Land of Black Gold

Graphicnovelbox| englishtitle=Land of Black Gold
foreigntitle=Tintin au pays de l'or noir


caption=Cover of the English edition
publisher=Casterman
date=1950
series="The Adventures of Tintin (Les aventures de Tintin)"
origlanguage=French
origpublication="Le Petit Vingtième" / "Tintin"
origdate=September 28 1939 - May 8, 1940 / September 16 1948 - February 23 1950
origisbn=2-203-00114-3
transtitle=Land of Black Gold
transpublisher=Methuen
transdate=1972
transseriestitle="The Adventures of Tintin"
transisbn=0-316-35844-4
translator=Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper and Michael Turner
writers=Hergé
artists=Hergé
colorists=
previssue="Prisoners of the Sun", 1950
nextissue="Destination Moon", 1953

"Land of Black Gold" (French: "Tintin au pays de l'or noir") is the fifteenth 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 "Le Petit Vingtième" from 1939 to 1940, but ended in mid-adventure. It was later redrawn, colourised and published in "Tintin magazine" and in book form from 1948 to 1950. Both these versions were set in British Mandate of Palestine. In 1972 parts of the story were again redrawn in order to set it in the fictional state of Khemed.

ynopsis

Experts are confused by a series of spontaneous car engine explosions, apparently caused by tampered fuel supplies. Political tensions heighten, leading the world to the brink of war, and Captain Haddock is mobilised in anticipation of an outbreak of hostilities. Following different leads, Tintin and Thomson and Thompson set off for Khemed (a fictional country in the Middle East) on board a petrol tanker. Upon arrival, the three are framed and arrested by the authorities under various charges. The Thompsons are cleared and released, but Tintin is kidnapped by Arab insurgents (In the original version of the story he initially arrived in the port of Haifa in British Palestine and was first kidnapped by members of the Irgun, before being subsequently abducted by Arabs).

In the course of his adventures, Tintin re-encounters an old enemy, Dr. J.W. Müller (see "The Black Island" for back story), whom he sees sabotaging an oil pipeline. He reunites with the Thompsons and eventually arrives in Wadesdah, the capital of Khemed, where he comes across his old friend, the Portuguese merchant Senhor Oliveira da Figueira. When the local Emir Ben Kalish Ezab's young son, Prince Abdullah, is kidnapped, Tintin suspects that Müller (who is masquerading as an archaeologist under the name of Professor Smith) is responsible. He pursues Müller in hopes of rescuing the prince and in the process discovers the doctor to be the agent of a foreign power responsible for the tampering of the fuel supplies.

Names

Many of the names of characters and places in this album are puns in Brussels dialect:

*Ben Kalish Ezab — "kalichesap", liquorice juice
*Bir El Ambik — "lambic", beer
*Yussuf Ben Mulfrid — "moules frites", French fries with mussels
*Bab El Ehr — "babbeleer", chatterer
*the Well of Bir Kegg — beer keg
*Wadesdah; What's that?

Notes

O'Connor, the sailor who tries to dispose of Snowy, claims to be from the Intelligence Service which in continental Europe is the standard way of referring to the British Secret Intelligence Service or MI6Fact|date=July 2008. Other Belgian comic series based around British characters, such as "Clifton" or "Blake and Mortimer", refer to the IS as a kind of umbrella organisation which covers both MI5 and MI6, which is not the actual case.

Publication history

The first version

Hergé began working on the story before World War II and early pages were published in "Le Petit Vingtième". The atmosphere of impending war throughout the adventure reflects the concerns of the time.

The original version was set in the late 1930s in the British Mandate of Palestine and the conflict between Jews, Arabs and British troops. In this version, the Jewish Irgun played a small but important part. Upon his arrival in Palestine, Tintin is arrested by the British authorities when compromising documents are found in his cabin, of which he knew nothing of. He is then kidnapped by members of the Irgun who have mistaken him for one of their own. They realise their mistake when their real associate, Finkelstein, arrives at their HQ. He bears some resemblance to Tintin, though he has a nasty and unpleasant smirk on his face.

Before they can decide what to do with him the Zionists' car is stopped by a roadblock of rocks and barrels. As they clear it, Arab gunmen emerge from a nearby wheat field and take Tintin, whom they too believe is the Zionist activist, into the desert. (This scene was inspired by a photo Hergé had in his archives showing two British soldiers from a road convoy dismantling a similar obstruction while other troops have their rifles and machine guns pointed at a wheat field. "Tintin: The Complete Companion" by Michael Farr, John Murray publishers, 2001] )

Tintin meets Sheikh Bab El Ehr, the Arab insurgent who is fighting the British and the Jews. Meanwhile the Zionists are captured and interrogated by British officials. [ [http://homepages.cwi.nl/~dik/english/TINTIN.html#gold] - Scans from the 1950 colour album (in Dutch)]

Following the takeover of Belgium by Germany in 1940, Hergé decided that it would be wiser to drop this story whose political context would not have appealed to the German censors. It ceased publication at about mid-adventure when Tintin, after his first confrontation with Müller, is caught in a sandstorm. ["The Pocket Essential Tintin" (Pocket Essentials, 2002; ISBN 1-904048-17-X]

Hergé moved to the collaborationist newspaper "Le Soir" and during the war years Tintin's adventures focused on non-political issues such as drug smuggling ("The Crab with the Golden Claws"), scientific expeditions ("The Shooting Star"), intrigue and treasure hunts ("The Secret of the Unicorn" and "Red Rackham's Treasure") and a mysterious curse ("The Seven Crystal Balls").

Controversially, "The Shooting Star" also included Jews shown in a bad light (see Tintin and the Jews).

French editing

Meanwhile, in occupied France, the story had been published in the weekly Catholic magazine "Coeurs Vaillants" ("Valiant Hearts"). All references to Zionists and Arabs were removed from the speech bubbles, though the illustrations remained unchanged, and Tintin's double, Finkelstein, was given the more French-like name of Durand. The scene where a British plane flies over the Arab camp was not included. This was presumably in an effort to avoid trouble with Marshal Pétain's censors. ["La Distinction", Swiss magazine, issue 81, 25 November 2000]

In 1945 the story appeared in the French Catholic paper, "La Voix de l'ouest" ("The Voice of the West", a local paper published in Brittany in the west of France). The story was renamed "Tintin et Milou au pays de l'or liquide" ("Tintin and Snowy in the Land of Liquid Gold").

Although Pétain had long since gone it still included much of "Coeurs Vaillants"' edited version: the British were referred to as "the police"; some cursing remarks made by a Jew about Arabs who have blocked the road were not included; and Tintin's Zionist-lookalike was still named Durand.

Tintin magazine

Meanwhile Hergé restarted the story from scratch in "Tintin magazine" in 1948. It was redrawn, colourised and given more detailed panels, but the scenes with the British and the kidnappers remained. Tintin's double was now given the more Jewish-sounding name of Salomon Goldstein.

By now Captain Haddock was an important part of Tintin's world and he was therefore added to the conclusion of the story (although no explanation as to how he suddenly turns up to rescue Tintin in Müller's bunker is given). Nestor the butler makes a cameo and Cuthbert Calculus and Marlinspike Hall are also mentioned. This version was published in book form shortly afterwards.

The final version

Twenty years later when the story was due to be published in English the state of Israel had long been up and running. Methuen felt that the scenes of British troops in Palestine made the book dated. Hergé and his assistant Bob de Moor rewrote the album resetting the story in a fictional Arab state called Khemed. It was published in 1972 and it is this version that is most commonly available in most countries today.

The changes that were made to the illustrations started from the point where, at night, Tintin checks over the oil tanks at the dockyard and overhears a conversation between two suspicious men. This continued with the scenes on the oil tanker, the events at the city-port and Tintin's meeting with Sheikh Bab El Ehr. They ended at the point when the Thompsons attempt, in bathing suits, to swim in a lake that turns out to be a mirage. Before and after that the illustrations remained pretty much unchanged.

A page in which the Thompsons go from mirage to mirage and end up crashing into the only palm tree for miles around was unchanged but moved to another location.

Some changes were made to the text in order to remove references to the British presence in the Middle East by Emir Ben Kalish Ezab and give him the air of an actual ruler of a Kingdom rather than the appearance of a local prince.

Other changes included:

External links

* [http://www.tintinologist.org/guides/books/15blackgold.html Land of Black Gold] at Tintinologist.org

References