| Tintin in America (Tintin en Amérique) |
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|---|---|
Cover of the English edition |
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| Publisher | Le Petit Vingtième |
| Date | 1932 |
| Series | The Adventures of Tintin (Les aventures de Tintin) |
| Creative team | |
| Writer(s) | Hergé |
| Artist(s) | Hergé |
| Original publication | |
| Published in | Le Petit Vingtième |
| Date(s) of publication | 3 September 1931 – 20 October 1932 |
| Language | French |
| ISBN | 2-203-00102-X |
| Translation | |
| Publisher | Methuen |
| Date | 1973 |
| ISBN | 1-4052-0614-4 |
| Translator(s) | Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper and Michael Turner |
| Chronology | |
| Preceded by | Tintin in the Congo, 1931 |
| Followed by | Cigars of the Pharaoh, 1934 |
Tintin in America (in the original French, Tintin en Amérique) is the third title in the comic book series The Adventures of Tintin, written and drawn by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. Originally serialised in the Belgian children's newspaper supplement Le Petit Vingtième between 3 September 1931 and 20 October 1932, it was subsequently published in book form in 1932.
The plot revolves around the young reporter Tintin and his dog Snowy who travel to the United States, where he plans to report on the crime syndicate then active in Chicago.
Contents |
It is the year 1931. Having encountered Al Capone's gangsters in his last adventure, Tintin in the Congo, Tintin is sent to Chicago, Illinois to clean up the city's criminals. He is captured by gangsters several times, soon meeting Capone himself after he is dropped through a trapdoor in the street and knocked out by two thugs. Al Capone pays the two, ordering the second one to eliminate Tintin. However Snowy knocks a vase onto his head as he fires, knocking him out. Tintin listens at the door where Capone and the other crook went. However the other one, revealed to be called Pietro, recovers and throws a vase at Tintin. But the door is opened at that moment, causing the vase to hit Capone's face, though the door makes Tintin drop his gun. However he then headbutts Pietro in the waist and runs out, hiding behind a curtain to evade the other crook. Tintin then gags Pietro and binds him, as well as gagging and binding Capone. He then knocks the other gangster out with a chair as he enters. However the policeman he calls to help arrest the gangsters does not believe his story and tries to capture him instead (Tintin's failure to capture Capone reflects the fact that Capone was still active when the comic strip was written). Snowy later comes along, revealing someone else came and untied the other three, despite his efforts.
After several attempts on his life, Tintin meets Capone's rival, the devious Bobby Smiles, who heads the Gangsters Syndicate of Chicago(GSC) who tries to persuade Tintin to work for him, but Tintin declines. Tintin spends much of the book trying to capture Smiles, pursuing him to the Midwestern town of Redskin City. There he is captured by a Blackfoot Indian tribe (fooled by Smiles into thinking Tintin is their enemy), and discovers oil. This unintentionally causes the expulsion of the tribe, as unscrupulous oil corporations take over their land, depriving them of any share in the oil profits (see Ideology of Tintin). Finally, Tintin captures Smiles, and ships him back to Chicago in a crate.
After Smiles is captured, an unnamed bald gangster kidnaps Tintin's dog, Snowy. Tintin manages to save him after hiding in a suit of armour and knocking out the gangster and two of his henchman. He discovers Snowy with his leg manacled in a dungeon. However the gangster sends his 15 bodyguard after Tintin. He tells them he wants them back in 10 minutes, with Tintin bound and gagged. Tintin locks them in the Keep, but the leader escapes. The next day the bald gangster orders a subordinate named Maurice Oyle to invite Tintin to a cannery, where Tintin is tricked into falling into the meat grinding machine. However, because the workers at the cannery are on strike, the meat grinder is deactivated and Tintin escapes. Tintin later tricks and captures both Maurice and the bald gangster.
After this escapade, Tintin is invited to a banquet held in his honor, where he is kidnapped by Chicago gangsters who have decided to wreak revenge upon him for his crackdown upon the city's criminals. The gangsters tie Tintin and Snowy to a weight and throw them into Lake Michigan. However, the gangsters mistakenly used a block of wood as a weight, and thus Tintin and Snowy are saved by what is ostensibly a police patrol boat. It soon transpires that the crew of the boat are not policemen, but more gangsters, and they attempt to kill Tintin. However Tintin overpowers them, and later leads the police to the gangsters' headquarters. A grateful Chicago holds a ticker-tape parade for Tintin, after which he returns to Europe.
Tintin in America first appeared as a black and white comic strip in "Le Petit Vingtième" on 3 September 1931. It was then published in a black and white album in 1932. In 1945, the album was reworked and shortened to a standard 62-page format, and published in colour.
Its first English translation was the 1962 UK edition. The first American edition was issued in 1973, for which some panels were redrawn in order to remove some stereotyped portrayals of African Americans. These include the doorman at the bank being built on Indian land and the woman holding the screaming baby.[1]
Tintin in America is the earliest Tintin album that is readily available in English translation; the two previous ones have been published in English, but in limited editions.
Tintin in America depicts the real-life problems of gangsterism in 1930s America during the Great Depression, and the brief depiction of Al Capone is the only notable appearance of a real person in a Tintin album. A member of the Irgun whom some have identified as Menachem Begin appears very briefly in Tintin in the Land of Black Gold but his name is not given. Indeed, he is encountered in only the early editions of the graphic novel and vanishes in later ones (as the story was moved from historical Palestine to fictitious Khemed).[2]
Although he depicts Native Americans as bloodthirsty, Hergé also demonstrates sympathy for their plight. In the first black-and-white strip Tintin is shown photographing an Indian who is holding a begging bowl (the begging bowl has disappeared in the colour version). Hergé later depicts Natives being driven off their land by armed soldiers so that the US Government may access the oil found there; and whereas Tintin, a white man, was offered thousands of dollars for the oil rights, the Natives are given a mere $25 and half-an-hour to leave.
However, the most overt aspects of American racism are omitted from the English translation. For example, in the original French version, there is a bank robbery (page 34). A panel shows a bank worker explaining to the police that, after sounding the alarm "on a immédiatement pendu sept nègres, mais le coupable s'est enfui." Translation: "We immediately lynched seven Negroes, but the guilty party fled." The English translation changes this to "we hanged a few fellers right away". The worker's admission of vigilante justice is met with indifference by the police. Two pages later, on page 36, a radio broadcast refers to the lynching of "44 nègres", with no accompanying explanation, implying that such events were typical. Other edits include a frame on page 47 where Tintin hears a wailing baby and thinks it's his kidnapped dog. In the original version, the baby and its mother are drawn as stereotypical negro caricatures. In later translations, the negro family has been replaced by whites.
It is a matter of debate among Tintin fans whether Tintin's arch-enemy Rastapopoulos makes his first appearance in this book (albeit simply in a one-off cameo). A man who looks like him can be seen sitting next to Tintin at the banquet from which the hero is then kidnapped. Next to him is a young blonde-haired woman: in the 1932 black-and-white edition of the book this woman is referred to as "Mary Pikefort", a thin disguise for the actress Mary Pickford; this is significant because Rastapopoulos is a movie mogul when he appears in Cigars of the Pharaoh. The reference was dropped from the redrawn coloured edition, presumably because Pickford's name would not have been recognized by the new generation of Tintin readers.[3]