Customer Reviews

Cigars of the Pharoah (The Adventures of Tintin)

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I am 9 years old and I am in the 3rd grade. This is the best book I have read in my life. I want to buy more Tin Tin books. The books are very funny and very mistirious. I read it with my dad. These are the only books I like. My favorite part is when Tin Tin jumps on this heavy guy and use his belly as a trampolin!
I love them, Get them! The real rating is *****************************************

The first time I read this book was ca. 1972, and it is just as important to me now than it was then. This is one of the most remakable aspects of Tin Tin: The fact that the stories and the art are agelss. As for this particular book, it is Lodge Material. Check out the secret society costumes and the repeated references to "Flor Fina". Snowy says it best: "Whoa !".

For those older people who are skeptical about buying books like these let me tell you that they offer an adventure and mystery as good as any novel. The characters are entertaining and all have distinct and enjoyable personality. The adventures of tintin offer an old fashioned setting which makes it very authentic. Dont let the age reccomendation fool you; if you're into mystery and adventure, these books are for you no matter what your age is!

This is the first Tintin book I ever read. All of it was interesting. It had lots of humor. The funniest part was how Mr. Sarcophagus kept bumping into things and people. Find out for yourselves and read it!

Herge, The Cigars of the Pharaoh (Methuen, 1934)

The Cigars of the Pharaoh was the beginning of Tintin's adventures leaving, at least for the big picture, the realm of the episodic and getting into big story arcs with returning characters (this is the book that introduces Thomson and Thompson, who would become two of the series' most beloved characters). The adventure itself still has much of the episodic feel one tends to find with things that are serialized, with lots of mini-cliffhangers and miraculous escapes, but this is where Herge really started to find his feet; it's still early work, and reads like early work, but it's good early work. ***

This fourth installment in the Adventures of Tintin stories has a lot going for it. Besides possessing the perfunctory Tintin suspense and drama, this story marks the debut of the Thompson twins (les Duponts in the original French) and the nefarious Rastapopoulos, billionaire, movie tycoon, and ... well, y'know, general evildoer guy.

Unique to this adventure is Dr. Sophocles Sarcophagus, the somewhat sanity-deficient Egyptologist whom Tintin encounters on a ship at the beginning of this story. This character is a textbook example of Herge's wonderful background characters, who proliferate in nearly every Tintin tale (the most notable exception being Tintin in Tibet, but I digress). A wonderfully memorable scene in Cigars of the Pharaoh is that in which Tintin learns to converse with elephants. The ending is something of a cliffhanger, causing the suitably hooked reader to experience an almost maniacal need to get his/her hands on The Blue Lotus!

A final comment: it is interesting to note that in redoing this story long after the completion of its original version, Herge has included a reference on page 1 to Marlinspike (Captain Haddock's family estate; Haddock and the house did not appear in the series until the later adventures The Crab With The Golden Claws and Red Rackham's Treasure). It's unlikely that Herge neglected to realize the continuity problem, but is this simply an indication of his having a bit of fun? Who knows? It's curious, anyway!

'Cigars Of The Pharoah' traverses the pyramids of Egypt, the deserts of Arabia, the jungles and palaces of India; and sees a vacationing Tintin stumbling on a gun-running, drug-smuggling plot centring on crates of Flor Fina cigars. An encounter with absent-minded archaeologist Sophocles Sarcophagus instigates the action and sees our heroes, among other things, cast adrift the ocean in coffins, where they are attacked by sharks; press-ganged during a tribal war, and lined up for execution; crashing a plane in the jungle and learning the language of elephants; committed to a lunatic asylum; escaping assassination attempts by a shady fakir; as well as participating in the more familiar car chases, train adventures, mountain climbs; meanwhile, Snowy is mobbed for attacking a sacred cow.

The two parts of the story are sensitively differentiated by Herge's astonishing drawing, the bright wide plains of Egypt contrasting with more richly colourful Indian milieux, with their elaborate costumes and decorations. Herge pulls off some remarkable tableaux - the Egyptian death chamber of mummified European archaeologists; Tintin's lurid, narcotic hallucination; his flight through the gates of Mecca from an army; his sitting on elephant-back in the jungle with mad Professor Sarcophagus. Although Herge respects the native hierarchies of the countries he draws, his image of beleagured colonialism is quite damning, with the unforgettable decline of an already barmy Sarcophagus into a babbling madman dressed in top hat, tails and undergarments shooting at butterflies a warning to all who would excavate ancient cultures for European benefit.

But 'Cigars', the first truly great Tintin adventure (and part one of a story that concludes with 'The Blue Lotus'), is most notable for the introduction of two legendary characters, Thomson and Thompson, those near-identical, always resourceful, but ultimately hapless police detectives; Magrittean, bolwer-hatted Englishmen doomed to each other's punning company: 'What a surprise to see your face again! We'd lost you completely!' 'To be precise, we'd completely lost face!'

very frequant exiting events as if u were watching a movies..[ wish they's make a tin tin movie instead of lara croft ] althought cigars of the pharoah is part one of the blue lotus but most people read the blue lotus with out noticing that point..any way if u already read the blue lotus and wanna so explainations of all of it's events read the cigars of the pharoah...it thrills :)))))))))

This book is just as fun and wonderful as all the other ones. Don't miss a single TinTin. They are all fascinating.

As you might or might not know, most early Tintin was originally published in B/W format, with old style drawing. Yes boys and girls, it wasn't the colour edition we have now in hands. The first 9 titles are sceheduled to be released in English. This Cigars of the Pharaoh is one of them.

Most early Tintin might look very old to us. The drawing weren't that smooth, compared to the later coloured edition. If you're a die-hard Tintin fan, I'm sure you really wanted to know what the book originally looked like. You will notice that the panels also changed. Not just the size, but also the sequence. Some panels were even edited or deleted. Some panels are added. In short, you can compare both editions.

The book was carefully printed and packaged. From the looks, people would already guess that this book (and also the others) is a lux book. The paper was good. The hard cover was good. The binding was good. The printing inside was also good. What more can you expect? Here the book also provided several pin-ups or covers in colour. It's a very nice gift!

If you feel you're a die-hard fan of Tintin (and Herge) then no doubt you must have all these 9 B/W original editions.