Flight 714 to Sydney

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Flight 714 to Sydney ( French original title: Vol 714 pour Sydney ) is a comic album from the series Tintin by the Belgian illustrator Hergé , which was published in 1968.

action

Tintin, Professor Bienlein, Captain Haddock and Struppi travel to Sydney for a space convention where they are the first people on the moon to be guests of honor. At the Jakarta airport they happened to meet Pjotr ​​Klap, whom they met on board during their adventure on coal . Klap is now the pilot of the eccentric millionaire Laszlo Carreidas, who also flies to Sydney and invites Tim and Co. to continue their journey in his private jet . Tim's suspicion is aroused by the suspicious behavior of Spalding, Carreidas' private secretary , and the strange fact that the copilot Paolo Colombani and the radio operator Hans Böhm recently joined the aircraft crew because both predecessors had accidents.

First, the air passes in which up to Mach 2 flying Carreidas 160 without any problems. Haddock and Carreidas play sinking ships , with the millionaire spying on and taking advantage of his opponent using a hidden camera and screen. Suddenly Spalding, the radio operator and the copilot Colombani take command on board at gunpoint. You hijack the plane and land on a desert island - Pulau-Pulau-Bompa  - in the Celebes Sea on a makeshift runway. The prisoners are tied and led out of the plane, whereby Struppi is able to escape into the jungle . Tim and his friends are faced with the perpetrator of the crime: Rastapopoulos, who appeared in earlier volumes as Tim's opponent, kidnapped Carreidas with the help of his subordinate Allan, Sondonesian rebels and other criminals in order to get the money with the help of a truth serum to get to his secret account.

Allan locks all prisoners except Carreidas in an old Japanese bunker . They are threatened with being sunk in the sea by plane. But with Struppi's help, Tim manages to free himself and the other hostages. He steals weapons and sets off with Haddock in search of Carreidas, whose hat Struppi gets on the right track. Meanwhile, in a second bunker, Rastapopoulos lets Carreidas through Dr. Krollspell inject the truth serum. But the plan to get Carreidas to reveal his account number fails: Instead, he makes a life confession and confesses all sorts of outrages. Rastapopoulos attacks Dr. Krollspell in a fit of anger. He still holds the syringe with the truth serum in his hand and stabs it into Rastapopoulos' arm in a defensive movement. Rastapopoulos now confesses that he had no intention of seeing Dr. Krollspell wants to get rid of him as soon as the number is known. He also had the Sondonesians' junks prepared with time bombs . A battle of words ensues between Rastapopoulos and Carreidas when each of them insists on being the worse person.

Tim and Haddock free Carreidas and take Krollspell and Rastapopoulos prisoner, who is able to flee into the jungle shortly afterwards. Tim's group is hunted by Allan and the Sondonesians. After Tim received a telepathic message describing a way out, he managed to escape into an underground temple system . Allan follows them to the temple entrance, but the Sondonesians refuse to go in when they see symbol drawings on the rocks. They fear the wrath of the gods who once came from heaven in “fiery chariots”. Therefore Rastapopoulos decides to pursue only Allan, Colombani, Böhm and Spalding.

In the underground temple, Tim meets Bienlein again and a strange gentleman named Mik Esdanitoff. This turns out to be a mediator to extraterrestrials , who had also previously telepathically contacted Tim. Esdanitoff says that the temple was built in honor of the aliens, recognizable by the representations of spaceships and astronaut figures. Rastapopulous' pursuit is ended by a volcanic eruption that also forces Tim and friends, including Klap, to flee the temple caves. You are saved by the aliens, but in a hypnotized state. Rastapopoulos and his gang have rescued themselves on the sea in a rubber dinghy and, hypnotized, climb the Flying Saucer in exchange for Tim and his friends.

After being rescued by a seaplane, it looks like Tim and his friends survived the Carreidas 160 crash in the boat. Because of the hypnosis, they can't remember anything - only Struppi knows what really happened. During a television interview with the rescued, there is a reunion with Fridolin Kiesewetter, who is following the program with his family. He laughs tears when Professor Bienlein presents a metal pen made of non-terrestrial material. One also learns that Dr. Krollspell was found confused in New Delhi and lost memory. Finally, the group continues their journey to Sydney on Qantas Flight 714 .

Others

Flight 714 to Sydney stands out from all other albums in the series because of its tightly packed, action-packed story, which essentially takes place within 24 hours. It is also one of the few volumes in which the detectives Schultze and Schulze do not appear. The Carreidas 160 supersonic aircraft was designed and illustrated by the cartoonist Roger Leloup , who specializes in aircraft and spacecraft . The characters Laszlo Carreidas and Mik Esdanitoff were inspired by the French industrialist Marcel Dassault and the chemist, spy and writer Jacques Bergier , whose real name was Jakow Michailowitsch Berger. Josef Mengele finds himself in Doctor Krollspell with the truth serum , both of whom managed to escape the judiciary abroad. Herge found further inspiration in the texts of Robert Charroux . So were z. B. the stone heads of the Mayas interpreted by him as unearthly life. Esdanitoff works for Comète magazine , while Bergier worked for Planète magazine . The “fiery chariots of the gods” of the Sondonesian legends in flight 714 are reminiscent of ancient Indian , mythological descriptions of vimanas , which are interpreted by representatives of pre-astronautics as extraterrestrial spaceships. The reporter on the last page in the ninth picture, who shakes Haddock's hand, is Jean Tauré, a fan of Tintin , whom Hergé immortalized here. The translators of the Hamburger Abendblatt published the story under "Flight 714 to Djakarta" in 1970, this was later corrected.

Missing pages

Hergé made a mistake when he created the work: The volume was supposed to have 62 pages, as always, but ended up having 64 pages. Removed two pages from the end of the story about saving Tim and his friends from the boiling sea water. This gives the impression of a cliffhanger : In one scene, the pilot sees an airplane swim towards the boat on the boiling sea water and on the next page you are in the living room Fridolin Kiesewetter.

criticism

According to Michael Farr , the author of a work on Hergé (“In the footsteps of Tintin”), Hergé completed this volume under time pressure. Michael Farr himself says that the drawings in some sections of the album are quite rough and that it is even "without a doubt the worst of all Hergé albums". Hergé said of the concept of “Flight 714 to Sydney”: “I wanted to demystify the adventure stories, with the 'bad boys' who are actually not that bad and 'good boys' who are actually not that good.” Bob de Moor was mainly assigned to this volume, his "line is not as refined, not as subtle as von Herge". So Haddock's facial expressions become exaggerated. Furthermore, the previous “anchoring in reality” in this band is broken. Even Hergé said: “I shouldn't have shown the saucer like that.” Kenneth Yeung commented positively on the largely realistic depiction of the Indonesian background in a newspaper article.

Adaptation to other media / translations

Flight 714 to Sydney was also staged as a radio play and published in 1984. The band was also filmed as a cartoon . It has been translated into at least 28 different languages.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Michael Farr In the footsteps of Tintin , Carlsen, Hamburg 2005, ISBN 978-3551771100
  2. ↑ Figure of the Reporter According to Tintinologist , accessed September 2, 2013
  3. ↑ Michael Farr In the footsteps of Tintin , Carlsen, Hamburg 2005, ISBN 978-3551771100 , p. 180
  4. ↑ a b Why did Tintin feared Asterix, Mr. Farr? Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, May 19, 2007, accessed April 15, 2009 .
  5. ↑ Vol 714 for Sydney. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on February 22, 2011 ; Retrieved October 2, 2010 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.tintin.com
  6. ^ Michael Farr In the footsteps of Tintin , Carlsen, Hamburg 2005, ISBN 978-3551771100 ; P. 181; 183
  7. ^ Tintin in Indonesia ( Memento from August 17, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) in Djakarta Expat , January 28, 2013, accessed on September 2, 2013
  8. ↑ Hörspielland.de
  9. ↑ DVD collection at Weltbild.at

Web links