Cigars of the Pharaoh

The outstanding Cigars of the Pharaoh was created by Herge between 1931 and 1932. What we love this album for are how Herge's graphic style can describe with often few elements other than a simple clear line, complex situations. Tintin escapes from a cruise ship: a few portholes suggest the massive ship. The walk in the desert to the tomb of the pharaoh, a line in the sand. Coffins floating over the sea. Stylistically it does remind Japanese print making such as Hokusai's Great Wave of Kanagawa when Tintin's coffin is going to be submerged.

Then the scenario is fantastically extravagant. Surrealist and oniric at times.

Contemporary cultural criticism labels Tintin's albums, especially the early ones, situated in different historical show more times, with racism.

Let's keep a certain historical perspective to these critics. Where were the United States in 1931? In which state of racism were they? And continued to be after this?
1928 had just witnessed after waves of racially motivated lynchings, a march of the KKK on Washington's Pennsylvania avenue.

As to the treatment of mental health, let's remind that State Laws and the Supreme Court endorsed policies of Eugenics that were similarly inspired to those adopted in Nazi Germany around the same time. Laws that remained in the books until the 1950s!

Herge was a man of great artistic sensitivity who was influenced by the ideas of his time. He chose to give his character, Tintin, a journalist by trade, the capacity to view the world and report it to us as it was. I recently visited a mental health institution in the South U.S. and wish it had had the charming garden Tintin drives Zlotsky and the nutty professor to.
Fortunately, unlike Tintin, they did not want to keep me there.

Herge's creative process and thoughts evolved over time and he himself regretted some characters he had not given enough thought as to how they may be perceived.

Was he perfect? no. Was he a willful racist? I beg to differ.

Plongée dans la drogue et la folie, societés secretes, militaires corrompus, momies, archéologistes maudits, fakirs hypnotiseurs, elephants et poisons, écrivains fous, docteurs fourbes, maharajahs et chasse au tigre, hauts de forme, calecons, fixes-chaussettes, Fez et Djellabas, l’Egypte de Tintin est bien eloignee de la XXe dynastie et de Champollion et plus proche de sa folie contemporaine.

Lisez “Les Cigares du Pharaon” tout en essayant de garder votre sanité pour tacher de ne pas finir dans une camisole de force alors que vous croyez que ce sont les autres qui ont perdus leur raison.

Le Nil et les jungles de l’Inde sont le charmant et stylizé décor que Tintin et Milou parcourent en tout sens tandis qu’un péril de tous les instants les guette. Ma scene preferee reste celle de la crypte funeraire ou Tintin apparait bebe. show less

My review, as posted in Tintin Books

"Cigars of the Pharaoh" marks the dawn of a new era for Tintin, an era in which Hergé began dogged research, and sought to introduce plotting and pacing instead of simply regular cliffhangers. That is not to say things were completed: Herge was obviously obligated to give cliffhangers in the album's original serialised format, and some elements of the countries were less well-researched than his later works. But this album is certainly the next step in the great evolution of Tintin's stories.

This is certainly a thoroughly enjoyable, if somewhat peripatetic, work, and shows - with its addition of a bustling cast of recurring and guest characters, and a thrilling variety of atmospheres - just why show more Tintin was already taking off. show less

This is the story where Tintin comes on his own. While it was still written in a serialised form when it first appeared back in 1934, this story has a proper story arc where Tintin stumbles on a sophisticated drug smuggling ring that stretches across the entire Eurasian continent. It is here that Tintin's companions begin to be developed (namely the Thompson twins) and we also begin to see Tintin going on real adventures and chasing after a singular bad guy. Where Tintin in America seemed to be a hodge podge of different stories thrown together, here we begin to see a well constructed adventure.
Tintin is on a Mediterranean cruise (much to Snowy's annoyance - and here we begin to see the character of Snowy, the loyal and faithful show more companion, developed as well) when he runs into the first of Herge's many absent minded professors, Dr Sophocles Sarcophagus. He is travelling to Egypt to uncover a lost tomb. Tintin also meets one of the recurring villains of the piece, the film mogul Rastapopolous. Herge developed this character very well in this book because we do not, at this stage, realise that he is the bad guy, and in fact when the master of the drug ring falls off a cliff at the end, we are left wondering who it was and whether we will ever find out.
While this story can be read on its own, it does carry over to the Blue Lotus, however I never got to read the Blue Lotus until a long time afterwards. As for this story, it is by far my favourite of the Tintin adventures. Some have suggested that Herge had not got the culture element right here, but we will note that after the Blue Lotus, Herge begins to create his own countries where the adventures are placed, and maybe it is a move away from raising clearly raising his concerns to being much more subtle in his criticism.
Yet we do have criticism within this story (as we do with the next one as well). It is not until Tintin reaches India that we are confronted with the destruction that a lot of these drug smuggler's are causing. While as a kid we read this book and considered that drugs smuggling was bad because Tintin is out to get them, it is when he meets the Raj of Gaipajama that the major concern is raised. The Raj is out to stop the smugglers because of the suffering they cause his people (and Herge is obviously trying to raise awareness of the practice, which still occurs today), namely that the smugglers force the peasants to grow opium poppies and purchase the poppies off of them at a significant discount. However, because the peasants are growing poppies they are unable to grow their own food, and as such are forced to purchase food off of the smuggler's at a significant premium.
The comedy is ramped up a lot here as well. Tintin in America was simply silly in a lot of cases, but now we have the Thompson twins, two Interpol Agents (I believe, though the English versions suggest that they are Scotland Yard) who bumble their way through the investigation, and but end up being the assistance that Tintin needs to crack the case. The most amusing part was where they think they see Tintin sitting behind a dune and whack him on the head with a cane only to discover it is a sheik. In the next panel, Tintin arrives at a city that is being mobilised for war because one of their sheiks was attacked. Then there are the three huge Indians let into Tintin's cell, to teach him a lesson, and then we hear the sounds of fighting, and an ambulance rushing off to pick up the wounded, only to discover that it was the three Indian dudes – golden. show less

Cigars of the Pharaoh is the second in the main sequence of The Adventures of Tintin, and the first that seems to have been written with a complete story from beginning to end in mind. While Tintin in America had a story that threaded through the entire volume, it was disjointed and clearly subordinate to the various gags and pratfalls that dominated the events of the book. In Cigars of the Pharoah, on the other hand, the story of Tintin's pursuit (even though it is often an unknowing pursuit) of a gang of opium smugglers is the centerpiece of the book. This was the first Tintin book I ever read. When I was an eight year old traveling to Africa with my parents, my mother bought me a book to read on the trans-Atlantic flight. Opening my show more backpack, I found a strange book featuring a character I had never heard of, and thus began my journey through the Adventures of Tintin.

Hergé wrote six of the main sequence Tintin books prior to World War II, which were originally published in black and white. Following the war, he went back and revised these books and had them published in color. My version of Cigars of the Pharoah is a revised version, and it shows in some odd ways, ways that show up on the very first page of the book. Tintin is on a cruise talking to his faithful dog Snowy about their trip itinerary when Snowy makes a reference to Marlinspike Hall. But Tintin doesn't meet Captain Haddock until five books later in The Crab with the Golden Claws, and Haddock doesn't acquire Marlinspike Hall until three books after that in Red Rackham's Treasure, making Snowy's remark something of an anachronism. Later in the book, a sheikh Tintin comes across tells him he is a fan and avidly follows all the stories of Tintin's adventures, with one of his servants producing what appears to be a copy of Destination Moon, a book that takes place twelve volumes later in the Tintin chronology. When Tintin meets Rastapopoulos, he remarks that this isn't the first time they have met. But as this is Rastapopoulos' first appearance in the series, and unless Tintin is saying he met the film tycoon at some unknown (and never discussed) point before the series began, this comment just seems odd. These sorts of quirks don't really affect the story, but they would be mildly confusing for someone who was coming into the series fresh and reading them in order.

There are a couple of other odd quirks in the book - on the opening page Tintin is describing their projected voyage to Snowy, saying their cruise will stop at Port Said, Istanbul, Piraeus, Naples, Marseilles, and then through the Straits of Gibraltar. But the accompanying map shows an entirely different voyage, that seems to suggest they are going from Port Said to Aden, Bombay, Columbo, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Shanghai. I suppose one could say that the map shows the voyage that led Tintin and Snowy to Port Said prior to the start of the book, but the directional arrows on the map all point the wrong way, and Tintin doesn't reference this at all, which makes the included map seem kind of superfluous. This sort of strange continuity error shows up often enough to be noticeable in the Tintin books, and I can only guess that this is the result of translation miscues or possibly miscommunication between the artist and the writer. One wonders why this sort of thing wasn't caught in the editing process though.

The story, however, overcomes these sorts of technical gaffes with action laced with a fair amount of humor. After a few idyllic moments on deck, Tintin encounters the quirky Egyptologist Sophocles Sarcophagus, and after a brief bit of comedy involving a lost parchment agrees to join him on the hunt for the lost tomb of Pharaoh Kih-Oskh. Immediately thereafter, Tintin and Sophocles have a chance encounter with film director Rastapopoulos, and soon after the action begins. In their first appearance in the series, the bumbling detectives Thompson and Thomson (already intoning handfuls of malapropisms in every panel) show up in Tintin's cabin and arrest him for opium smuggling, uncovering a planted cache as evidence against him. As usual, Tintin has no idea what is going on, so this continues the pattern of gangsters trying to bump off Tintin when he is clueless about their activities, which leads Tintin to investigate, which results in Tintin foiling the schemes he didn't know anything about at the outset. It seems that organized crime would be much better served if they just left Tintin alone, and let him cluelessly go on his merry way while they pursued their criminal enterprises.

In any event, once he frees himself from the brig of the cruise ship and made his way ashore, Tintin runs across Professor Sarcophagus and joins him on his hunt for the lost tomb of Kih-Oskh, because there is nothing better to do when one is on the run from the law after being framed as an opium dealer than to look for a tomb in the Egyptian desert. With Snowy in tow, the pair find the tomb rather quickly (which makes one wonder exactly why it was lost for so long), and before too long it turns out that the tomb may not have been so lost after all. The as yet unknown and unseen villains capture Tintin when he ventures into the lost tomb and walks into a trap they set for him. But one has to wonder how they could have predicted that Tintin would escape the brig of the ship, meet up with Sophocles, uncover a tomb buried in sand, open the secret door to the tomb, and then wander to just the right spot so that he and Snowy could be conveniently gassed into unconsciousness. And it is made quite clear that the gangsters believe Tintin is coming along this route, so they seem to have amazing powers of precognition, which might explain why they targeted him to begin with when he was completely clueless about their activities.

In any event, Tintin and Snowy take a trip on the Red Sea, get rescued, captured again, freed, and runs across Rastapopoulos, who turns out to be remarkably affable given Tintin's previous encounter (and especially given what the reader later learns about him), gets arrested by Thompson and Thomson for gun running, escapes again, and finally finds Rastapopoulos for a third time. Rastapopoulos, apparently unfazed by Tintin's admission that he has been arrested for opium smuggling and gun running, provides him with some equipment to head off across the desert, where his life is threatened once more. And the fairly amazing thing about all of this is that Tintin still has no clue why he was framed for opium smuggling, or who is trying to kill him. And there's really no reason why he should, given that thus far neither he nor the reader have come across any clues other than some mysteriously marked cigars. This installment of The Adventures of Tintin has plenty of action, but basically no mystery, because unanswered questions with no clues is not a mystery.

So Tintin meanders along. He gets drafted into a local army during a war that Thompson and Thomson seem to have sparked, gets shot as a spy, revived, and winds up in the jungles of India. One element that is potentially lost now is that all of the places that Tintin journeys to in this book are what would have then been British or French colonies (after the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire following World War I). This goes a long way to explaining why everyone Tintin meets speaks English (French in the original), but raises the question of whose army is he drafted into? This question, however, pales in comparison to the question of how Tintin figures out how to speak the language of elephants with a hand carved horn. And that question vanishes into almost insignificance next to the amazing coincidence of Tintin running into Professor Sophocles in an Indian jungle. Finally, almost two-thirds of the way into the book, and only as a result of a fortuitous accident, Tintin begins to get some clues as to who framed him and wants him dead.

Of course, this being Tintin, the clues only come after a dinner party, and then in the form of yet another attempt on Tintin's life. We finally come across an actual criminal, but he escapes and then Tintin is put in a mental ward, escapes, is caught again, runs across Thompson and Thomson yet again, Snowy angers a mob of Indians and is to be sacrificed, and finally Tintin befriends an Indian Maharajah and sets about unraveling the plot of the story. And once Tintin actually gets on the trail of the bad guys, he gets to the bottom of things quite quickly. I suppose this isn't surprising, since they had already proved themselves to be fairly incompetent by screwing up their attempts to kill him time and again in the story. After locating the villains' ridiculously easy to find secret lair and crashing their secret meeting, Tintin breaks up the gang and is exonerated for all the crimes Thompson and Thomson had arrested him for. There is a final denouement involving a kidnapped prince and a mysterious masked criminal, but most of the story is wrapped up in a bow at the end, with just a few loose ends left hanging.

And those loose ends lead to The Blue Lotus, although the stories are only very loosely tied together - unlike the later two-part Adventures of Tintin, Cigars of the Pharaoh and The Blue Lotus are more like a story and its sequel rather than one story spread over two books. Even though Cigars of the Pharaoh is a better book than Tintin in America, this is not one of the volumes that makes the series well-loved and fondly remembered. The artwork is good, having been cleaned up and colored as part of the work done on the early volumes following World War II, but it is still more or less a newspaper strip simply translated to book form, so the beautiful half-page and full page panels that show up in later books are not to be found here. However, it is a decent story, and full of the humor that makes Tintin such a likable character, and full of the action scenes that make him a dashing hero. The book just lacks the coherence, the depth of research, and the intrigue that make later volumes so good.

This review has also been posted to my blog Dreaming About Other Worlds. show less

Thankfully, this was a vast improvement upon the previous book, Tintin In America. The plotting was tighter and the character of Tintin starting to be more developed.

The funny bits were actually funny, which helped, and the introduction of Thompson and Thomson gave the story an added dimension missing from the previous book.

So, a better offering and a nice set up for the next volume, The Blue Lotus

This has long been one of my favorite Tintin books! Ties in well with several of the other books in the series, and introduces you to Thomson and Thompson and the Maharaja of Gaipajama. Sets up perfectly for the Blue Lotus.

I love all of the historical references in the series. It’s not just for kids! Adults will enjoy it just as much. Enough humor for both!

Tintin # 4 - Tintin runs across a strange heroin drug ring and thwarts their attempts to kill him. The heroin is being run out of an old hidden pharros' tomb and then smuggled out in the shape of cigars. There is one woman depicted in this entire comic. Was Herge just not comfortable with drawing women? I've heard that Tintin is thought to be sexually neutral or homosexual, not that I think that matters much, but there are hardly any women in any of the Tintin books so far. Sort of weird is all.