Tintin in America

Tintin in America (Tintin en Amérique)
File:TintinAmerica.jpg Cover of the English edition
Date	1932
Series	The Adventures of Tintin (Les aventures de Tintin)
Publisher	Le Petit Vingtième
Creative team
Writers	Hergé
Artists	Hergé
Original publication
Published in	Le Petit Vingtième
Date of publication	September 3, 1931 - October 20, 1932
Language	French
ISBN	2-203-00102-X
Translation
Publisher	Methuen
Date	1978
ISBN	1-4052-0614-4
Translator	Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper and Michael Turner
Chronology
Preceded by	Tintin in the Congo, 1931
Followed by	Cigars of the Pharaoh, 1934

Tintin in America (French: Tintin en Amérique) is the third in 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 the hero.

Publication and alternate versions

Tintin in America first appeared as a black and white comic strip in "Le Petit Vingtième" on September 3, 1931. It was then published in a black and white album in 1932. In 1945, the album was reworked and shortened to a standard 62-page format, and published in colour.

Its first English translation was the 1962 UK edition. The first American edition was issued in 1973, for which some panels were redrawn in order to remove some stereotyped portrayals of African Americans. These include the doorman at the bank being built on Indian land and the woman holding the screaming baby.[1].

Tintin in America is the earliest Tintin album that is readily available in English translation; the two previous ones have been published in English, but in limited editions.

Synopsis

It is the year 1931. Having encountered Al Capone's gangsters in his last adventure, Tintin in the Congo, Tintin is sent to Chicago, Illinois to clean up the city's criminals. He is captured by gangsters several times, soon meeting Capone himself. Although Tintin temporarily captures Capone and some of his henchmen, the policeman he calls to help arrest the gangsters does not believe his story and tries to capture him instead (Tintin's failure to capture Capone reflects the fact that Capone was still active when the comic strip was written).

After several attempts on his life, Tintin meets Capone's rival, the devious Bobby Smiles, who heads the Gangsters Syndicate of Chicago. Tintin spends much of the book trying to capture Smiles, pursuing him to the Midwestern town of Redskin City. There he is captured by a Blackfoot Indian tribe (fooled by Smiles into thinking Tintin is their enemy), and discovers oil. This unintentionally causes the expulsion of the tribe, as unscrupulous oil corporations take over their land, depriving them of any share in the oil profits (see Ideology of Tintin). Finally, Tintin captures Smiles, and ships him back to Chicago in a crate.

After Smiles is captured, an unnamed bald gangster kidnaps Tintin's dog, Snowy. Tintin manages to save him and arrests most of the bald gangster's henchmen, although the gangster himself manages to escape. The next day the bald gangster orders a subordinate named Maurice Oyle to invite Tintin to a cannery, where Tintin is tricked into falling into the meat grinding machine. However, because the workers at the cannery are on strike, the meat grinder is deactivated and Tintin escapes. Tintin later tricks and captures both Maurice and the bald gangster.

After this escapade, Tintin is invited to a banquet held in his honor, where he is kidnapped by Chicago gangsters who have decided to wreak revenge upon him for his crackdown upon the city's criminals. The gangsters tie Tintin and Snowy to a weight and throw them into Lake Michigan. However, the gangsters mistakenly used a block of wood as a weight, and thus Tintin and Snowy are saved by what is ostensibly a police patrol boat. It soon transpires that the crew of the boat are not policemen, but more gangsters, and they attempt to kill Tintin. However Tintin overpowers them, and later leads the police to the gangsters' headquarters. A grateful Chicago holds a ticker-tape parade for Tintin, after which he returns to Europe.

Relationship to real life

Tintin in America depicts the real-life problems of gangsterism in 1930s America during the Great Depression, and the brief depiction of Al Capone is the only notable appearance of a real person in a Tintin album. A Rabbi whom some have identified as Menachem Begin appears briefly in Tintin in the Land of Black Gold, but his name is not given and he appears only very briefly. He only appeared in the early editions of the graphic novel and vanished in later ones.

References to social problems in the United States at the time are made, most notably in the sympathetic portrayal of Native Americans, whose mistreatment shows the prejudice and manipulative behavior of American oil companies that disenfranchise the tribe by seizing their land. Other issues in American society (such as lynching) are briefly alluded to. The failure of Prohibition in the U.S. is also highlighted, memorably portrayed in a scene where a small town sheriff becomes intoxicated in front of a sign proclaiming the Volstead Act.

The scene in which Tintin visits the factory run by Maurice Oyle (and nearly ends up as canned meat himself) is reminiscent of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, and its fierce indictment of the American meat packing industry.

However, much of the sequence in the American West is less realistic, as it depicts the West as it was in the days of the Wild West, complete with cowboys and Indians. Another inaccuracy is that American cars are sometimes depicted with right-hand steering columns.

Politics

Although he depicts the Indians as bloodthirsty, Hergé also demonstrates sympathy for their plight. In the first black-and-white strip Tintin is shown photographing an Indian who is holding a begging bowl (the begging bowl has disappeared in the colour version). Hergé later depicts the Indians being driven off their land by armed soldiers so that the US Government may access the oil found there.

Connections with other Tintin books

It is a matter of debate among Tintin fans whether Tintin's arch-enemy Rastapopoulos makes his first appearance in this book (albeit simply in a one-off cameo). A man who looks like him can be seen sitting next to Tintin at the banquet from which the hero is then kidnapped. Next to him is a young blonde-haired woman: in the 1932 black-and-white edition of the book this woman is referred to as "Mary Pikefort", a thin disguise for the actress Mary Pickford; this is significant because Rastapopoulos is a movie mogul when he appears in Cigars of the Pharaoh. The reference was dropped from the redrawn coloured edition, presumably because Pickford's name would not have been recognized by the new generation of Tintin readers .

External links

• Tintin in America at Tintinologist.org