After the success of splitting 'The Secret of the Unicorn' and 'Red Rackham's Treasure' into two separate books, Hergé promptly followed up with another pairing, 'The Seven Crystal Balls' and 'Prisoners of the Sun'. Like last time, this first half recounts the discovery of a mystery and gets us to the point where we and the characters understand what's going on and can now shift to a new location in the second half to solve it. It's a great approach that gives Hergé time to make his story really breathe without losing any urgency.

For instance, he gets right down to business on the first page. Tintin's reading the paper on the train and discovers that the Sanders-Hardiman Expedition has returned from Peru and Bolivia. They discovered a bunch of Incan tombs while they were there, including one that belonged to a mummy wearing a borla or gold crown. He's Rascar Capac and he's compared to Tut-Ankh-Amen by the gentleman reading over Tintin's shoulder. You know, curses.

The train is taking Tintin to Marlinspike because he's visiting Capt. Haddock, who we discover is putting on airs now that he's residing in a manor house, right down to wearing a monocle. He's still the same old blustering buffoon, of course, and slapstick chaos soon ensues. To be fair, it's Snowy who starts that, chasing a Siamese cat and knocking over all the drinks on the tray of the butler, Nestor. Haddock isn't even horrified, thus demonstrating the decorum of the important, I presume. However, Haddock leads Tintin very capably into a whole lot more of it.

The conceit is that he's been trying to figure out a magic trick that he's seen performed by the master magician at the local music hall, Bruno by name, which is to turn water into whisky. You can see why the captain would want to know how to do that, but he can't, prompting a typically impressive outburst of alliteration: "Billions of bilious blue blistering barnacles in a thundering typhoon!" And then he takes Tintin to see the show, so he can see it too. And, naturally, this is a perfect way to collide them with the plot, which naturally, has to do with the Sanders-Hardiman Expedition.

The first act on is Ragdalam the fakir with Madame Yamilah, who knows everything there is to know when she's in a hypnotic trance. Like how the husband of a lady in the audience works as a photographer and has been cursed by the Sun God. It turns out that he's Clarkson, part of that South American expedition. The second is a knife thrower billed as Ramon Zarate, but Tintin is quickly aware that he's really Gen. Alcazar, former president of San Theodoros, who we met in 'The Broken Ear'. Talking of returning characters, Bianca Castafiore, the Milanese nightingale we met in 'King Ottakar's Scepter' is up next. That's where they have to leave because Snowy is eager to sing along.

So, they go backstage to see Gen. Alcazar, but get lost and Haddock promptly turns into a bull in a china shop, almost literally given that he ends up stumbling onto the stage while stuck inside a full sized bull's head and crashing into the orchestra pit. I did mention slapstick chaos, right? We haven't even seen Thomson and Thompson yet. Don't worry, they're not far away because you'll be shocked to discover that they're investigating what's been happening to the members of the Sanders-Hardison Expedition.

Hergé initially sets that up in isolation, confirming that Mr. Peter Clarkson has been taken ill at his home and Prof. Sanders-Hardiman quickly followed suit. Our favourite inept detectives soon explain that they both fell into deep comas with shards of crystal found next to them. One call to headquarters later, they discover a third, Prof. Reedbuck. And so we go, with each member of the expedition succumbing, even with protections being put into place, and Tintin attacked, too.

What's notable here is that this feels pretty dark and the supernatural element cannot simply be explained away. Of course, we'll come back to the curse telegraphed on the first page, which is explained by an old friend of Prof. Calculus by the name of Prof. Tarragon. He was also on the expedition and is in possession of Rascar Capac's mummy, which is bound by ropes even though he's been dead for centuries. He calls him "He-who-unleashes-the-fire-of-heaven" and relates a prophecy that was written on the walls of his tomb, which is eerily close to what the expedition just did.

And, while the seven crystal balls of the title refer to the method used to send its members into comas, it's here that we see the memorable events depicted on the cover. That sparkling yellow ball of light enters via the chimney, dances around the room causing devastation, including the levitation of Prof. Calculus in his chair. It ends by crashing into the display case that contains the mummy of Rascar Capec, which promptly disappears into thin air. If that wasn't bizarre enough, Tintin and Haddock promptly share the same dream about that very same mummy sneaking in through their respective windows and hurling a crystal ball at the floor. They're safe because it was just a dream but Prof. Tarragon is now in a coma, the newest victim of the curse.

There's plenty more to come, because this is only around the halfway mark, but I'll let you find out the rest. What matters is that Prof. Calculus is kidnapped and the trail leads to a Peruvian merchantman which just left the docks for Callao. Prof. Calculus has obviously been elevated to regular status with this book and he's been staying at Marlinspike Hall, where he's maddened Capt. Haddock with the combination of profound deafness and stubborn refusal to accept that fact. It's therefore obvious when he vanishes and we'll have to wait until 'Prisoners of the Sun' to find out what happened to him.

As a horror fan, I'm all for Tintin stories to explore their darker side, but I was surprised at how dark this got. Some of these scenes could have been borrowed from horror movies and the live (or at least animated) mummy of Rascar Capac is a highly memorable villain, even if the story paints him more like a hero whose remains have been caught up in an adventure. We'll have to wait until next time out to discover which he was during his lifetime. For now, we can only enjoy and wonder at why Hergé took such a dark approach to his story.

Well, it's not too hard to figure out, because it ties to the real-life circumstances in play while it was being written. If you've been following these reviews, you'll recall that Hergé got political in 'King Ottakar's Scepter', warning his readers about the aggression of Nazi Germany through a thinly veiled account of what they were already doing. A month after it finished, they sparked the Second World War by invading Poland and, seven months later, they took Belgium too. That meant that the next four books were written under Nazi occupation and control of 'Le Soir', the newspaper that published Tintin adventures.

This story started under those conditions, beginning its serialisation in December 1943 but still going when the Allies liberated Belgium in September 1944. The stress of this period led him to a nervous breakdown and a two-month break for being "sick for a few weeks". In other words, after suffering Nazi control of his professional output, he feared being labelled a collaborator after their expected fall, a fate that had led many others to death at the hands of the Belgian Resistance. Sure enough, when Belgium was liberated, he was blacklisted as a collaborator and the story cancelled partway through.

It took two full years for his name to be cleared, eventually resuming this story in a dedicated 'Tintin' magazine in September 1946. I'm sure he felt a lot better about this by April 1948 when the serialisation finished, but it had to have been an especially hard time for him. There isn't a single thing worse for a creator than the forced inability to create and to be stuck there for the crime of simply doing his job at a particularly awful time was a quintessential no-win situation. Fortunately he got through it intact and was able to return to writing, finishing this story and a further ten Tintin books still to come by 1976, plus an unfinished one posthumously published a decade later.

Perhaps inevitably, given such upheaval during its creation—Hergé was arrested and freed on four separate occasions by four different authorities—this isn't up to the standards of its most obvious comparison, 'The Secret of the Unicorn', but it really isn't far away. It flows well, only a darker imagery hinting at what was going on behind the scenes. In many ways, it's the point at which everything feels exactly right for the first time to a fan like me coming back to the series after a long time away. Tintin is the capable lead he's always been, Haddock has completed his gradual evolution into reliable sidekick, Snowy is just a dog (and close companion) and Calculus is a regular character, as indeed is Marlinspike Hall.

It all bodes very well indeed for 'Prisoners of the Sun' next month. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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