I found 'Land of Black Gold' to be a weaker episode in the 'Adventures of Tintin' series, but it's very possible that the reason boils down to its history and, to look at that, we need to jump six books back in the series. Book eight was 'King Ottakar's Sceptre' and its fictional story served as a real life warning. The countries within it were made up, but the warlike Borduria is clearly Nazi Germany, which was flexing its muscles at the time. It annexed Austria in March 1938 and Hergé had Borduria attempt to annex Syldavia as an overt parallel.

He finished that story in August 1939, and it proved to be prescient because, only a month later, the Nazis invaded Poland, sparking the Second World War. He also began work on this story, as the ninth Tintin adventure. The Germans were the villains, almost inevitably at that point, and 'Le Petit Vingtième' continued to serialise it until the Nazis invaded Belgium in May, 1940. With that, everything changed. The Germans couldn't be the villains anymore because they were in charge now and they shut down the newspaper anyway, so 'Land of Black Gold' was put on hold.

Instead, 'The Crab with the Golden Claws' became the ninth completed adventure, with another five further books following in its wake for us to fast forward through, before Hergé was talked into picking this one back up again. I've already covered the reality under which he had to work while writing those stories, not just the inherent censorship that the Nazis imposed on him but the accusations of collaboration following their removal. At this point, he was free and clear to create, though surely traumatised by his experiences, and he had his own 'Tintin' magazine for new stories.

He was also on a high, the previous four books benefitting from being split up into two pairs so they could breathe. 'The Secret of the Unicorn' and 'The Seven Crystal Balls' served as capable mysteries to set up adventures, while 'Red Rackham's Treasure' and 'Prisoners of the Sun' took the characters onto those adventures. That doesn't happen here, as it's a single story taking up the same page count as any one of those four, so it covers both mystery and adventure. That's likely because Hergé clearly didn't care as much about it he usually did, commenting later that "Black Gold was a repair, and I abandoned it".

The problems are obvious from the start. The core of the story warns of an imminent European war, an entirely appropriate plot device in 1939 when it was started but not in 1950 when it was finished, not least because the continent was still recovering from the one they'd just had.

That sends Captain Haddock off to assume command of a merchant vessel and await orders, so he's absent for most of the book, disappearing on page three after one panel, not to reappear until page fifty-four, so entirely out of the blue that Tintin even comments on it: "And what are you doing here anyway, Captain?" To be fair, he didn't exist as a character in the first version of 'Land of Black Gold', so was shoehorned into this one where he could fit, as a new favourite.

And that means that most of the early scenes and many of the later ones are slapstick comedy with Thomson and Thompson, which is glorious fun on occasion but not so much when it seems to take over. It takes over far too much here and, in doing so, reminds us how far the series had come and how much we now expected characters like Captain Haddock and Professor Calculus, another one who didn't exist at the time of the first version so was also inserted briefly here, not in person but through a long letter he sends to wrap up a bunch of plot strands.

The trigger for everything is the fact that petrol (gas to most of my readers) has become oddly explosive. We first see that on page one when Thomson and Thompson car explodes after filling up their tank. Page two quickly follows suit with Thomson's lighter. That soon turns out to be all over the city and the country, escalating so far that airline companies suspend services, shares in oil slump to half their usual value and petrol usage plummets by two thirds. In one hilarious aside, even the laboratory testing the gasoline blows up mid-test.

Things proceed in two threads, one with Thomson and Thompson investigating a tow company they suspect has created this panic in order to boost their own business and the other following Tintin, who stumbles accidentally onto a clue and from there follows a more rational trail. It's a good one for him, as it means finding a way on board a boat called the 'Speedol Star', which he does by becoming its new radio operator. Unfortunately much of what follows is more slapstick, with a suspicious character losing his mind at an inconvenient moment. It's all about as weak as the name of the city they eventually dock at, Khemikal.

Here's where I point out that there aren't merely two versions of 'Land of Black Gold', there's also a third. The original was the unfinished serialisation in 'Le Petit Vingtième' that was shut down by the Nazis in 1940. The second was the completed version that ran in 'Tintin' magazine from 1948 to 1950. The third came later in 1971, when it was published in English and the bulk of the changes were to these early sections before and after docking in the middle-east.

That was because the early versions were set in the British Mandate of Palestine, with Tintin, Thomson and Thompson all arrested by British police—for good reason, I should add; they were stitched up royally—and then captured by a Zionist terrorist organisation called Irgun. All this was fair for 1950 because all of those things were real. However, by 1971, none still existed and it therefore made a lot more sense to render them all fictional and thus timeless. So it became the city of Khemikal in the Emirate of Khemed.

Of course, there's a political struggle ongoing, between the bad guys, led by Sheik Bab El Ehr, and the good guys, led by the Emir of Khemed, Mohammed Ben Kalish Ezab, who is well aware that the Sheik is trying to depose him, with the aid of a villainous corporation, Skoil Petroleum. While the MacGuffin might seem to be the unexpectedly explosive petrol, the real MacGuffin is a shipment of arms that's supposedly destined to reach the Sheik. None of it really matters, of course, because what we end up with is yet more slapstick comedy, Thomson and Thompson not capable of telling the difference between reality and mirage. Again, it's fun in moderation but it gets tiring in abundance.

The same goes for the most worthy subplot, which involves the kidnapping of Abdullah, the son of the Emir. In a neat touch, Abdullah is a young rascal who's enormously fond of practical jokes, the sort that you'd see advertised in comic books. Thus, instead of serious shenanigans such as Tintin being set up to look like an arms dealer or Thomson and Thompson drug mules, suddenly it's all exploding cigars and sneezing or itching powder. I should emphasise that these aren't in aside, they're often important props to make a difference in chase scenes or rescue attempts.

There's fun to be had here, but it's sometimes hard to find, especially in the desert where the usual landmarks and textures are absent even before the sandstorm begins. Frankly, the most fun I had was revisiting old series characters as they made return appearances. One of the lead saboteurs is Dr. Müller from 'The Black Island' and Senhor Oliveira da Figueira, from 'Cigars of the Pharaoh' shows up too, now selling roller skates in the desert. Tintin puts him to very good use indeed. Unfortunately the same can't be said for anyone else.

While this "repair" was a low point in the series, Hergé clearly used it as a stopgap at a time of stress and, as far as I remember from my youth, promptly returned to form with the next two adventures, which take Tintin to the most exotic location the series had seen. So check in next month as I tackle one of the most famous Tintin books, 'Destination Moon'! ~~ Hal C F Astell

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