I've been looking forward to this particular 'Tintin' story for quite some time, as it was reputedly Hergé's personal favourite from the entire series. It's also critically acclaimed and won an unusual award for a graphic novel, the Hergé Foundation accepting a Light of Truth Award in 2006 from the Dalai Lama for contributing to the eternal fight for human rights. I certainly enjoyed the book, an unusual one for the series given that it doesn't have a villain to root against. The setting is lovely but the story is so skimpy that writing a synopsis becomes a challenge.

What it fundamentally boils down to is the abiding connection between Tintin and Chang Chong-Chen, the Chinese boy who played such a prominent part in 'The Blue Lotus'. If you'll recall, Tintin saves Chang from drowning and Chang later returns the favour by saving Tintin from an assassin sent to kill him. They fought the villains in that story together and parted emotionally, after the orphan Chang was adopted by Wang Chen-Yee, leader of the Sons of the Dragon. 'The Blue Lotus' was the fifth 'Tintin' book and this was the twentieth, but we haven't heard from Chang since, an overt recent focus on reunions notwithstanding.

Tintin hears from him here in a highly unusual fashion. The reporter is enjoying a walking holiday while Captain Haddock happily remains at ground level, firmly believing that mountains ought to be abolished. Tintin drops off during a chess game while waiting for the captain's next move then startles awake from a nightmare screaming "Chang!", thus prompting a gloriously dynamic half-page panel in which only the profoundly deaf Prof. Calculus remains unfazed. Chang was calling to him for help, half buried by snow but unable to move because of injury.

Next morning he receives a letter from Hong Kong that's been on its way to him for some time, a letter from Chang. Apparently, Wang Chen-Yee has a brother who runs an antique shop in London, so he's flying out to stay with him. 'Tintin in Tibet' was originally serialised in 'Tintin' magazine in 1958 and 1959, so travel wasn't as quick and easy as it is today. Chang has many flights to catch, a couple extra because he has presents to deliver to his adoptive father's cousin in Nepal, and one of them, from Patna to Katmandu, crashes in the Himalayas with no survivors.

We're only five pages in but the story is set. All the evidence suggests that Chang is dead, but our intrepid reporter refuses to believe that. He knows, deep in his being, that Chang is still alive and in need of rescue. He believes that the nightmare wasn't a dream at all but a sort of contact, "premonition... telepathy... something like that." So the quest begins. One page later, Tintin and Haddock (and Snowy, of course) reach New Delhi. One frantic chase later, they're on the plane to Katmandu. And, as soon as they find the house of Cheng Li-Kin, Wang's brother, they're hiring the sherpa they need, Tharkey by name, to guide them into the mountains to visit the wreckage.

One reason that this was Hergé's favourite 'Tintin' story was that it was an acutely personal one for him. The fictional character of Chang was based on a real person, Zhang Chongren, a Chinese student at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, to whom Hergé was introduced by an abbot, Léon Gosset. The four 'Tintin' stories before 'The Blue Lotus' were action-packed but also poorly researched so felt inauthentic. Hearing that he would set his next story in China, Gosset, a chaplain to Chinese students at the Catholic University of Leuven, suggested that he talk with an actual Chinese man, the result of which was much authenticity in 'The Blue Lotus'.

Hergé and Zhang, who were very close in age, got on like a house on fire, the latter later stating that they became like two brothers. Given how much his influence changed 'The Blue Lotus' and how much 'The Blue Lotus' changed the 'Tintin' series for the better, it seems fair to say that this friendship is a major reason why the 'Tintin' books are still remembered  almost a hundred years on from its debut in the pages of 'Le Petit Vingtième' in 1929. When Hergé wrote 'Tintin in Tibet', he hadn't seen Zhang for a couple of decades, having lost track of him after the Japanese invaded China in 1937. Much later, in 1981, the French media tracked him down and arranged a reunion.

It doesn't take much of a psychologist to see that Hergé was missing his friend dearly, but it isn't the only reason that this book felt personal to him. Interviews suggest that he was suffering from recurrent nightmares that often involved "the beauty and cruelty" of white, even visiting a Swiss psychoanalyst, Franz Riklin, who had been a student of Carl Jung, to explain these dreams. What Riklin identified was a "quest for purity" that may have tied to the fact that he had started to see Fanny Vlaminck, a colourist at Studios Hergé, even though he was married. A Catholic from birth, he believed marriage was for life and felt guilt over considering divorce.

This quest of Tintin for Chang is therefore Hergé missing Zhang and the quest into the mountains to save him is Hergé seeking a release from guilt from divorcing his wife to marry a much younger woman. Ironically, the most religious moments are either Buddhist in nature or Snowy's shoulder angel and demon when he gets drunk on Captain Haddock's whisky halfway up a mountain. It's no coincidence, I think, that while the angel gets the first words, the devil gets the rest. Then again, Snowy promptly falls off a cliff to sober up in a river, but the angel gets the upper hand later and the dog redeems himself.

Much happens before they reach a Buddhist monastery and get religious validation for the quest. They find evidential validation first, as Tintin falls into a crevasse near the wreck, as a yeti passes him, and discovers a stone in an ice cave on which Chang had carved his name. Later, a yellow scarf caught on a rock face shows where they must climb. Eventually, though they reach the Monastery of Khor-Biyong, after the blind Blessed Lightning levitates and, in a vision, sees that Great Heart, Powder Snow and Rumbling Thunder need to be rescued. So the monks find them and carry them to the monastery to recover. Rumbling Thunder is a glorious name for Captain Haddock.

It's notable that there's so much Forteana here. The entire story hinges on the telepathic distress call Chang makes to Tintin from a continent away. We see Blessed Lightning levitate on multiple occasions as he experiences visions. And, of course, we don't merely see the yeti from a distance, blurred during a blizzard, and hear stories about how dangerous it is from locals. We get to meet the migou, to use the local term, in person. It inadvertently leads them to Chang in a cave, where it's kept him fed and alive, literally saving his life, then joins them until Tintin scares it away with his flashbulb. It even gets the final scene, roaring a goodbye as it watches them leave in caravan procession. It's a highly sympathetic take on a famous cryptid.

Given all that, how are we supposed to take other moments shown as merely Buddhist traditions? For instance, ashes of great lamas are preserved in memorials called chortens and our party goes past one as they climb into the mountains. Tradition is that you should only pass them on the left, as passing on the right is bad luck. Of course, Haddock, who's the comic relief here just as much as ever, stumbles into one at speed, so the piece he knocks off smashes into the bottles of whisky in his rucksack. It seems to me like we should treat this as a given, just like the others.

It's easy to see why the Dalai Lama saw this as worthy of a Light of Truth Award. The Tibetans are treated with great respect, whether peasants, Sherpas or Buddhist monks. Or, indeed, the migou, who's seen as a Tibetan as much as everyone else, at least by the end. Zhang Chongren explained some of the tenets of Taoist philosophy to Hergé during their talks around 'The Blue Lotus' and it seems that they stuck. The monks here are Buddhist rather than Taoist but they're treated with a serious amount of respect, except, of course, by Captain Haddock, who puts his foot in everything.

It's worth mentioning that 'Tintin in Tibet' was serialised in 'Tintin' magazine from 1958 to 1959, collated into book form in 1960 and again in English translation in 1962. That was an eventful time for Tibet. The Chinese had annexed the country in 1951 and rumours eight years later that they would arrest the Dalai Lama prompted protests in Llasa. When they turned violent, the Chinese shelled the Dalai Lama's summer palace and prompted him to escape to India, where he led the Tibetan government in exile until 1991. Hergé kept himself up to date on all this as it happened, research that no doubt helped shape this work. It's been called the bestselling volume on Tibet, the book that introduced more westerners to the region than any other.

My initial reaction to 'Tintin in Tibet' was that it was empty but in a good way. There's very little story, mostly just a touching reflection on friendship, exhibited in a score of ways: Haddock's for Tintin, given how he refuses to let him walk into danger on his own; Tintin's for Chang, travelling to another continent to save him, based largely on a dream; the migou's for Chang, keeping him safe in one of the bleakest parts of the world; Tintin's for Snowy, risking himself to save him from the river; or the monks' for all of them, even though they're complete strangers at this point. It's heavy on theme but light on plot.

Gone are the usual frantic chases, except for one early on when Haddock accidentally rides one of the sacred bulls in New Delhi. Gone is the intrigue and the need for a villain; the enemy here is an instinct to give up but that rarely gets a word in. Tellingly, gone too are the plethora of recurring characters that threatened to weigh down the previous book in the series, 'The Red Sea Sharks'. I like how characters reoccur periodically through the series but having so many show up all at once felt rather overwhelming. Here, the only recurring character beyond a brief appearance by Prof. Calculus, is Chang. Otherwise, it's restricted to the core cast: Tintin, Snowy and Haddock. Or, as I'll now think of them, Great Heart, Powder Snow and Rumbling Thunder.

In their place are a slower pace, a gentler tone and a bigger heart. There aren't many showcase panels, though it seems like there would have been plenty of opportunity for some. Most obvious are the half-page when Tintin receives his telepathic message and the half-page when they reach the site of the wreckage and witness how devastating it was; the aircraft literally torn in two and now partly buried by snow. Instead, they gradually accumulate into an abiding impression.

Many, especially in the mountains, are vertical; emphasising their altitude in the Himalayas. The ones in the caves are claustrophobic. Those in blizzards are especially effective, somehow able to show us everything we need to see while simultaneously noting how hard it is to see anything. An abundance of panels ably contrast the vast size of the landscape with the tiny people venturing into it. None of it's showy stuff, even compared to similar pages in 'Prisoners of the Sun', but it's subtly impressive and it carries an emotional weight, like everything else here.

Next up for Great Heart, 'The Castafiore Emerald', which has an unenviable job to follow this. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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