Old Tintin

The money we spend to complete our Tintin collection. Tintin in the Land of the Soviets in a new collector's edition (those two magic words work every time) and Tintin in the Congo cost us a whopping $58 in all, money that could've been much better spent.

Though the books did give us an endless supply of quotable quotes:

"Idiot! Fool! Animal!" -- Tintin to a man he tricks into inflating his car tire

"Why did I take fifteen cartridges just to kill one antelope?" -- Tintin, after he's shot what he thinks is one antelope only to find he killed the whole herd.

The stories are cheap, the dialogue is hackneyed, and there are too many deus ex machina scenes to count. Congo also has the rather dubious distinction of having the highest body count of any of the Adventures of Tintin, with most of the wildlife in the Congo dead by the time Tintin is done hunting. Even the fact Christians are shown positively (what, I'm mentioning this as a plus factor? I must be getting desperate) doesn't take away from the racism and killing that runs through the story.

And how Tintin understands animal language is beyond me. In Congo some of his dealings with animals are downright impossible--wonder if anyone's strong enough to get a constrictor to eat its own tail?

Still, Soviets and Congo are excellent lead-ins to the more canonical Tintin adventures. I'm disgusted, yet thrilled at Tintin's evolution from adventure-seeking reporter to reluctant, resolution-seeking hero.

Now if I can just pick up Tintin and Alph-Art...