Wednesday, December 7, 2011

The Adventures of Tin Tin and the Red Sea Sharks


            The Adventures of Tin Tin was a surprise to me. I have never read them before and thought Tin Tin was young, coming just out of boyhood. Maybe he is but he seemed older in the comic I read. In this comic Tin Tin and the Captain ran into an old friend who was selling planes illegally. They go to investigate and get into a mess of trouble, first they survive a plane crash, then hide out and ride camels across the desert where they board a ship that gets shot down by planes and get picked up then brought to another ship which is lit on fire and they are left to die and while on this ship they dodge torpedoes and finally contact the Navy to capture their villains and be safe; quite an adventure. I enjoyed the adventure, but was surprised at how much text was in each panel. This made it seem like a comic for an older age group. There was some violence but not much, mostly just guns with a few fights here and there and the captain was always obsessing over some alcohol. Tin Tin was more grown up than I thought because he carried around whisky and knew how to shoot guns. There’s no age limit for that in comics but I always thought of him younger. The captain was a funny character. Constantly losing his drinks and cursing in his sailor way. This comic didn’t seem as old as it was. It came out in 1958 but I couldn’t tell just from reading. Everything that happened could have happened today. The villains or terrorists were from Africa but some looked like they were from the Middle East, making this comic every more up to date. One interesting thing I noticed was the lack of detail in Tin Tin’s face. Other characters had defining lines and hair or beards, but Tin Tin was very clean and simple, maybe this was Herge’s way of showing that Tin Tin was much younger than everybody.
I did enjoy the comic and would read others. 

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