The black island
The black island ( French original title: L'Île Noire ) is a comic from the series Tintin by the Belgian illustrator Hergé . The story was published in Le Petit Vingtième on April 15, 1937 .
action
Tim witnesses the forced landing of an unregistered aircraft . When he offers to help the two pilots , Tim is shot by them. Tim survived the gunshot wound and found out from the detectives Schulze and Schultze in the hospital that the aircraft in question had crashed in England . Tim goes to England to investigate. Several attempts are made to kill him on the way. The gangsters are convinced that Tim is after them, but neither Tim nor the reader know why at this point.
In the fictional town of Eastdown in Sussex , southern England, he looks for the plane that crashed. Struppi discovers the suits of the two pilots near the crash site, in whose pockets Tim a slip of paper with incomprehensible notes and the name " Dr. JW Müller ”finds. Tim happened to be able to visit Dr. Find Müller in the vicinity and gain access to the property. However, he is led by Dr. Müller posed. During a fight between Tim and Dr. Müller catches fire in the villa and burns down completely. Dr. Müller flees. Tim discovers a signal system in the garden that is apparently intended for airplanes and deciphers the incomprehensible notes on the pilots' slip of paper, which describe a certain light signal.
Tim lurks in the garden of Dr. Müller on an airplane. At the same time, Dr. Müller - unnoticed by Tim - also on the plane. When it arrives and Tim sets the signal system in motion, bags of counterfeit money are thrown away. Dr. Müller escapes with one of the sacks and is followed by Tim.
After a long chase across England up to Scotland , Tim ends up in the fictional town of Kiltoch, off whose coast the so-called "Black Island" lies. Villagers warn Tim against entering the island, as a beast is said to live there and no one has returned from the island alive. Tim is therefore really on his way there, discovers an old castle on the island and meets a gorilla from which he can escape. Inside the castle, Tim comes across a professional forgery workshop . Tim alarms Scotland Yard on a radio and manages to find the gangsters - including Dr. Müller - to arrest. After Scotland Yard arrives, the gangsters are arrested. The injured gorilla, who served the gangsters as a "monster" to keep the locals away from the island, is housed in the London Zoo .
backgrounds
"The Black Island" is the first comic from the Tintin series that does not take the protagonist into foreign lands. Before that, Tim visited the Soviet Union (“ Tim in the Land of the Soviets ”), Egypt and India (“ The Pharaoh's Cigars ”) and China (“ The Blue Lotus ”). This time the story takes place in other European countries - mostly in Scotland or in the Hebrides . This enabled Hergé to concentrate more on the actual crime story instead of depicting the cultural peculiarities of distant countries.
The focus on the story is also expressed in the illustration of the background images: the images are essentially limited to the most essential image content - at least in the first two publications in the story.
"The Black Island" is inspired on the one hand by the British feature film The 39 Steps by Alfred Hitchcock from 1935, which was the inspiration for both the plot and the sparse equipment. On the other hand, the portrayal of the gorilla "Ranko" contains references to the popular film King Kong and the white woman from 1933. Further references to current world events can be found in the portrayal of television , which was introduced in Great Britain only a year earlier .
A special feature of the history of the "Black Island" is that Hergé published it three times - each time completely redrawn. The first version appeared in short black-and-white sequels from April 15, 1937 to June 16, 1938 in the Belgian youth magazine Le Petit Vingtième . The story was then reprinted in black and white in a 124-page album published by Casterman .
In 1943, the paper shortage in World War II forced Hergé to redesign the album version. The publisher Casterman limited the length of the album to 62 pages and at the same time gave Hergé the opportunity to design his stories in color. To redraw and color the story, Hergé hired two draftsmen, who later became his closest collaborators and also published successful comics on their own: Bob de Moor and EP Jacobs . Although the page size of the album was cut exactly in half, Hergé did not change the story, but distributed four instead of the previous three panels on one page and also reduced the width of the individual drawings. From then on, Hergé used this new layout for all of Tintin's later color albums. The limitation to 62 colored pages was also retained right up to the last volume - “ Tim and the Picaros ”.
In 1965 an English-language version of the story was to be printed for the first time . The English publisher first read the color version of the “Black Island” from 1943. He discovered errors and inaccuracies in the drawings with regard to the representation of Great Britain , and made a detailed list of all errors. Hergé accepted the challenge and decided to redraw the entire story, eliminating all errors and bringing them up to the technical standard of 1965. First he sent his colleague Bob de Moor to Scotland to do research on site. De Moor put together drawings of the Scottish rocky coast or researched the appearance of correct Bobby uniforms. From these sources of inspiration Hergé redrawn the entire story. This time he did without the minimalist design of the drawings and emphasized the new wealth of details with sometimes extra-large passages. This becomes particularly clear, for example, in the episode in which Tim and Dr. Müller is fighting in his villa. While in the versions from 1937 and 1943 the fight takes place in front of largely bare walls, the two opponents now fight in a villa that is decorated with great detail. Hergé countered the technical progress since 1937 by, for example, allowing Tim to travel with a diesel locomotive instead of a steam locomotive . Despite the new richness of detail, Hergé did not change the actual story. The steam locomotive was inspired by the Flying Scotsman .
The psychiatrist Dr. JW Müller goes back to Georg Bell , a former National Socialist who was murdered in Austria in 1933.
Hergé merged the Loch Ness monster and King Kong into one character, the Gorilla Ranko. In April 1934 a London doctor photographed Nessie, a copy of the photo can be found in the Herges archive.
Different versions
First version, 1937–1938
Tim travels from Brussels via Ostend to London . The mention of Belgium as Tim's homeland was later removed. In 1966 he traveled from Cologne via Brussels to London.
During the scene on the cliff, Tim is knocked down with a large wrench, in the later versions it becomes a rubber club. In addition, Ivan is present in this scene, who takes Tim under fire with an automatic weapon. In the later versions, Ivan is not present.
When Tim finds the scraps of paper, Hergé asks his readers in a footnote to try to solve the puzzle themselves ("Et vous, Amis Lecteur, pourriez vous reconstituer ce texte?") This request is missing in the later versions.
Ivan and Müller leave the hijacked locomotive . Ivan has no orientation, but Müller tells him that he knows England like the back of his hand. This version also contains a newspaper clipping in which Tintin is walking in a rural area.
Second version 1943
The above scenes have been deleted in this version. In addition, scenes have been shortened (from 120 for the black and white edition to the 62 pages for the color edition specified by the publisher).
This version also contains the newspaper clipping in which Tintin is walking in a rural area.
Third version 1965
The scene with the newspaper clipping has been removed.
The original names of the police officers were Edwards, Johnson, Wright, and O'Rally. These were changed to the Scottish names McGregor, Stewart, Robertson and Macleod. Originally, Tintin traveled on a " Johnnie Walker tank truck". This name was later changed to " Loch Lomond ". This should remove the advertising from the pictures. However, there is also a whiskey called " Loch Lomond " today, but the brand was only created in 1966, so that is probably a coincidence.
Furthermore, were vehicles and aircraft modernized. When Schulze and Schultze crash-land their aircraft, the pilot is thrown out of the plane. This detail was missing from the old versions. Herge received help from Roger Leloup when revising the aircraft types . B. made a De Havilland DH-121 out of the Savoia-Machetti S-73P.
The journalists Christopher Willoughby-Drupe and Marco Rizotto, who also appear in The Singer's Jewels , have been added.
Publications in Germany
As a German-language version appeared "The Black Island" in 1956 in the colored version of 1943 by Casterman. The newly drawn version from 1965 was published by Carlsen Verlag in Germany that same year and is still the best-known version of the story in Germany today. The original version from 1937 was only translated into German in 1994 and published.
Literature and Sources
- Michael Farr: In the footsteps of Tim & Struppi. Carlsen, Hamburg 20065, ISBN 978-3-551-77110-0 .
- Benoît Peeters and Andreas C. Knigge: The History of the Black Island. In: The Black Island. Carlsen, Hamburg 1990, ISBN 3-551-02930-X .
- Hergé: The black island. Carlsen, Hamburg 1998, ISBN 978-3-551-73226-2 .
- Hergé: The Adventures of Tintin, The Black Island. Carlsen, Hamburg 1994, ISBN 978-3-551-01376-7 .
- Hergé: Tintin. The black island. In: Hergé: The adventures of Tintin. Volume 3, Carlsen, Hamburg 2014, ISBN 978-3-551-73908-7 , pp. 65–128. (Reduced hardcover edition of the 1965 version)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Michael Farr: In the footsteps of Tim & Struppi , Carlsen, Hamburg 2005, ISBN 978-3-551-77110-0 , p. 70 ff.
- ↑ Michael Farr: In the footsteps of Tintin and Struppi . Carlsen Comics, Hamburg 2006, p. 77.
- ↑ a b Michael Farr: In the footsteps of Tim and Struppi. Carlsen Comics, Hamburg 2006, p. 71.
- ↑ Michael Farr: In the footsteps of Tintin and Struppi. Carlsen Comics, Hamburg 2006, p. 75.
