The crab with the golden claws

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The crab with the golden claws ( French original title: Le crabe aux pinces d´or ) is the ninth volume of the adventures of Tintin by the Belgian draftsman Hergé . It is the first volume in which Tim's future long-time friend, Captain Haddock , appears.

action

Tim is informed by Schulze and Schultze that a murder has occurred and that part of the label of a tin can with the handwritten note Karaboudjan was found on the dead man . His research and the kidnapping of a Japanese gentleman who wanted to speak to Tim lead him to a ship called the Karaboudjan .

Tim and Struppi enter the freighter together with Schulze and Schultze to investigate. There Tim is overwhelmed by some sailors who inform Schulze and Schultze that Tim has already disembarked, so that the two detectives also leave the ship, which is about to leave. Tintin are locked in an engine room, where Tim discovers large amounts of opium . The entire crew of the ship turns out to be a gang of criminals - under the leadership of the first officer Allan .

The alcoholic Captain Haddock knows nothing about the machinations of his crew, because he is in a permanent state of intoxication , which Allan maintains by regularly supplying his captain with whiskey and thus maintaining control of the ship. Shortly before Tim is about to be drowned by the criminals, he manages to free himself. He overpowers a number of criminals and flees in a lifeboat with Struppi and Captain Haddock . Allan sends a small, with a machine gun tipped seaplane afterwards to eliminate the refugees. Tim succeeds in paralyzing the plane's engine with a pistol shot and thus forcing the plane to dive. Tim captures the pilot and his companion.

With the repaired plane he flies away with Haddock, Struppi and the tied gangsters. They get caught in a storm and Haddock, who finds a bottle of whiskey, gets drunk and knocks Tim out with the bottle. The plane had to make an emergency landing in the desert and burned out completely. The prisoners break free and flee. Haddock, Tintin and Struppi march through the desert. After a long journey, they collapse, are rescued by men and taken to a French fortress.

It turns out that they ended up in Morocco . You travel to one of the coastal towns and discover the Karaboudjan in the harbor, which has since been given a new name. There they meet Allan and his gang again, whose boss is the rich and respected businessman Omar Ben Salaad and who smuggle drugs on a large scale. After several adventures, including kidnapping, torture and a motorboat chase, Tim arrests the gang, including Ben Salaad and Allan. The kidnapped - and meanwhile freed - Japanese turns out to be an investigator of the Japanese police who was on the trail of the syndicate. He tells Tim about some of the background to the story.

History of the tape

Hergé actually began in September 1939 - as usual in the weekly supplement to Le Vingtième Siècle - with the story of Im Reiche des Schwarzen Goldes . In May 1940, however, Brussels fell into the hands of the Nazis and they stopped the appearance of the Vingtième Siècle . A story that also dealt with warmongering and totalitarian regimes could not be published further. But Hergé knew that his hero had become so popular in the meantime that he could also appear successfully in another form. Hergé's hero found his way into Le Soir pretty quickly . This had the advantage that its circulation was considerably larger than that of the Vingtième , but also the disadvantage that this newspaper was controlled by the Germans and was also misused for propaganda. Although this is decidedly denied by most tintinologists today, Hergé was often accused of collaborating with the Germans after the war. After all, Hergé had turned down an offer from Léon Degrelle to become his chief draftsman. Hergé had known him for a long time and it was through him that he first became aware of comics.

So on October 17, 1940, Tim's adventures continued in a newly created weekly supplement Le Soir Jeunesse des Le Soir , albeit with a new story that, to be careful, had nothing to do with politics. This form of publication did not last very long either. In 1941 paper ran out as a result of the war and Tim now appeared as a comic strip in Le Soir , first on half a page, then only as a single line of images, i.e. in a form that is still very common in daily newspapers today. The change from two pages per week to one line per day also required some content changes, as more highlights were now expected.

In this story, Tim meets Captain Haddock , who becomes Tim's best friend. Unlike the other secondary characters, Haddock is represented in all of the following adventures in an essential role. In character, he is the pure counterpart of Tim: Failing, easily irritable, pitiful and mostly drunk. Nevertheless, or perhaps because of that, the character gives the stories a whole new depth. Haddock's role, however, marginalizes Struppi's.

After the story was over, it was released as an album by Casterman, as usual . It was the last album to appear in black and white, because in 1943 the publisher had bought the first color printing press. Because paper was still very expensive, the stories were shortened to 64 pages for color printing, compared to 100–130 for the black and white versions. In the case of The Crab with the Golden Scissors , however, the problem was the other way around: the story was 10 pages too short in the original version to fit into the new format. In the same year when the whole volume was to be redrawn and in color, Hergé added additional pictures or enlarged certain ones considerably.

In the 1960s, the volume was released in the United States with numerous changes. In the original Haddock was beaten by blacks, these were changed to Arabs and whites. In addition, a scene has been removed in which Haddock drinks whiskey straight from the bottle. Hergé commented on these changes as follows: “Everyone knows that Americans never drink whiskey. (...) and that there are no blacks in America. "(Eng .:" Everyone knows that Americans never drink whiskey and that there are no blacks there. ")

The Karaboudjan was inspired by the ship Glengarry from Glasgow.

The crash landing and migration through the desert of French Morocco was borrowed from the novel "The White Squadron" by Joseph Peyre.

Film adaptations

In 1947, the band was in Belgium by Claude Misonne in stop-motion -Animationstechnik filmed. It was the first film adaptation of a Tintin tape ever. The film follows the story of the comic book. It has been available as a French DVD since 2008 .

The crab with the golden claws , together with The Secret of the "Unicorn" and The Treasure of Rackham's Red, is one of the three Tintin volumes on which Steven Spielberg's film The Adventures of Tintin - The Secret of the Unicorn from the Year 2011 mainly based. The plot differs greatly from the templates.

The story was also turned into two cartoon series, 1957 by Belvision and 1991 as a French-Canadian co-production.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Michael Farr: In the footsteps of Tim and Struppi . Carlsen Comics, Hamburg 2006, page number missing.
  2. ↑ Michael Farr: Tintin: The Complete Companion John Murray publishers, 2001, page number missing.
  3. ↑ Chris Owens: Tintin Crosses The Atlantic: The Golden Press Affair . In: www.tintinologist.org
  4. ↑ Interview with Hergé on tintinologist.org.
  5. ↑ Michael Farr: In the footsteps of Tintin and Struppi . Carlsen Comics, Hamburg 2006, p. 96.
  6. ↑ Michael Farr: In the footsteps of Tintin and Struppi . Carlsen Comics, Hamburg 2006, p. 95.
  7. ↑ Oliver Battrick: The Crab With the Golden Claws (1947) - The First Tintin Movie . In: tintinologist.org . March 21, 2004. Retrieved April 5, 2013.
  8. ↑ Ulrich Lössl: Steven Spielberg: Love letters to the writers . In: Frankfurter Rundschau . October 10, 2011. Retrieved April 5, 2013.

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