Tintin Forums

I propose that it would be good idea to group the adventures into 3 groups - the early, middle and later works. There would be 8 in each section. I have grouped them so as each group has cetain common elements not always seen in the other groups. These are how and why:

The early works
Tintin in the Land of the Soviets to The Crab with the Golden Claws. The first 3 works follow the same pattern of 'Tintin in...' adventures where one thing happens after another, and Tintin narrowly avoides getting blown up or shot. After these come one book stories containing only Tintin and Snowy (except in the last one, where Haddock is introduced).

The middle works
Starting with The Shooting Star up to Explorers on the Moon. The first, The Shooting Star is more reminiscent storywise of an early work, but as it contains Haddock, I put it in here. Maybe this should go into the early works section?
The rest of these stories (with the exeption of Land Of Black Gold, which was started in the early works period), all contain Haddock as the 2nd most important character, replacing Snowy and are two-part stories.

The later works
From The Calculus affair to Tintin and Alph-Art these have in common that they are one part stories with Haddock as the 2nd character. They also involve a high number of re-occuring characters, which did not occur in other groups, i.e., in the later works, Rastapopoulos is seen 3 times, Castafiore 5 times, the Emir twice, Sponz twice, and Chang and Alcazar re-appear.

What do others think of these groupings. Would these make it easier when talking about Tintin?

I’m not certain what need these categories would serve, to be honest. I see the logic of the chronology, to be sure, but other than that, I’d be hard pressed to think of when I’d use them.

I’d also say that, personally, I think of Soviets as a book unlike any of the others, and the books pre-Haddock as being different to the post Haddock ones, for example, so to me Crab has more in common with Black Gold than Broken Ear.

Other considerations would be the books which have been re-drawn, as this affects whether they are “early” or “late” in many ways: Black Island is chronologically an early book, but its artwork in the standard edition places it amongst the later ones, and thus it occupies two niches in my mental filing system (it may get a third if we ever get it in B&W!).

It’s all a matter of taste, of course.