2002-11-16 Far and away the best perils of Tintin slapstick adventure

I do not really like the early Tintin adventures where there is a lot of slapstick and every other page our intrepid reporter hero is either holding a gun or having somebody hold a gun on him as much as I do the later adventures where the emphasize is on character humor and cultural details. However, "The Black Island" is certainly the epitome of this type of Tintin adventure. Hergé really pours it on pretty much from start to finish. This might be slapstick but it is nonstop slapstick from Tintin trying to stop the Thom(p)sons from arresting him to Snowy getting the better of a gorilla (but not a spider). Tintin might end up unconscious more often in this story than all of his other adventures combined. The beginning is simple enough. Tintin sees a plane land with engine trouble. Noticing it is an unregistered plane he offers to help and is immediately shot (do not worry, boys and girls, the bullet only grazes his ribs). Of course Tintin wants to get to the bottom of this mystery but it is hard to collect clues when people are trying to kill you and you have no clue why. As you can tell from the cover illustration of "The Black Island" Tintin gets to wear a kilt, not to mention a bonnie bonnet as the titular piece of property happens to be in Scotland. This might not be the best Tintin adventure and there are certainly funnier sequences to be found down the road, but all things considered "The Black Island" has got to be the funniest of Hergé stories.