Graphic SF Reader | The Blue Lotus (The Adventures of Tintin)

First glimpse of what the series would eventually achieve | The Blue Lotus (The Adventures of Tintin) | Herge

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	• The Blue Lotus (The Adventures of Tintin) Herge Little, Brown Young Readers, 1984 - 62 pages average customer review:based on 19 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Must-Have for Tintin Fans

As you might or might not know, most early Tintin was originally published in B/W format, with old style drawing. Yes boys and girls, it wasn't the colour edition we have now in hands. The first 9 titles are sceheduled to be released in English. This Blue Lotus is one of them.

Most early Tintin might look very old to us. The drawing weren't that smooth, compared to the later coloured edition. If you're a die-hard Tintin fan, I'm sure you really wanted to know what the book originally looked like. You will notice that the panels also changed. Not just the size, but also the sequence. Some panels were even edited or deleted. Some panels are added. In short, you can compare both editions.

The book was carefully printed and packaged. From the looks, people would already guess that this book (and also the others) is a lux book. The paper was good. The hard cover was good. The binding was good. The printing inside was also good. What more can you expect? Here the book also provided several pin-ups or covers in colour. It's a very nice gift!

If you feel you're a die-hard fan of Tintin (and Herge) then no doubt you must have all these 9 B/W original editions.

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Graphic SF Reader

Tintin, still in India helps out a Chinese family having problems with a bunch of Japanese military gangsters, in a rather cross-cultural extravaganza.

Said gangsters would like to test out their sword sharpness on the young reporter's neck. The Blue Lotus itself turns out to be an opium den of iniquity kind of joint.

First glimpse of what the series would eventually achieve

Herge, The Blue Lotus (Methuen, 1936)

Herge here continues the story arc that started in The Cigars of the Pharaoh, with Tintin and Snowy headed off to find the antidote for the madness-inducing poison that played such a prominent role in their last adventure and, of course, finding themselves in even more danger than they were the last time. This is still early work for Herge, and newbies to the series might want to start with one of the later volumes (anything published during World War II will likely make you a fan for life) and come back to this. And, of course, you don't want to read this one without having read The Cigars of the Pharaoh first, or a number of references will make less sense than they otherwise would. ***

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one of herge's best

Blue Lotus is certainly one of Herge's best, along with Cigars, Broken Ear, Tintin in Tibet, Red Rackams Treasure. What I find to be true in his best books is the belief that never dies which is that there is some point of contact possible between the relationships you pursue in your lifetime and the external world or the events and history of earth herself. This illusory point of contact is kept alive, we keep hoping for it, because Tintin is undefeatable since he never makes the mistake of loving.

Herge's first masterwork

Tintin's fifth album (counting Tintin in the Land of the Soviets as the first), is Herge's first mature work. Lotus is actually a sequel of the Cigars of the Pharaoh, but it can be read without having read the previous book, and is miles apart in terms of maturity. Also, the book transpires in a very definite time and place: Shanghai in the 1930s, as different powers (the japanese, the western countries) struggle for influence. Tintin takes the side of the suffering chinese people, in the form of his friend Tchang (inspired by a real life chinese friend Tintin met in Belgium, also named Tchang). For the first time, he chastises colonialism and the westerner's treatment of non western people (see page 6 and 7 in particular). Paradoxically, the japanese are the really bad guys in this story, personified by the evil Mitsushirato, Tintin's nemesis in this album. I suppose this was the view that many people in the west have of the japanese during that time. This is a complex, multilayered book (hardly the stuff one think is directed at children), and I suppose this was the reason why it was only translated into english in the 1980s, decades after most of the other albums.

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Tintin travels to Shanghai where he and his dog, Snowy, encounter Japanese spies, sabotage, and opium smugglers.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4

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