Land of Black Gold
Encyclopedia : L : LA : LAN : Land of Black Gold
Land of Black Gold (Tintin au Pays de l'Or Noir) is one of 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 originally published in 1950.
Land of Black Gold is the fifteenth in the series.
The storyline
The world is on the verge of war when a mysterious case of exploding car engines occur all over the world. The root cause appears to be tampered fuel supplies. Following different leads, Tintin, Thomson and Thompson set off for the Middle East on board a petrol tanker. Upon arrival the three are arrested by the authorities under various charges. The Thompsons are cleared and released, while Tintin is kidnapped by Arab insurgents.In the course of his adventures Tintin comes across an old enemy, Dr. J.W. Müller. He also meets his old friend Senhor Oliveira da Figueira. When the local Emir Ben Kalish Ezab's young son is kidnapped, Tintin suspects that Muller is responsible. He goes after Muller and in the process discovers that the doctor was the agent of a foreign power responsible for the tampering of the fuel supplies.
Language
Belgian readers will note that many names of characters and places in this album are puns: Ben Kalish Ezab (kalichesap = "liquorice juice" in Brussels dialect), Bir El Ambik (Lambic beer), Yussuf Ben Mulfrid (moules frites = French fries with mussels), Bab El Ehr (babbeleer (babbler), "chatterer" in Brussels dialect).
Rewrites
Hergé started work on Pays de l'Or Noir before World War II in Le Petit Vingtième, and the original version had a different storyline. Whereas in the final album there is a conflict between two Arab tribes, the earlier version dealt with the 1948 Palestine question: Tintin became involved with Jewish settlers in the British protectorate of Palestine. This storyline was dropped and Hergé and his assistant Bob de Moor rewrote the album 1969-1971 for a British edition that was published in 1971. Pages 6, 17, 19 and 20 were redrawn.By the time Hergé finally completed the story Captain Haddock was an important character in Tintin's world. Land of Black Gold had been started before the Captain's first appearance in The Crab with the Golden Claws, but was not completed until after Hergé had produced more of Tintin's adventures, all of which included the captain.
This is why Haddock makes a sudden appearance towards the end of the story, but never actually manages to explain how he got involved.
External link
- redirect
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.