TONNERRE DE BREST! Little Riad Sattouf's learning to read via Tintin (see The Arab of the Future 2) led me to pick up a couple of Tintin books that had been around the house for a while without my getting to them. These two are linked stories about baby-faced Tintin and his pal, the crusty old salt Captain Haddock, finding (in first book) instructions to find an old pirate's treasure and (in second) the treasure itself.
Pretty familiar stuff, really. And (to my mind) a little less satisfying, as narrative, than Treasure Island, because Stevenson had rival groups in competition to find the treasure first, adding urgency to the hunt. Tintin and Haddock have rivals for finding the instructions (which have been separated into three different pieces of parchment), but not for finding the treasure; the sole obstacle to their finding the treasure is their own tendency to misinterpret the instructions. A bit less exciting than having to outmaneuver Long John Silver.
What is satisfying, even sublime, about these books is that Hergé loves to draw ships, especially La Licorne, the vessel commanded by Haddock's 17th century ancestor. We have not only an episode in historical flashback on the decks of La Licorne itself, but the story begins with Tintin finding a scale model of that grand old ship. Turns out there are three such models (each with a parchment hidden in its mainmast) that have to be found, so Hergé gets to draw a fully-rigged 17th century ship on almost every page, and he does it with love every time. He depicts it from any number of angles--what a master of foreshortening he was--and the drawing is always immaculate, radiant.
The 20th century boat on which Tintin and Haddock set off to find the treasure is also rendered in loving detail, but the real heart of the tale is that Hergé gets to draw that 17th century ship over and over.
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