Customer Reviews

The Adventures of Tintin: Tim in Amerika (German Edition of Tintin in America)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Although it begins with a precise date (1931) and location (Chicago) and features a real historical figure (Al Capone), 'Tintin In America' is Herge's tribute to the mythical America of dime novels and silent serials (especially gangster stories and Westerns). There's a real 'Perils Of Pauline' quality to Tintin's misadventures, which see the young reporter and his faithful terrier Snowy attempt to clean Chicago of gangsters, and which includes trapdoors, underground passages, falls from cliffs broken by handy branches, tetherings to railway lines etc. On their arrival, the pair are plunged into a hectic series of mishaps - they are kidnapped by a mob stooge in a steel-shuttered limousine; sawing their way out, they are met by police, and give chase; just as the nabbed hood is about to squeal, he is knocked out by a boomerang, whose owner they pursue in a gun-stuttering chase which ends in the first of many vehicular accidents. Throughout, Tintin will be gassed, dumped into Lake Michigan, shot at by a professional sniper, captured by Red Indians, have his brakeless train dynamited, and be thrown into a mincer. Welcome to America!

The simple-minded pleasures of these melodrama cliches are supplemented by a sophisticated and often quite savage critique on modern America (having tackled Bolshevik Russia in the previous adventure), an America on the brink of globalising superpowerdom, a critique that invokes the past to indict the present. The Red Indian sequence at first seems in dubious taste, with the warriors easily manipulated by a gang leader into mutilating Tintin - their knee-jerk savagery and comical rituals are the sad cliches of many a Western. But in the book's most perturbing sequence, Tintin accidentally hits oil on their land; they are speedily thrown off the reservation, and oil wells, banks and a new city erected in its place; a brilliant, shocking encapsulation of the long and terrible history that underlies bright modern America. The gangster epidemic is linked to police and presidential corruption, while the tendency of famed American democracy and justice to degenerate into mob rule and lynching is unflinchingly pinpointed, as are the ecological crimes of big business. In fact, Herge sees American capitalism as a form of cannibalism - a sausage-grinding plant is a front for disposing of gangland enemies, their flesh mingled with animal meat for sale (the leader of the gang is a dead ringer for Foucault!). Conversely, Tintin is at one point rescued by a labor strike! One frame must have registered on the young Jean-Luc Godard, in which Tintin passes a landscape of car-wreckage overlooked by advertising hoardings. The irony of the story is that America, once so new, innocent, a beacon of hope where the world's oppressed could find refuge, has become as corrupt as the Old World, to which Tintin must return ito protect HIS innocence.

Herge's satirical instinct does not preclude a great love for the LOOK of America, with its precisionist skyscraperscapes, and vast prairie spaces. Herge deliberately streamlines his animation, drawing in bold, uncluttered strokes and strong, bright colours, giving some indication of the size and modernity of America, as well as its anonymity, conformity and assembly line mentality. The nocturnal scenes, in which the overall brightness becomes deeply mysterious, are particularly beautiful. I dare anyone who views the flabbergasting scene of Tintin clambering across an endless skyscrapter not to feel dizzy. Within his frames, Herge creates an extraordinary dynamism of movement. I particularly love it when characters walk on the border of the frame, as if getting ready to leap from it.

As a child, I read all of the Tintin books in Swedish, except the first one "Tintin in the Soviets". As an adult living in the U.S., I am reading most of them again to my children, but this time in English. Herge's first three Tintin books are not as good as his later books, and this was his third book. "Tintin in Congo" is the only Tintin book that I have read that is worse than this one. "Tintin in America" portrays America with an old fashioned European prejudice that is unrealistic and unflattering. His portrayal of the Indians is borderline racist, and the plot is essentially "gangster tries to kill Tintin, Tintin miraculously escapes" repeated a couple of dozen times. In a sense Tintin is a super hero with "luck" as his super power, and this becomes tiresome. The plot is silly, and the book is certainly not a history lesson.

Kids seven and below could enjoy this book, older kids will consider it stupid. If Herge instead had written "Tintin in Sweden" at this time, all the Swedes would have been blond, stupid, and quiet. There would be polar bears and reindeers in the streets, Samis would have been portrayed in an insulting way, and Tintin would have been repeatedly attacked by gnomes. Just to put this book in a Swedish perspective (for fellow Swedes). Humor has changed since 1932, and so did Herge's soon after (1934).

Having said that, the book is still entertaining, in its own way, and my kids have asked me to read it a few times, which I have. If you or your kids like Tintin books then buy it, but don't let this one be your first. Herge's master pieces came later in history. My favorites are "Tintin in Tibet", "Blue Lotus", "Flight 714", "The crab with the golden claw", and "The Seven Crystal Balls/Prisoners of the Sun", but I really like all of the later ones.

What a fun book. We bought the entire Tin Tin series for our oldest son over a period of a year when he was 9 years old( He is now 13 years old). He and his now 4 year old brother read them every morning with breakfast and every afternoon with tea. Every book is so absorbing. Be advised of occasionally guns and racial stereotyping(Indians and gangsters) but not enough to sway our family.

There's not really a whole lot to recommend about one of Tintin's earliest adventures. In terms of plotting, characterisation and artwork, Tintin in America - created in 1931 and completely redrawn for collected colour publication in 1945 - is rather primitive compared to the sophisticated later adventures, the story suffering from no clear single storyline other than Tintin chasing one particular criminal across America. The book reflects rather its serialised origins where Tintin and Snowy are put through sequences borrowed from every genre of Hollywood filmmaking, from gangster films to Westerns.

Following on from Tintin's run-in with Al Capone's operations in, of all places, the Belgian Congo (in Tintin in the Congo), the news that the fearless reporter is coming to America to continue his crusade against the gangster strikes fear into the hearts of Al Capone and his gangsters, who immediately try to capture and dispose of him the moment he arrives in Chicago. Escaping their clutches, Tintin however soon breaks up their organised crime activities, but has to chase one big-time gangster, Bobby Smiles across half the continent and through Red Indian lands.

There's at least no shortage of incident in Tintin in America, a mixture of crime-fighting, mishaps and adventuring through exotic landscapes that would become a familiar formula in later Tintin books. It gives Hergé the chance to indulge in classic US movie imagery and escapades, with gangsters and Indians, lynch mobs and runaway trains, with Tintin in cowboy gear sitting at a campfire or dressed as a bellboy. Even if all those incidents and imagery are well-worn clichés from Hollywood films of the period, and the artwork isn't quite as refined as it would later become, there is at least some flair in how those sequences are storyboarded, with some terrific larger splash frames.

Tintin sets off for lawless gangland America where he sets about bringing Al Capone and his gangs to justice. The whole story is one episode after another where the gangsters attempt to rub him out, only to fail; sometimes Tintin tries to get the upper hand by cornering the bad guys, only to suffer a setback. Of course, in the end all the bad guys are in jail. Tintin is knocked out, chloroformed, smashed in a car wreck, betrayed, gassed and beaten up by the cops, The story improves the physical action of some of the earlier Tintin tales, and there is a bit more realism than in the first two books (but not much). Tintin careens from the streets of Chicago to the wild west on the trail of gangster Bobby Smiles, who he finds in "Redskin City, a small place near the Indian Reservations." Bobby Smiles turns the natives against him, and once again it's Tintin versus an army of enemies - of course he prevails, mainly through luck (oil is discovered on the reservation, and in rolls the army, the carpet-baggers and profiteers, and in the blink of an eye there is civilisation in the middle of the wilderness). There are several other train wrecks, Tintin survives a lynching, a drowning, Snowy is dognapped (enter one inept hotel detective), but in the end nothing can stop our hero from ridding America of organised crime forever. Hooray for Tintin!

"Tintin in America" was Belgian artist and storyteller Herge' third adventure for his cartoon hero, the youthful reporter Tintin. This story was first published in 1931, and updated by Herge in 1946 and 1973. It is often considered the first of the real Tintin adventures.

Tintin and his faithful dog Snowy come to America in pursuit of the Chicago gangsters whose diamond smuggling plot Tintin foiled in his previous adventure in the Congo. Unfortunately, the gangsters are out to get Tintin first. Tintin narrowly survives a series of assassination attempts by the mob before his pursuit of a gangland boss takes him out West. There, he encounters hostile indians and nearly falls victim to mistaken frontier justice, before finally catching his man. His return to Chicago prompts one last confrontation with organized crime.

"Tintin in America" features one cliff-hanger after another in what would be a frightening story if we didn't know that a resourceful and lucky Tintin always survives. The interactive dialogue between Tintin and Snowy is the narrative hub of this pre-Captain Haddock story. The story's weakness is that it deals in broad stereotypes of gangsters and Indians that probably made more sense in 1931. Fortunately, Herge has begun to work out the detailed artwork and meticulous narrative style that would characterize the later adventures. "Tintin in America" is highly recommended to Tintin fans of all ages.

Huge childhood fan of these books - they're even more comical when I read them now.

"Tintin in America" is the third Tintin adventure, originally a serial comic strip in the Belgian newspaper "Le Vingtième Siècle" from 1931-1932. It's not a Tintin adventure I'll reach for often, but it's all right.

It's 1931. After the events in "Tintin in the Congo", Tintin and his dog Snowy have been sent to Chicago to clean things up by way of an investigation into the criminal activity there. Al Capone wants him out of the way, while Capone's rival Bobby Smiles wants Tintin on his side. There's car chases, train chases, and even a scene or two in the Old West. Will Tintin "clean up", or will it all end up messier than before?

You can tell this was originally serialized, just by the way the action stops, starts and carries on. Lots of cliffhangers if you were reading it in in the newspaper back then. Could have gone anywhere, and that would have been interesting. Trouble is, as a whole story, the plot does seem a bit drawn out and rambling. There's a twist of satire in parts, though, which is interesting.

It's all right, but probably not the first Tintin adventure to pick up. "Secret of the Unicorn" might be a better start.

Tintin in America, the third volume in the Adventures of Tintin series, is the earliest Tintin story available from its American publisher, most likely due to the fact that its two predecessors (Tintin au pays de Soviets and Tintin au Congo) are widely considered to be just too politically incorrect. If you are a political correctitude sort of person, you will likely find Tintin in America to be lacking in that area as well, but it is important to remember that it is a story steeped in its time, and more importantly, fictional.

What Tintin in America lacks in the indefinable quality some of the later adventures possess (The Calculus Affair, The Castafiore Emerald, and Flight 714, to name a few), it makes up in its suspense factor. Danger looms around every corner in this story (Gangsters! Indians! A meat-canning factory!), and it doesn't matter how many times you've read it before -- you will still need to get through the entire story each time you read it!

To sum up: Somewhat awkwardly composed, and rife with stereotypes that seem ridiculous nowadays, Tintin in America is nevertheless a compelling and fun read. It is, after all, a Tintin book.

This book has a very different feel from the rest of the series, along with the "Shooting Star" story. He's definitely all over America's criminals. Some pretty amazing escapes as well. Definitely worth the money!