research    |   except for the occational glitch    |
| Bergen                          |   inserted by the Little Green Goblin |
| Norway                          |   who lives in my LAN outlet.         |
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