Great - if strange - Tintin album | Flight 714 (The Adventures of Tintin)

Fantastic. | Flight 714 (The Adventures of Tintin) | Herge

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	• Flight 714 (The Adventures of Tintin) Herge Little, Brown Young Readers, 1975 - 62 pages average customer review:based on 16 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Good Story Good quality and Fair cost of $8.99

This is one of best stories of tintin series. I love to read this. Cost wise also 8.99 is lowest on net.

Great - if strange - Tintin album

Flight 714, one of Tintin's later albums, is one of Herge's stranger and more modern efforts, as the book deals with such issues as industrial espionage and extraterrestrials (!). As the first men of the Moon, Tintin, Haddock and Calculus travel to Sydney for a conference. Changing planes in Jakarta, Indonesia, they run into Lazlo Carreidas, the man who never laughs, an eccentric millionaire who invites them to their private plane after Calculus gets an accidental laugh from him. Unfortunately, there is a plan set on to kidnap Carreidas' plane with the help of his personal assistant and divert it to a small island in "Sondonesia". The head of the plan is none other than Tintin's enemy Rastapopoulos (other characters from previous books such as Allan and Szut appear here). However, things don't go as planned for Rastapopoulos, as Tintin escapes from captivity in the island and is drawn to an ancient cave full of statues that resemble astronauts, and paintings that resemble spaceships (I suppose that Erich Von Daniken's theories were in vogue when Herge wrote this album in 1968). Things get stranger and stranger, and I find the denouement puzzling (without giving it away, I wonder what happens to Rastapopoulos and Allan...and why they appear back unharmed in Tintin and the Lake of the Sharks). Overall, a great (if strange) album.

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Fantastic.

Herge, Flight 714 (Methuen, 1968)

Flight 714 is the pinnacle of Herge's genius, Tintin and company's finest moment. Drawing on both Herge's experimentation with pacing in The Castafiore Emerald and the anomalousness of Tintin in Tibet, Herge gives us the return of Rastapopoulos, Tintin's arch-enemy. This time he's hijacking the plane of a magnate who's offered Tintin a lift to a conference after they miss their transport. Needless to say, no one involved has any intention of letting him get away with it. This is great, great stuff, and one wonders what might have been had Herge died after only one more book. ****

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"It's a bore to stop being a millionaire."

Reader opinion is divided over the merits of Flight 714. Far and away the most modern of Belgian writer Herge's Tintin comic books, Flight 714 deals with industrial espionage, aliens, and a surprising amount of gunplay for a Tintin adventure. Some fans saw it as an unwelcome departure from the quaint European jet-setting of books past; more than that, however, the book shows that Herge understood that the world was changing. The Cold War had begun, and the people were unsafe in new and frightening ways. For all that bleakness, the book is more action-packed than many of the others, and it ends happily, as does every Tintin book. It's also the next-to-last book in the series, followed by Tintin and the Picaros.

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A Strange Flight

"Flight 714" is a strange flight, and an interesting Tintin adventure, first published in 1968. It's got a rather weird atmosphere too. Always creeped me out a bit when I read it as a kid.

Being the first men on the moon, Tintin, Captain Haddock and Professor Calculus have been invited to a conference in Australia. Changing planes in Jakarta, Indonesia, they run into millionaire Lazlo Carreidas. He's known as "the millionaire who never laughs", though Professor Calculus gets quite a chuckle out of him thanks to an accidental magic trick. Carreidas hasn't laughed in years, and he insists on taking the three of the them to Australia in a private jet of his own design. Unfortunately, the jet is hijacked on the way by Carreidas' personal assistant, and taken to a remote island in "Sondonesia", which has a rather strange vibe to it. No time to worry about that though, Tintin's enemy Rastapopolous is there, and plans to give Mr Carreidas a truth serum, and get his bank account number. Things don't go as planned for him either, and things start taking a very strange turn when Tintin, on the run with the others, is drawn towards an ancient cave full of statues that resemble astronauts, and paintings that resemble spaceships...

There's a bit of satire, in the form of eccentric millionaire Mr Carreidas, there's a bit of character exploration, in the truth serum scenes, and there's a bit action, comedy and science fiction too. Herge, being in his early 60s when he wrote this, seems to focus more on Captain Haddock, who's closer to his age, rather than Tintin, who's a much younger man. I've noticed he does that a bit in the later comics.

It's worth a look for Tintin fans. A unique adventure.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4

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