The Shooting Star

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The Shooting Star (L'Étoile mystérieuse) is the tenth of The Adventures of Tintin, a series of classic comic-strip albums, written and illustrated by Belgian writer and illustrator Hergé, featuring young reporter Tintin as a hero. It depicts Tintin travelling to the Arctic Ocean to recover a meteor that is composed of Phostlite, an unknown metal. (Although actually, this should be a mineral or ore rather than a metal, since the suffix "-ite" is applied to minerals; metals take the suffix "-ium".) It was first published in the newspaper Le Soir in black and white in 1941, but was the first Tintin adventure to be published directly in a coloured album a year later. It was also the first Tintin story that was immediately restricted to the later classic fixed length of 62 pages, while all older stories had about 110 pages.

[edit] Synopsis

Tintin is out walking with his dog Snowy one night, and notices an extra star in the Great Bear. When he reaches home, he dials the Observatory. They say that they have the phenomenon under observation and hang up.

Tintin star is getting bigger every minute. He walks to the Observatory, and, after some trouble, gets inside. He meets someone leaving who tells him that "It is a Judgement! Woe!". Puzzled, he knocks. Receiving no answer, he enters the telescope room and sees two men seated at a small table. He asks for the Director of the Observatory.

It turns out that the heat was emanated from a burning rock of an unknown mineral composition and its impact on Earth was no more than an earthquake lasting a mere few seconds and not the end of the world as prophesied by the first stranger that Tintin met when he enters the Observatory. After an analysis of a spectroscopic photo of the mineral via the spectroscope in the Observatory by the Director (Professor Decimus Phostle) and deduced that it was a new metal, Professor Phostle was persuaded by Tintin that such a rare mineral discovery is a rare find and decides to organise an expedition led by himself and flanked by leading fictional scientists of the science world to find the metal and to retrieve a sample of it for further research.

Initially unknown to the expedition also commandeered by Captain Haddock on the trawler 'Aurora', the financier from São Rico, Bohlwinkel has financed another rival expedition on board the polar ship 'Peary' and has taken a head start against the 'Aurora'. In order to secure victory, he arranges for several sabotage attempts for the rival expedition. The sneaky tactics by Bohlwinkel along the journey included intercepting messages sent from the 'Aurora' via wireless set and sent word to oil companies in Akureyri where the 'Aurora' was due to refuel to bar all transactions of fuel to Professor Phostle's expedition. This would mean effectively shackling the Professor's and his expedition's efforts and stranding them at the Icelandic port. As usual, Tintin and his brilliant thinking reversed the situation and outwitted Bohlwinkel and his cohorts.

As the 'Aurora' expedition draws closer to their destination, including reconnaissance of the meteorite from a distance from a seaplane, Bohlwinkel tried a last ploy and instructed his wireless operator to send a fake SOS message to the 'Aurora' citing that a bogus ship named 'Cithara' has collided with an iceberg and required assistance immediately. This would mean a diversion from their planned course and Tintin and his friends fell for this trick. Not long after, the 'Peary' expedition sent a message to Bohlwinkel stating success as they have spotted the meteorite of rare metal.

The final race heats up as Tintin and the pilot of the seaplane of the 'Aurora' raced to plant their flag of the European Foundation of Scientific Research to claim the meteorite before the Bohlwinkel expedition could raise their own flag. The seaplane was used as a last resort as the earlier fake SOS deception has made the 'Aurora' too far to gain any advantage over their rivals.

As the 'Peary' sent out a boat to plant the flag, the astonished 'Peary' captain and a disgruntled unidentified subordinate known only as Frank looked on as Tintin parachuted from the seaplane over the rock, seemingly turning the tables on them. Not to be outdone, Frank hurried to take a sniper rifle, intending to snipe at Tintin before he could land on the rock and plant his flag but was prevented by the conscientious Captain of the 'Peary'. Tintin then safely planted the flag but hard circumstances have befallen the 'Aurora' expedition as the ship has exerted its capabilities and was forced to fall back to make repairs and would not be coming to the rendezvous point earlier than expected. Tintin decides to stay on the meteorite rock as it would not be logical to abandon the rock with the rival so close by.

One of the politically loaded features of the original album: the antagonists of the original album were explicitly Americans (top), while recent editions feature the flag of the fictitious country of São Rico (bottom).

As Tintin discovers after spending a night, the rock was more astounding than he would imagine as any organic matter in contact with the rock would swell to many times its size and outgrow itself, with trivial events such as a maggot in an apple or a tiny spider running away from a meal box coming back to give him the fright of his life. The chief characteristics of the rock was strange as egg shaped objects would materialised from the ground, swelling into a tiny mushroom before towering over Tintin and exploding right before his eyes to nothingness.

Nevertheless, help was on the way, and Tintin salvaged a sample of the rock as required but not before a rescue drama involving Tintin, Snowy and the seaplane pilot as the rock sinks below the sea. As an epilogue, Bohlwinkel hears in a news report that he has been identified as the chief culprit and will be brought to justice.

[edit] Alternate versions

Originally the villain was named Blumenstein, and was an American financier. Since Blumenstein is a Jewish name, some accused Hergé of anti-Semitism, prompting him to change it. In later editions the financier was named Bohlwinkel (a slight alteration of a term in Brussels dialect for "Sweet Shop", although the name was still, unfortunately, deemed to sound Jewish), and was based in the fictitious South American city of São Rico.

A number of other details were also removed (like two Jews rejoicing at the idea that the apocalypse would free them from repaying their creditors, the American flag of the landing party of the Peary), while a number of other, more obscure, hints remained (the names Peary and Kentucky Star for the ships of the antagonists, the "European Research Society" in the context of Nazi-occupied Europe, the seaplane used by Tintin is a World War II Nazi Germany reconnaissance aircraft Arado 196).

[edit] Trivia

This is one of the very few albums where Tintin makes Haddock drink alcohol in order to make him more co-operative (he uses the same tactic in The Red Sea Sharks and Tintin in Tibet).