Customer Reviews

The Broken Ear (The Adventures of Tintin)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

After the artistic, technical and emotional peak of 'The Blue Lotus', Herge wisely decided to take things down a gear, rather than attempt to somehow out-marvel that seminal book. So 'The Broken Ear' is Tintin in a minor key - the undeviating single narrative is shorn of sub-plots; the spaces of South America, compared to the intricate detail of Japan and China in 'Lotus', are comparitively broad.

A fetish originating with the Arumbaya tribe is stolen from the Museum of Ethnology, and replaced with a fake. Tintin knows it's bogus because the original had a broken ear, and discovers that two Spanish crooks are also interested in finding the thief. Heroes and villains end up in the small South American principality of San Theodoros where Tintin is set up and put in front of a firing squad. Saved by coup and counter-coup, Tintin is made Colonel and right-hand man of dictator General Alcazar, among whose officers appear those same two thieves.

'Ear' is full of typical Herge incident, from the comic pursuit of a splendidly abusive parakeet, to a suspenseful downriver kayak-trip in search of a mysterious, hostile tribe. Herge's satiric sense shows how the political instabilities of many South American countries, with their seemingly daily military coups, are fanned by greedy European and American arms manufacturers and oil companies. The European plunder of other civilisations, so memorably a feature of previous adventures, is once again shown to be disastrous, even fatal. There are some wondrous visual conceits, in particular the Arumbaya rainforest sequence, which, set against an abstract, gren backdrop, frames its physical movements (fights, chases etc.) into a mysterious Matissean dance. The representation of landscape and settlements, with the eye on revealing detail, is as resonant as ever.

All this is fine, but one can't help feeling the lack of density, the rather perfunctory nature of the whole.

This is not one of the better Tintin books. The illustration makes it very apparent that this is one of the earlier books. I find the story line to be rather choppy. This book was also penned before the introduction of Captain Haddock or Professor Calculus; even the Thompson Twins do not have much depth to them. It is noteworthy that General Alcazar makes his first appearance in this adventure. This book should be read before Herge's final Tintin adventure, Tintin and the Picaros, which in some senses is a continuation of The Broken Ear.

When a wooden statue is stolen from the museum, Tintin is intent on tracking it down. His pursuit takes him through South America, from the fictional country of San Theodoros (in which Herge satirizes the fickleness of a dictatorship) through the jungles of the Amazon. Murder and mayhem accompany him every step of the way.

Despite this book's lackings, it is a Tintin book, a fact which makes it a worthy read in of itself. For collectors, it is a must have. For Tintin enthusiasts, it is an enjoyable tale. For anyone unfamiliar with Tintin, I must stress that the other books are even better.

The Broken Ear (L'Oreille Cassée in the original French) is the sixth installment in the Adventures of Tintin series. It is also the first of the Tintin stories set in fictional Hispanic land San Theodoros, which (along with some of its natives) is to play a much greater role in later tales. The "broken ear" in the title refers to that of the Arumbaya Fetish, a small tribal statue whose theft from a museum is what begins the story.

In my mind, The Broken Ear is also the last Tintin story that is fully representative, in both its drawing style and plotline, of the early adventures. Looking at the art in The Broken Ear, one notices it bears a most striking resemblance to its immediate predecessors, notably The Blue Lotus and Cigars of the Pharaoh, whereas The Black Island - which immediately follows The Broken Ear - has a much greater similarity to the late adventures. Of course this is due to the subsequent revision (and revision and revision, in some cases) of those stories - but it's still curious to note.

To sum up, The Broken Ear has all the right ingredients: humor, suspense, intrigue, peril (and plenty of it!). To top it off, it features an ending in which the bad guys get what they deserve. Nothing could ever be lovelier.

(The "grrrrreat grrrrreedy-guts!" of the headline refers to a line often uttered in The Broken Ear by a parrot, who plays a crucial role in this story.)

I've enjoyed the Adventures of Tintin series since I was a child. The combination of good art, interesting plots, and local detail which looked (to my untravelled eye) authentic, got and kept my attention through all 21 titles in the series.

In _The Broken Ear_, Tintin investigates the theft from a museum of a small statue with a broken ear. His investigations take him to South America, where the rain forest tribe that originally made the statue lives.

Unlike some of Tintin's adventures, which have fantastic or science fictional elements, this is a pure mystery / adventure comic which I highly recommend.

If you like the Adventures of Tintin, you may also enjoy the Asterix series, by Goscinny and Uderzo.

i was shocked to see the broken ear referred to as a "minor tintin" by one reviewer. i've read all the tintins atleast 50 times each over the last 20 years. in my opinion the broken ear is right at the top in the tintin canon! the mystery, the action, the adventure, the humour - it is simply superb. and this opinion is shared by a large number of my friends too. in the tintin canon the broken ear is rivaled only the blue lotus.

There's an understandable tendency to look dismissively at the earliest solo Tintin adventures - justifiably in some cases. The artwork is somewhat naïve, as are the depictions of the countries that Tintin visits and the racial stereotyping, and the stories themselves suffer from the episodic format that they were originally published in, and there's often no clear overarching story, just a series of adventures based around a theme. On the other hand, the attraction of Tintin's character and the foundations of his investigative nature are established in his exploration of exotic lands, delighting in the diversity of a world rather that is more complicated than it would seem.

In this respect, The Broken Ear is certainly one of the best earliest Tintin exploits and, packed with incident and adventure, it's also one of the most memorable. More than just a series of adventures in a foreign land, there's some real-life relevance to the nature of South American republics in constant revolution, one dictatorial regime replacing another and not appearing to be any different or less cruel, while American investors, oil companies and weapons dealers manipulate the situation for their own ends.

The story starts off innocently enough with Tintin becoming interested in the disappearance of a South American fetish from a museum only for it to be replaced the next day, with its formerly broken ear now suspiciously intact. It's clearly been switched, but why would anyone go to such trouble for an object of little more than ethnographic interest? Tintin follows up the trail of a murdered sculptor and a talking parrot, before finding that the trail leads him right back to San Theodoros and the Arumbaya tribe living in its jungle. Before Tintin can investigate further however, he finds himself caught up in a revolution and appointed aide-de-camp of General Alcazar who has just deposed the evil dictator General Tapioca.

Certainly much of the storyline is built on cliché and standard plot devices - masked revolutionaries in sombreros running around carrying fizzing bombs, last minute escapes from firing squads, Amazonian tribes with poison darts - and the artwork is rather simplistic, showing little of the meticulous detail and research that Hergé and his studio would put into later works, but even so, this is the stuff of grand adventure. The storyline may freewheel from one incident to the next, but Hergé remains focussed on the story, returning repeatedly to the missing fetish and its mystery, allowing it to be the motif that threads through the narrative. And while the clear-line artwork might lack the finesse of mid-period Hergé, there's still a wonderful dynamism to the visual storytelling elements and the layouts, fully capturing the exoticism of the locations and the danger within them. Tremendous fun.

In the Tintin adventure "The Broken Ear", Belgian artist and storyteller Herge manages to work in a great many plot ideas. A South American fetish with a secret goes missing from a Brussels museum; the young reporter Tintin and a couple of bumbling but dangerous criminals set out in pursuit. The pursuit leads to the cartoonishly coup-torn Republic of San Theodoros, and ultimately to the mysterious Arumbaya tribe, deep in the South American jungle.

Although the story presents one exciting cliff-hanger after another, Herge never quites decides whether to play it as drama or comedy; the result veers eratically between high adventure and low farce. Tintin is a distinctly younger version of the high-minded, mature adventurer that he would become. Tintin's faithful dog Snowy has a prominent role in this pre-Captain Haddock adventure.

Herge published the original story in 1937. He updated the artwork in 1945, although not to the standards of his later work. The result is a quaintly dated storyline and artwork. Nevertheless, "The Broken Ear" is an entertaining early Tintin adventure and is very highly recommended to his fans of all ages.

A fetish of the South American Arumbaya tribe is stolen from the Museum of Ethnography. The Arumbaya tribe live along the banks of the River Coliflor in the Republic of San Theodoros. This leads Tintin to begin his investigations leading him on anew quest. The fetish seems to have been returned but Tintin discovers that the reinstated version is a fake, as the original had a broken ear.
The plot thickens after artist Jacob Balthazar is found murdered in his room.
Through Balthazar's pet parrot, both Tintin and the Latin American criminals, Ramon and Alonso found out that Balthazar was murdered by Rodrigo Tortilla who has fled to the South American Republic of San Theodoros.
Ramon and Alonso murder Tortilla but are outwitted by Tintin who arrests them on arrival in San Theodoros, and hands them over to the authorities.
A series of hilarious mix ups regarding a series of coups and counter coups between Generals Tapioca and Alcazar, and ends up being named Colonel ?Aide De Camp to San Theodoran strongman General Alcazar.
A long battle between Tintin and the Alonso/Ramon pair see a series of failed assassination attempts and bombings, prison breakouts, kidnappings and escapes. Tintin encounters the lost explorer Ridgewell and the tribes the Arumbayas and Rumbabas.
He also gets caught up in a border war between San Theodoros and Nuevo Rico.
Again this album shows Herge's contempt for international capitalist speculators.
Eventually Tintin recovers the fetish and sees the demise of the bad guys.
Not quite as exquisitely detailed as the Cigars of the Pharaoh and the Blue Lotus or as intriguing as King Ottokar's Sceptre, it is nonetheless a great addition to your Tintin collection.

Not as meorable as some of the later books - still quite good though

After the great achievement of "The Blue Lotus", Herge decided to make a somewhat less ambitious (but still entertaining) book. This is one of those early books when a lot of things happen to Tintin in just a few pages. After a fetish from the South American Arumbaya tribe disappears from the Museum of Ethnology, and replaced with a fake, Tintin decides to investigate. After several escapes from death at the hand of two South American crooks that are also looking for the fetish, Tintin decides to travel to the fictional South American country of San Theodoros, is arrested on arrival on bogus charges, is saved in extremis by a revolution from a firing squad, named top aide to General Alcazar, tries to avoid war with the neighbouring country of Nuevo Rico brought on by the pressure of the oil companies, is arrested again, escapes and flees to the jungle, find the Arumbaya tribe, meet the two South American crooks again in the middle of the jungle, and so on. As in other early books by Tintin, real events inspired Herge: the war between San Theodoros and Nuevo Rico was based on the now forgotten Chaco War between Paraguay and Bolivia. Herge makes this war a conspiracy by the oil companies wishing to get to the Chaco (in the Broken Ear, Chapo) region's oil, as it was in reality. Also, arms dealer Basil Bazarof is inspired by arms dealer Basil Zaharoff. Overall, an entertaing album, though as with other early books, one misses two future characters appearing in Tintin: Captain Haddock and Professor Calculus.