The Black Island

Graphicnovelbox| englishtitle=The Black Island
foreigntitle=L'Île Noire


caption=Cover of the English edition
publisher=Casterman
date=1938
series="The Adventures of Tintin (Les aventures de Tintin)"
origlanguage=French
origpublication="Le Petit Vingtième"
origdate=April 15, 1937 - June 16, 1938
origisbn=2-203-00106-2
transtitle=The Black Island
transpublisher=Methuen
transdate=1966
transseriestitle="The Adventures of Tintin"
transisbn=1-4052-0618-7
translator=Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper and Michael Turner
writers=Hergé
artists=Hergé
colorists=
previssue="The Broken Ear", 1937
nextissue="King Ottokar's Sceptre", 1939

"The Black Island" (French: "L'Île Noire") is the seventh of "The Adventures of Tintin", a series of classic comic-strip albums, written and illustrated by Belgian writer and illustrator Hergé, featuring young reporter Tintin as a hero. It was first published in the newspaper supplement "Le Petit Vingtième" in the late 1930s and subsequently in a black-and-white album. Two more versions of the story were published in 1943 and 1966.

In France it was first published in 1937 in the magazine "Coeurs Vaillants" as "Le Mystère de l'avion gris" ("The Mystery of the Grey Plane").

ynopsis

While walking in the Belgian countryside Tintin sees an un-registered plane making an emergency landing, and goes to help, but as he comes near he is shot by the pilot. Tintin recovers at a hospital where police detectives Thomson and Thompson inform him that a similar plane has crashed in a field in Sussex, England. Tintin decides to investigate for himself.

Tintin takes a train from Brussels to the coast in order to board the ferry from Ostend to Dover. During the journey he is framed for the assault and theft of a fellow passenger (who is in fact part of the mysterious criminal gang Tintin has inadvertently stumbled upon). Thompson and Thomson arrest Tintin, but he escapes by handcuffing them to each other while they are asleep.

Arriving in England, Tintin is kidnapped by the same men who framed him. They take him to a clifftop, intending to make him jump off it, but Tintin escapes thanks to Snowy.

Tintin's investigations lead him to Dr. J.W. Müller who, with his chauffeur Ivan, is part of a gang of money counterfeiters, led by Puschov, the so-called victim on the train.

Tintin's pursuit of Müller and Ivan results in a plane crash in rural Scotland, where a friendly farmer gives him a kilt to wear. He visits the pub in the coastal village of Kiltoch, where he is told strange stories about the Black Island, where an evil beast is said to roam, killing humans. He buys a boat from a villager and heads for the island. There he is almost killed by a gorilla called Ranko. Stranded on the island, Tintin discovers that it is the hideout of the gang of forgers led by Puschov and Müller.

Tintin calls the police on their radio signalling device after watching Thompson and Thomson win an air show race on a television set (though they didn't mean to). After a desperate holding-out action (in which Ranko's arm is broken) the gang is captured, and Tintin returns to mainland Kiltoch — but the media and press do not stay very long after Ranko appears.

The gang is jailed and the now docile Ranko is placed in a zoo in Glasgow.

Publication History

"The Black Island" is the only "Tintin" story to have had three major different editions published in French: 1937, 1943 and 1966. [ [http://tintinologist.org/articles/blackisland.html] History of the Black Island at Tintinologist.org]

First version, 1937-8

"The Black Island" first appeared in black-and-white installments in the newspaper supplement "Le Petit Vingtième" between 15 April 1937 and 16 June 1938. It was then published in book form.

This version contains several scenes that were deleted or altered in later editions. These included:

*Tintin taking the Brussels to London train and referring to Ostend as the port from which he will take the ferry. The reason for altering these scenes is that specific references to Belgium as Tintin's country of residence were taken out of the later editions of his adventures. In the 1966 edition the train is from Cologne to London via Brussels.

*In the cliff top incident Tintin chases Puschov and his associate back to the car only to come under fire by Ivan who is armed with a rifle. Tintin ducks for cover. (In the later editions, this was replaced by Tintin tripping over a stone and no sign of Ivan.)

*When Tintin finds the airmen's clothes hidden in a tree, he notices bloodstains on one of the leather suits and believes one of them was injured during the crash landing. He thinks this will be a helpful clue, but the injured crewman is not referred to in the rest of the story.

*Ivan and Müller are shown leaving the hijacked locomotive after knocking out the two-man crew. Ivan wonders where they are, but Müller assures him that he knows the country like the back of his hand.

econd version, 1943

In 1943, a colourised version of the book was published. It was similar to the previous one, but there were some changes, the most notable being the deletion or alteration of the scenes noted above. [ [http://homepages.cwi.nl/~dik/english/TINTIN.html#island] - Scans from the 1943 colour album (in Dutch)] In addition, some of the panels were cropped or even expanded to make the story fit the 62-page limit that was required due to wartime paper shortages (the original version had spanned 120 pages).

As in the original black-and-white edition, the opening panel has a newspaper report with a crude "photo" of Tintin and Snowy walking in the countryside. Next to it is a report from London of which only a few words can be made out: they include references to an island.

Third version, 1966

When "The Black Island" came to be published in English in 1966, Hergé's British publishers, Methuen, decided that the book did not portray Great Britain accurately enough, and Hergé was asked to rework it completely, updating it to the 1960s. The resulting book is the version most commonly available today.

Hergé's assistant, Bob de Moor was sent to Britain to gather material and take photos of various locations. He even obtained a uniform of the Scottish police. The police officers with whom Tintin is shown posing with were given more Scottish-sounding names. The original versions had Officers Edwards, Johnson, Wright and O'Rally. These were changed to McGregor, Stewart, Robertson and Macleod.

Another change was "less" accurate: in the original versions, Tintin and Snowy travel on a Johnnie Walker tanker train, a real brand of whisky from Scotland; this was changed to Loch Lomond, which was to be a prominent brand in "Tintin and the Picaros".

The story was updated from the 1930s to the 1960s: the cars and aircraft became contemporary 1960s models; fire hoses manually pulled by firemen were replaced with a fire engine; the counterfeited 1 pound notes were updated to 5 pound notes, and the 50 French francs to 100.

Much of this work was done by de Moor, with Roger Leloup working on the aircraft."Tintin: The Complete Companion" by Michael Farr, John Murray publishers, 2001] In keeping with Hergé's current style, the panels had more detailed backgrounds, such as the landscape of the countryside and the inside of Müller's residence. Other changes included the darkening of Tintin's hair colour and his brown suit being changed to his iconic blue sweater and plus fours. The other characters' clothing was updated.

The 1966 version also toned down the violence. The use and portrayal of firearms was also reduced: in the previous versions Tintin was shown armed when running in the panel prior to climbing the tree from which he tries to jump onto Müller's car; the police were also shown armed while confronting the gang at the castle. Although guns remained in the 1966 version their presence was reduced compared to the previous editions.

Some of Snowy's injuries, either from Tintin's doing or by accident, were removed: in the originals Tintin grabbed hold of Snowy's ears while jumping onto a passing truck and Snowy fell on his face when they got off to examine Müller's crashed car. This was replaced by Tintin simply hitching a ride. [http://ftp.cwi.nl/dik/strips/KUIFJE/island.30a.jpg]

Another change brought in minor characters from the recently-published "The Castafiore Emerald" (1963): journalist Christopher Willoughby-Drupe is shown interviewing the old man in the pub, while his colleague Marco Rizotto is in the crowd receiving Tintin.

Critics attacked this updated version, claiming that the story lost a lot of its charm as a result.

Contemporary connections

When "The Black Island" was originally published in "Le Petit Vingtième" in 1937, many aspects of the story reflected popular movies of the time, such as Alfred Hitchcock's "The Thirty-Nine Steps" (an innocent man on the run from the police pursues the real crooks to Scotland) and "King Kong" (Ranko the gorilla).

While talking to the old local in the pub, Tintin mentions the Loch Ness Monster which had been the subject of recent newspaper reports. [The famous "Surgeon's photo" of the monster by Robert Kenneth Wilson had been published in newspapers some three years earlier]

The gang that Tintin confronts is made up of a wide variety of figures:

*Wronzoff (or Puschov in the English version) wears a huge beard which implies that he is a Jew.

*His unnamed moustached associate could pass off as a typical cockney crook, similar to Flash Harry of St. Trinian's or Walker of "Dad's Army".

*The name Ivan suggests that Müller's chauffeur is a White Russian, exiled by the Bolshevik Revolution.

*The name Dr. J.W. Müller implies that the character is a German. Some have suggested that he is a secret agent out to destabilise the British economy, though this is unlikely given that he works with a Jewish-like boss. It has been suggested that Müller was based on the adventurer Georg Bell, who was an associate of Nazi leader Ernst Röhm.

References

External links

* [http://www.tintinologist.org/guides/books/07blackisland.html The Black Island] at Tintinologist.org
* [http://www.tintinbook.com the black island book]