Tintin in the Congo

Read my copy of Tintin in the Congo today. This Tintin book, the second one that Herge made, was first published in French in 1931 as Tintin au Congo, in black and white. This book was revised and published in 1946, in color. The book shows Tintin's adventures in Belgian Congo, and it has a foreword section, which says: "In his portrayal of the Belgian Congo, the young Herge reflects the colonial attitudes of the time. He himself admitted that he depicted the African people according to the bourgeois, paternalistic stereotypes of the period - an interpretation that some of today's readers may find offensive. The same could be said of his treatment of big-game hunting." It seems Herge even redrew a page in the revised version of 1946. However, it was only in 1991 that the first English language edition of this book was published, that too in black and white. The color English version is coming now, in 2005. It completes my Tintin collection as well.

The issues with racism and hunting apart, the plot of Tintin in the Congo is boring and ideas are childish, and it would highly disappoint any reader who reads it after going through those more interesting books that came later in the series. At one place, Snowy is caught by a monkey, and to rescue him, Tintin kills another monkey, tears its skin and wears it over him, and goes to the monkey and exchanges his hat for Snowy! In another one, a python swallows Snowy, but Snowy tears open the python's stomach, and walks through its body! In yet another one, Tintin uses an electromagnet to divert arrows coming towards him. There are many more such stuff which create disgust rather than amusement.

However, we can also see seeds of several ideas and images in this book, which Herge has enhanced and reproduced in more sophisticated form in later books. The significance of Tintin in the Congo is mainly historical, I feel, and it shows Herge's development as an artist. The illustrations in the book are far more refined than the first book, Tintin in the Land of the Soviets; However, details in drawings are still less, and they are far behind the polished illustrations of later Tintin books.